Brad Wardell writes us: “Windows Vista Beta 2 is nearly here and now seems as good a time as any to take a look at where things stand with Microsoft’s next-generation operating system. As this article makes clear, Windows Vista has a lot of potential – it is a major upgrade. But it also has some major issues to overcome prior to release.”
..it’s nothing new for people that had their hands on Vista’s CTP and Beta 1 releases.
It’s a dog slow operating system with or without debugging code and I tested both. Beta 2 prerelease repotrs arent good either.
It is unclear where this sort of architectural miss leads MS to, and where to will lead consumers.
The sad thing is that after all this time, and the delays it’s really nothing more than eye candy. I’m no Linux Fan, or Apple Zeelot, but if there was ever a time when either of these alternatives could penetrate this market it’s now. Not to mention all the things this OS will break in terms of apps; Corporate Anti-Virus, Ghost imaging, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first in line to get it, but from an enterprise POV Vista may be more trouble than it’s worth…my 2c.
And in this comment lies the problem.
You are so ignorant that you don’t see anything but the eye candy.
There is a COMPLETELY new API, new networking stack, new audio stack, new display manager (more than just eye candy), new IE, new OE, new WMP, updated file management (last update came with IE4), UAC, and then more.
The fact that you can’t see anything but the eye candy should tell you something.
Actually, I do realize there’s more than that under the hood. The new IE7 will be availbe soon for XP. OE is nothing more than facelift; it doesn’t handle email, or do anything else differently than the OE we have now. WMP is in BETA now, and again a free version for XP will be available soon. The display manager is eye candy, so sorry to burst your bubble. Unless you have a 128MB video card, it won’t work. The new audio and network stacks could be enhanced via an update. So again, why would an enterprise want to invest 10’s of thousands of $$$ for a new TCP/IP stack, and better audio? Obviously you don’t work in IT or support 100’s of users…idiot.
Actually, OE does handle e-mail, and well, EVERYTHING differently.
Not only can it handle a lot more than previous versions (if you’ve used OE for TONS of work, you would know what I’m talking about), but it also stores contacts, e-mails, etc… all as their own file on the harddrive, rather than making some absurd and stupid OE file on the harddrive that is nearly impossible to back up.
Just from the fact that you say that the new display manager is eye candy says to me that you no next to nothing about the topic. The new UI is some eye candy and some interface enahcnements, but the display manager allows you to do so much more with your UI than what GDI+ could do, and I don’t mean just UI.
You can enchance any part of the os via an update. So what?
I’m telling you what’s new, and not even everything that’s in there because you can’t see beyond the eye candy.
BTW, good job resulting to personal attacks (being called ignorant is a personal attack, at least, not if you know what it actually means).
Calling someone ignorant isn’t a personal attack? You must be a Brit…
And no I don’t use OE often you’re right. OE is a personal e-mail client, not a corporate client. If you use it that way, you’re crazy.
I do know about the topic, and my stand point is from a corporate perspective. If you ask any IT Manager/CIO that the reason we’re spending $50,000 [not including the upgrades needed on hardware] to upgrade to Vista for better GUI performance, a better OE clinet [that isn’t used anyway] he’d tell you you’re nuts. As I said, I’ll be the first in line to get this when it comes, because personally I like the look and feel.
However, in the corporate environment there has to be a higher value placed on need vs. want.
You are right, I don’t see much of a reason to upgrade in a corporate environment, unless you are a software assurance customer.
I could see a reason if you have 2000 desktops, as XP is easier to administer (with remote assitance and such). But then, could you find a better deal on XP than Vista? Who knows.
It’s all a wait and see. I for one hope it’s all it’s supposed to be and more. I love new stuff…but I think of the horrors of the migration from NT to 2000/2003 and WIN9x/2000 to XP. Oh well…if it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t have jobs I guess…
Actually, I do realize there’s more than that under the hood. The new IE7 will be availbe soon for XP. OE is nothing more than facelift; it doesn’t handle email, or do anything else differently than the OE we have now. WMP is in BETA now, and again a free version for XP will be available soon. The display manager is eye candy, so sorry to burst your bubble. Unless you have a 128MB video card, it won’t work. The new audio and network stacks could be enhanced via an update. So again, why would an enterprise want to invest 10’s of thousands of $$$ for a new TCP/IP stack, and better audio? Obviously you don’t work in IT or support 100’s of users…idiot.
I think CPUGuy is right and you need to look below the surface of the UI. Just as you were wrong about Vista only offering eye-candy, you’re wrong about OE (Windows Mail) being just a facelift. Windows Mail uses the file system and a new database for email storage. Among other things, this allows you to get at your messages from other apps, and supports a greater number of messages without the store becoming corrupted as can happen with OE.
The audio and network stacks could not and will not be enhanced via an update to downlevel platforms. The audio subsystem was ripped out of the kernel, rewritten from scratch, and put in user mode. The network stack was also rewritten and depends on features only offered in Vista.
Last, you don’t need a GPU with 128MB RAM for the DWM. It works with 64MB GPUs as well. Most blow this out of proportion anyway as the GPUs have been available for over 3 years and can be acquired for around $25. Those that discount the the 3D GUI as just eye candy will soon be just as surprised by its utility for visualization and usability as those who discounted the 2D GUI as eye candy 25 years ago.
And again, try and justify those items for a 300 – 500 seat upgrade. It won’t happen. As for OE; like I said I don’t use it everyday, because it’s used very little in the corporate environment. All of what is being talked about does not make Vista a “NEED” in corporate IT. At some point it will find it’s way into the enterprise, just like XP did. But my point, and probably not verbalized very well, is that with all the delays, the need for beefier systems, and the majority of the enhancements being GUI related, corporate IT sees Vista as primarily eye candy enhancements. I don’t disagree that the better video performance isn’t a good thing. But it’s going to take more than that for the enterprise to get excited and make it a “must have” for their company. That’s why I stated that a number of companies may opt to look at alternatives, and it’s a perfect time for Linux and other Nix alternatives to get a foothold.
Edited 2006-05-19 17:47
Fair enough. From a corporate standpoint, the security and deployment technologies may be more interesting.
Network Access Protection, allowing you to automatically quarantine systems that don’t meet enterprise security policy and clean/update those systems before allowing them to connect to the network.
BitLocker, which protects systems (particularly laptops) from information disclosure if they are lost or stolen by encrypting the entire harddrive.
XImage file-based image deployment, allowing you to mount OS images in Windows, edit them to your needs, apply patches, service packs, etc., and nest images for multiple deployment scenarios so you can use a single image file for different hardware, language requirements, etc.
Serverside, there will be Terminal Services Gateway allowing TS over HTTP, and Remote Applications, allowing execution of applications over TS via shortcuts on the client and running them on the client desktop like local apps rather than all contained within a TS window.
More http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/default.mspx
All of these things may be new but if the finished product is still slow and crappy, are we still going to be touting all this newness then?
All of these things may be new but if the finished product is still slow and crappy, are we still going to be touting all this newness then?
The current betas aren’t slow and crappy so I doubt the final product will be. The features aren’t just being touted because they are new. They are being touted because of the architectual changes that push them ahead of the old designs and allow for new features, better security, greater extensibility, and/or greater efficiencies.
Well, let’s see:
“new networking stack”
There are two things here, or you dont know what a networking Stack is, or you are a Windows_zealot. Write a new networking Stack is a heavy process and long one too, even for the _best_ programmers. They wrote TCP/IP stack from beggining? they wrote a new stack for NETBIOS? or a Wireless one? What i know from this, is that Wireless Stack was improved to extend it.
“new display manager”
Uh? Can you believe they wrote all GUI stuff from start? But you’re right, there’s is a “new” CLOSE (X) button in Vista.
“new IE”
and a new ActiveX ? 😉
“new WMP”
WMP has the worse UI in the world, period.
I’m sorry, but you are the one who doesn’t know what you are talking about.
They baically dumped the TCP/IP stack from XP and started over from scratch. You say it takes good programmers a long time to do this, well, it’s been how long now?
Yes, they did write all that GUI stuff from the start.
GDI+ was what was used from 2000 on, and now they have Windows Presentation Foundation, which is a COMPLETELY different system.
What does new IE have to do with new ActiveX?
Great, so you don’t like WMP’s UI… have you even used WMP11? Also, that sort of thing is really completely subjective. WMPs UI is not that much different from iTunes, except you can do more with it. And now WMP11 has some really slick enhancements.
What does whether or not you like WMPs UI have to do with there being a new version? Abolutely nothing.
Seriously, instead of attacking people about things you obviously have no clue about, maybe you should open up a book, or perhaps LEARN how to use your system.
It’s not all that accurate either. First, the big differences are in several APIs — particularly for drivers. That’s good because the extra effort to maintain pre-Vista and post-Vista drivers will give plenty of incentive to support only one (probably Vista).
The networking stack is not new. It has a bunch of new functions added on top, but the stack itself is the same stuff the lifted from BSD for XP.
Basically, a lot of the features are intended to be more Linux-ish. Audio is becoming more similar, the display management, the file management, etc. Even WMP is converging on a mix of KDE’s Konqueror and AmaroK (I know, WMP11 isn’t as feature-complete, but they traded that for integration with music stores — they are playing to a different audience).
I’ve had a chance to test-drive Longhorn fairly recently. There were a lot of bugs I found. I had used betas of XP prior to release too, and it was far more stable/usable.
The stuff the author says about file handles and stuff is also off. File handle resources don’t bog down your system at 25K handles. That’s silly. Longhorn still suffers from the same sloppy VM handling as XP though. That might be where he’s seeing the problem. The filesystem’s caching is still strange too. The funniest bugs are when there’s errors that cause the CTM (or whatever they call it) for certain screen elements to be messed up. It has some entertaining consequences for the UI. I also find the handling of the window decorations and titles (and their frequent disappearance) very annoying.
But, Microsoft’s getting there. I don’t see the new UIs and such as being a huge boon. Some of the graphics stuff will enable some nice eye-candy, but there’s going to be an era of really bad UI work to put it through its paces and decide what’s good and what’s not as far as practice goes.
The networking stack is not new. It has a bunch of new functions added on top, but the stack itself is the same stuff the lifted from BSD for XP.
This isn’t true. The new stack was written from scratch. To answer the previous poster, it’s a new dual-mode TCP/IP stack. There’s also a new native wireless architecture, enhancements to existing APIs and systems such as WinHTTP, WinInet and NDIS, and new extensibility frameworks including for wireless extensibility.
Edit: Also, XP’s stack has no BSD code. Only some of the utilities like http://FTP.exe use BSD code and these were remnants from when MS used a BSD-derived stack from Spider Systems back in the NT 3.x days. MS has rewritten the stack since then, IIRC in NT 4.x, definitely in Win2k (and continuing in XP for IPv6), and now with Vista (combining v4 and v6 and including MSR tech as well as supporting several new RFCs).
Edited 2006-05-19 20:51
“if there was ever a time when either of these alternatives [Linux or OSX] could penetrate this market it’s now.”
One of them might. The other, as long as it is only available to run on Apple branded hardware, will definitely not.
I’m in two minds about whether releasing OS X would have worked, or would still work, and it would be risky as well as interesting. It is bet your company time, when you radically change your model like that.
But the thing I’m not in two minds about is that Cupertino bottled. Understandable, but they bottled.
The enterprise won’t be migrating to Vista anytime soon for those exact reasons.
Vista has little to offer over 2003 server, which has little to offer over 2000 Server – speaking from a practicality standpoint.
Exchange will determine who upgrades and when. Big-budgeted corporate rollouts will always be around, but when a company has to decide between upgrading 500MHz user workstations (running a mix of NT ^still^ and 2000), or upgrading their Windows and email server licenses, it is a tough call.
NT is dead, and they’re killing 2000, but it’s hard when so many companies are reluctant to change, especially when they have to change *everything* in order to make it pay off.
When you take into consideration how many companies rely on third party hacks like Ghost and Anti-Virus (not to mention all the imaging, updates, etc) and you tell them that they will have to come up with something new – all at once – I’d bet that not too many IT managers will be jumping on Vista.
Reports from whom?
There are no performance problems for me, save for ingame performance issues, maily due to the new driver framework and untweaked video drivers.
The UI is actually a LOT snappier and more responsive, boot time is faster, and just the overall use of the system is much more smooth.
“There are no performance problems for me”
Care to mention your hardware specification …
“The UI is actually … system is much more smooth.”
Yes new instalation tend to do that when your old one was full of spyware , adware , nagware , virus , registry not optimized , defrag not done in a long time , etc …
Um yeah, except I didn’t have spyware, adware, nagware, etc….
My system rating is a 3
This is a really well written, minimally biased article that gives facts and information. Kudos to the author.
I don’t understand his comment “Depending on your configuration, somewhere around 25,000 handles your Windows machine will start to slow down dramatically” though; my current XP SP2 laptop (centrino w/ 1Gb ram) right now has 57,000 handles and that’s normal use for me on a day to day basis.
Of course an HBITMAP must have a different performance impact than an HPEN, and there seems no way to get that kind of detail from the Task Manager.
But I’m curious, what kind of app needs 57,000 handles ?
I found detailed discussion of handles vs 64-bit, which is your number-one hit on Googling << LLP64 MIDL >>.
According to the LLP64 model, evidently the 64-bit-handle-space is actually not any larger for the kinds of handles such as USER and GDI handles – these are ported simply by sign-extending them to 64-bits, which allows a lot of existing data-structures to work.
Only handles such as HGLOBAL make use of the high 32 bits.
In other words it is not handle-address-space, the sheer number-of-handles which is running out, the OS must be running out of the memory required to implement whatever the handles refer to, which as in the case of e.g. HBITMAP can be a lot of memory. Devil-in-the-details !
That is my suggestion. Wait until you’ve tried them both ( Leopard & Vista ) at your local computer store / apple store before commiting to one or the other.
For me, I will make my own choice wether I should buy an Apple Mac or an AMD64 X2 depending on the OS/software.
My 2 cents
is deciding on a release date, and what the product will actually be! I figure the longer they delay it – the more they will have to play catchup later on.
A good article but I’m still going to run Linux.
I work for a support company and although I support both Linux and Windows network, my laptop only runs Linux. I just don’t understand Windows at times. After 3 months it’s always dog slow. I don’t even know what to tell my clients when their computers are slow. I normally say “when last did you defrag?”. Maybe I’m an idiot. I just don’t trust Microsoft at all. They bought Exchange, stole Active Directory from Novell basically, bought DOS, bought Windows Defender (not sure what the AV company was called). Can MS actually code? How much of the software they’ve made is actually written by them? It’s a pitty for Microsoft though, their customers don’t feel confident. I see them everyday.
Currently I’m dreading upgrading Windows 2k and Windows XP machines to Vista.
Just my thoughts.
//After 3 months it’s always dog slow//
Funny, after *two years* my Dell laptop with XP SP2 runs plenty fast. I defrag once a month. Use AVG Antivirus. Smart browsing habits.
It’s simple, really, to keep your XP boxes running fast and clean.
In a corporate environment, the easiest way to do this is to remove admin rights on each box. Again, simple, with Group Policies.
re: upgrading to Vista … unless you’re forced to do so, I’d wait. I’m running XP, and will wait at least 12 months to upgrade to Vista … probably longer.
Funny, after *two years* my Dell laptop with XP SP2 runs plenty fast. I defrag once a month. Use AVG Antivirus. Smart browsing habits
Funny, average users don’t do that, and shouldn’t have to. Wasn’t Windows supposed to be simple ? Now you’re saying you have to be smart to use it, that you have to do thing with names an average users can’t even understand ?
It’s simple, really, to keep your XP boxes running fast and clean
You should not have to tend to an OS, it should have to do it itself. You should not have to help an OS stay in shape either, the OS should do this work automatically, and warn you when it can’t anymore. This is wasted time, and time is money. That’s less productive time for users of Windows.
And what you call simple I call very hard. None of the users I know could ever even understand or do defrag, or antivirus (and Windows) updates.
Particularly these 2 problems have 20+ years solutions (privilege separations and intelligent FS), in place on other systems.
Vista apparently will solve only one of these 2 problems, which is sad really for its future users.
I don’t care actually, but saying keeping a Windows system fast and clean is simple is delusion.
//Funny, average users don’t do that, and shouldn’t have to. Wasn’t Windows supposed to be simple ? //
Er … it isn’t simple to setup automatic defragging? As a support tech, you *should* know how to do this, so that the user never even has to bother with it. Is it any easier to setup automatic cron jobs in Linux? Thought not.
//None of the users I know could ever even understand or do defrag, or antivirus (and Windows) updates.//
All of which can be (very easily) setup to run automatically, by anyone with a modicum of Windows experience. No offense, but you either need to learn more about the OS, or your users are *exceptionally* dumb. How hard can it be to let something run automatically, and click “restart” when an update has been installed?
And, no, you won’t be “restarting 4 times a day” … more like 4 times a month, at most.
“or your users are *exceptionally* dumb.”
Never under-estimate the lack of intelligence or the desire to know with computer users.
Your not making a very strong case.
Defragging – Windows — manually run and/or manually setup a scheduled event. Linux/BSD — don’t have to do this.
Antivirus – Windows — download and install and have it chew up cpu cycles in the background — possibly get a freebie AVG or similar (or pay a yearly fee for the privlege). Linux/BSD – don’t have to have antivirus.
Antispyware/malware – Windows — at best you run a few of these apps and they fix the issue. At worse, you have to reformat and reinstall and *hope* that data copied over is not infected. Linux/BSD — probably doesn’t exist. Users run underprivleged, package management verifies binary checksums and most systems come pre-configured with daily security audit scripts to notify you of potential issues.
User Accounts – Windows — setup in corporate environment where users do not have administrative access (which oddly axes user functionaility like the pop-up calendar/clock) and mess with filemon/regmon and a myraid of other tools to make applications work properly in this environment. Linux — defaults to *all* users running underprivleged w/privlege escalation prompted when necessary (easily managed on a per-user basis). Applications are written to this expectation so you can install them and they umm..work.
Restarting – Windows — you claim 4 times a month. Linux/BSD — My systems (desktops, servers providing 90+ thin clients desktop access, etc..) have uptimes measured in hundreds of days. The only time they go down is for *kernel* updates or scheduled hardware maintenance (hard drive upgrades/ram upgrades, etc..).
Updates — most of my systems have all software installed via the centralized package repository. As a result, all updates are centralized and require a single command. Windows requires Windows Update for select Microsoft products, various update checkers for other applications and manually checking/purchasing/installing of the remainder. In addition, with Windows, when an app is upgraded, you cannot use the old version — on Linux/BSD you can (helpful when your working with a true multiuser system).
Windows is not easy nor transparent. It is definitely *familiar* and most people over the past decade have largely accepted the “Windows way of doing things”. However, to state it is easy and then type a list of tasks you need to do to work around its inadequacies that are *not* the norm for other operating systems is simply foolish.
I couldn´t say it any better!
Thank you, sir.
“As a support tech, you *should* know how to do this, so that the user never even has to bother with it.”
and how many home users have a personal support tech that can do these things for them…
Er … it isn’t simple to setup automatic defragging? As a support tech, you *should* know how to do this, so that the user never even has to bother with it. Is it any easier to setup automatic cron jobs in Linux? Thought not.
I think his point was that in Windows you need to setup defragmentation to run periodically. In Linux, the filesystems don’t fragment, so you neither need to setup a cron-job, nor do you have to deal with the overhead of the defragmentation.
You were proving his point. Under Windows, you need to set these things up. Doing so requires a modicum of experience, and running them impacts the system’s performance. In Linux, these things are not necessary and aren’t done — and thus no experience is necessary and there’s no impact on the system.
How hard can it be to let something run automatically, and click “restart” when an update has been installed? And, no, you won’t be “restarting 4 times a day” … more like 4 times a month, at most.
Same thing. To the Linux user, the notion that you need to restart after a software install or update is foreign. It’s simply not necessary. Reboot the machine? When would you ever do that (unless you are turning it off to conserve power)? Really, 4 times a month is 48x a year. But the Linux box in my basement (which is in heavy use) hasn’t been rebooted for a few years (it’s a web server, file server, and we use it for video editing and point-to-point video conferencing with my inlaws in Europe).
The funniest thing about all of the Linux user’s replies is, basically, “oh, but you save SO MUCH TIME by not having to reboot your PC!”
Give. Me. A. Break.
It takes about 38 seconds for my Xp box to reboot to a completely usable desktop session.
Unless your time is worth >$150 US/hour … the time savings is miniscule.
And, for 99.99% of linux users … their time isn’t worth 1/45th of that.
Edited 2006-05-22 19:42
I don’t think he said you had to be smart, you have to have “smart browsing habits” which is important on any OS.
I have never used an OS that I did not have to tend to in some way, and I have used win31/95/98/nt/2k/xp/2k3, AIX, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, fedora core, and OSX. there’s updates, driver problems, user management, filesystem management (even if that means just cleaning a /tmp folder).
It’s very easy to do a defrag, and and all my users catch on pretty quick to the benefits of doing it, maybe it’s not your users that are at fault, or Windows, maybe they just need some advice and education
XP defrags automatically when idle. The “ProcessIdleTasks()” function is what runs this and there are lots of google hits for it.
That’s for tasks in memory, not diskspace, read those google hit’s your talking about.
I don’t have to defrag and I don’t run an AV /Malware scanner, I can freely roam any site that I fancy. Then aagain I don’t run Windows.
Alie
😉
After almost ten (10) years (the actual anniversary is the end of November, 2006), my Micron Millenia Pro2 Plus tower with OS/2 Warp 4 runs plenty fast, too. 🙂
I’ve never bothered to defrag its HPFS boot partition, I only use an anti-virus tool (F-Prot for DOS) on those DOS and Windows programs that I grab from the net, and I tend to browse wherever I want using either Links 0.99 or Firefox 1.5.0.2. I don’t use flash or Java on Firefox, so some might consider that “smart”.
It’s easier keeping an OS/2 box running fast and clean.
I don’t plan on upgrading. No need. If I get new hardware and Warp 4 won’t install, I might upgrade to eCS, but that won’t happen til the old PPro box dies.
Svchost, the much maligned process in the review.. is windows running windows services. It just encapsulates them in svchost.exe processes.
If the author had bothered to google, he would have understood that.
Not a bad review but next time I hope he will spend 10 seconds on google on the touch points.
Morglum
The author was aware of this. The point was that Windows should display the service’s name in the process list, not the word “svchost”.
Yeah, I agree that there should be a private API between SVCHost and task-manager to enumerate the sub-processes. But this would probably burn a thread in SVChost to do it.
There are probably going to be far fewer svchosts in the final release. I think services are being separated from each other to aid in debugging crashes.
The author was aware of this. The point was that Windows should display the service’s name in the process list, not the word “svchost”.
While Task Manager doesn’t display the contained services, you can see them from cmd with “tasklist /svc”
For those of you who will be buying a copy of Vista right away, which feature in particular will you be buying it for or is it just for the whole package? Or more specifically, which improvements over XP are of primary importance?
As with any IT enthusiast, it’s new. For me it’s digging into all the pieces, GUI, Network, Security, new apps, better apps, and seeing if it’s better. More imporantaly, finding how it will make IT and the company more productive. I’ll do the same with Office 2007 too. Can I do my job, and can others do their job with Linux and OO? Sure…probably, but lets face it we’re in an MS-Centic world, and that won’t change for some time, at least I don’t see it…
Well maybe if you tried…
Hey, I’d love to see a change. I’ve used a few Linux distros, and I think they have a lot to offer. I haven’t done much with MAC/OSX so I can’t give any pros/cons. What I’ve seen I like a lot, and wouldn’t turn my nose up at a MacBook or MacBook pro, or an iMac. But again, from a a corporate stand point, it’s pretty hard to oust any MS platform, and essentially do a Fork-Lift replacement…
But again, from a a corporate stand point, it’s pretty hard to oust any MS platform, and essentially do a Fork-Lift replacement…
Tell this to Extremadura’s administration, or Munich, or Palma de Mallorca, or …