Longhorn will have some new features that will be particularly interesting for hardware hackers: The Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat) is basically a built-in benchmarking tool that should help with determining what affect a new component is having on the system, and another, unnamed feature looks for hardware changes on boot, and, if it finds any, will restart the hardware configuration process.
That nice.
So… is it another influence of ex-Be engineers around redmond? =^]
“The initial, limited view of this feature will show up in Beta One; it will be command line only until later in the Beta cycle.”
Oh nice. Soo that’s going to be the end of complaints against unix cli programs. Microsoft does it, so all will party and rejoice.
If the article was about a same kind of app for linux:
“That’s so lame. They’re making me use CLI!! That’s so 80’s. Linux suxxxx OSX rulzz WXP rullzzz.”
Just like every revolutionary new “automation” found in windows through the years this will be another source for headakes .
Just like autodiscovery and driver instalation of usb devices (especially printers). It kinda’ works (the 10% of the time you actually have the drivers in your system) but gives you such touble when things go wrong … And they do !
I may be wrong… but seen that the only difference in this new “feature” is that the system will boot faster not looking for new devices. If a new device’s found, the system will just do the same as now. The only difference is the OS trying to understand the hardware to make the appropriate changes in system config, like the eye candy level and video resolution for example… (Or more drastic changes in case of motherboard changes… it won’t trust the previous config/registry all the time)
They already do that, at least to a great extent.
Try this little experiment: remove a hd with windows xp from a computer, and plug it in on a computer with a different chipset, or sufficiently different hardware. You get a blue screen faster that you can blink. Why? Instead of probing the system, they load most of the crap right away.
And I think that it’s bogus most kinds of self-configuring stuff like this. Just look at the genetic algorithm patches that are in some testing linux kernels, it’s nice and very interesting, great idea, but in reality, it gets you like 2% performance, max.
I’d be happy if Windows just gave more descriptive error messages. I shouldn’t have to google a bluescreen error code to find out if a crash was caused by bad RAM or a problem with the video card driver, etc.
My personal favourite recently came when trying to import settings in Outlook Express. “Settings could not be imported because an error has occurred.” Thanks a lot, that’s really bloody useful.
Where is that &*$^%^ CD. I can not find that CD….
Longhorn still has a long way to go before you can actually use it for anything without screwing up your system and wasting your time. I find it simply irresponsible of Microsoft to talk about a release and even call it Longhorn Beta. Instead of hyping it up they should do another year or two of development and try to get it at least somewhat stable.
so is the final name going to be sumthing like W1nd0wZ ub3r 1337 n00b 3d1710n. once again this is more crap i would hafta disable and or remove if i planned on using windows. thank god for linux.
Yet more automatic “features” with the possibility to fuck up your system at will, without the slightest provocation.. I can’t wait.
that while you could in theory rip any win9x disk out of one machine and put it into another, trying to do the same with a win2k or later will end in a bluescreen all to often.
how hard is it to detect a driver failure and try to load a generic one that supports the most basic of functions?
I personally believe it is part of MS’s lockin strategy, XP is most likely blue screening due to the Activation UID generated from hardware components of the machine XP was installed on, in Win2k is it possible the system was first tested on Win2k?
“…and another, unnamed feature looks for hardware changes on boot, and, if it finds any, will restart the hardware configuration process“.
And it will report the changes to Microsoft and force the user to reactive Windows.
I find the benchmarking program to be interesting, but I’m sure the numbers won’t mean anything. I mean, it’s not like they’ll be compatible to Winstone, Sandrasoft, et al. Without a “true” benchmark how do you know what it all means? What if you want to compare your system to a friend’s who has just upgraded his mobo but is running XP?
The device checker just sounds like a BSOD waiting to happen. What happens if the Registry gets corrupted? Will the system be in a perpetual reboot loop?
WinSat isn’t meant to benchmark between computers, only between hardware changes…
P.S. For the summary, the noun is “effect”, the verb is “affect”.
Mandriva / Mandrake linux has been doing this since 2002 or sooner!
“Linux has been doing this for 10 years already!”
Sorry, just wanted to act like a stupid ass moron linusux user.
No matter what Microsoft puts into windows, Apple or Linux invented it first or it will screw up your system so it’s worthless.
Sorry, again sounding like a masturbating linsux troll.
Honestly, I think this is great and should be a great improvement. Nice Job Microsoft. Tell these trolls to bugger off.
“No matter what Microsoft puts into windows, Apple or Linux invented it first or it will screw up your system so it’s worthless. ”
The gui wasnt in linux first (and linux people are still trying to get their heads out of their a$$’s when it comes to gui design) (and yes, I know the gui wasnt in windows first either). What exactly did linux invent first? Cant think of a single thing. Linux is just a clone of unix, cant think of a single unique gui idea, its basicly designed around windows with a few graphical differences (everything is in about the same place with the same functionality). Seriously, what exactly has linux done that wasnt done by either Be, MacOS, Unix, or Windows first?