The December CTP of Windows Vista has been released. ActiveWin has published screenshots, and a list of features, of the latest CTP of Windows Vista. Key areas of improvement in this CTP are security (Windows Defender, parental control, enhanced firewall, control over installation of device drivers, and more), performance, power state transitions, and the user interface (“evidence of Aero’s progress in the December CTP includes the translucent ‘glass’ appearance of open windows, smoother transitions between windows and a re-designed start menu”).
The only improvement I see since the last build is the start menu.
Windows defender looks out of place, and like it should be in XP.
edit: I realize there are improvements under the hood. I am strictly speaking interface wise.
Edited 2005-12-19 22:18
I wish they’d use something else than JPEGs. lol
Dotn see much of changes superficially. I hope someone talks a bit about the under the hood improvements and if they are noticeable to the potential customer in enabling them to have a more smooth computing experience whether it be from doing menial tasks like surfing the web to installing software and so on.
I love that funky “13 Days Left For Activation” on the computer information screenshot. So cool!
I know that Mr gates has gave alot of $ to help alot of people, and thats very good. But I just HATE that Activation thing. I know as welll theres alot of mater Minds in the world that we live in that are very good with cracking this activation as well. I’m just waiting to just see whats going to come about.
hheehhaaaa
I’m afraid desktop linux has some catching up to do. Of course i can not know that for a fact until it hits the stores, but i guess they’ve made some improvements over the old XP base/core.
I hope dapper drake will kick some real ass… As i said, desktop linux has most likely some catching up to do.
That depends on how you look at it, the same could be said about almost any OS in comparison to any other OS. Windows Vista is getting some things that were already implemented in GNU/Linux and is still missing some things that were already implemented in GNU/Linux. Yet interestingly enough Windows also has a comparable share of things that are missing from GNU/Linux and has come up with some things before GNU/Linux.
Windows is more viable as an average Joe operating system because most people already have experience with it, and hardware companies are readily providing Microsoft with drivers to include in Windows while software writers are readily providing people with Windows software. In my opinion Linux would be doing equally well overall if only companies would do more than pay lip service and would actually get to work on drivers and software for Linux that is as good as what they provide for Windows. There’s also a matter of stabilizing the changing API’s but that would be done by now if Linux had the financial backing and user Windows has. With a stable API companies could write drivers and distribute them as binary kernel modules without having to keep updating the drivers with every API change that breaks them, thus providing a way for closed source drivers to work more easily.
Really Windows has a big advantage by having been on the market before Linux, and it’s closed nature means that as long as it’s healty it’ll have guaranteed financial backing. Then there’s the matter of it being under the control of one or a few people, which means that conclusive decisions on the design and implementation can be forced if there is unbreakable indecision retarding it. That in my opinion is how Linux needs catching up.
For the record I don’t mean it needs catching up as if it weren’t a good OS. I use Linux myself and it’s good enough for me.
Let me just say though that I don’t think it’s fair to mention one OS in a thread for another OS, that raises tension and conflict. A good unwritten rule would be to walk on egg shells when doing that.
Less than you’d think. I’ve had Vista build 5258 installed for a few weeks now, and while the Aero effects are impressive, they’re honestly still as buggy as most of the composition managers I’ve seen for Linux.
One thing Vista does show, though, is that not every app needs a File menu – some do, certainly, but individual folder windows, for example, might be better served by a toolbar alone.
The various Linux DEs might consider the idea of adding one or two additional types of toolbars, that could be re-used across apps – say, one for media and one for navigation. This would allow special function toolbars like Vista uses, but would be more useable, as there’d still be consistency across the various apps you’d use.
At least right now, consistency in Vista just isn’t there – some apps don’t have file menus at all, and have different types of toolbars, some have new toolbars and file menus – it’s a bit of a mess. I’m sure they’ll clean it up some before release, though.
“I’m sure they’ll clean it up some before release, though.”
don’t count on that…
And I thought they would abadon the volume letters…
In favor of what? You know you can mount volumes in 2k/XP?
to a random folder?
“Windows Defender”…, but doesn’t defend against Viruses. Naming things for marketing reasons are we?
It’s like McAffee and NIS stating “Now detects Spyware”. NIS doesn’t even detect viruses, let alone spyware.
I can’t be the only one that thinks Vistas usability is horrible. All the colors and bars and shapes thrown around without much detail to usability just makes my head spin. I do admit I find the new task bar cool and the translucent window border too but all the apps jus appear a mess to me. I’m sort of horrified about using this one day.
You are not the only one. I think the same (and I’m not some Microsoft hater… in fact, I beta tested(legally, officialy, whatever you want) almost everything they released in the past couple of years.
Vista UI just sucks. Why? Because since Windows 95, Windows has almost a perfect UI (Linux, OSX fanboys, shut up ok?). Now they try everything to change it a little to boost up sales. BUT THAT IS WRONG.
All the colors and bars and shapes thrown around without much detail to usability just makes my head spin.
OSX uses 7 different themes.
“I can’t be the only one that thinks Vistas usability is horrible”
I’m sure you can’t be the only one that thinks Vistas(sic) usability is horrible without ever USING it, either! 😉
Yet another example of bad UI: http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/vista/5270/rainbowhorn.JPG
The transparency checkbox enables a negative, but should enable a positive e.g. it *should* say ‘Enable transparent glass’. Opt-in, not opt-out.
This is truly Earth shattering.
You know, these are the first screenshots that aren’t entirely awful. No OSX, but they’re trying…
I suppose this really will be Aero. Bummer.
Edited 2005-12-19 23:36
I only wish Microsoft would allow more flexibility in the Windows start menu bar thing (whatever you want to call it).
Two things I want:
– Free theemeing support that actually has free themes available for it.
– Flexible editing of the start menu bar, I want to be able to pull every last piece out of it and put them where I want on the screen.
I don’t get why microsoft charges for Microsoft Plus, you would think giving away free themes and customizations for Windows would be better for marketing the product.
I’d settle for complete icon replacement. It’s annoying to use Iconpackager or an equivalent, only to discover that you still see the default Windows icons in the Open File/Save File dialogs, Windows Explorer, the Control Panel, and elsewhere.
I’m pretty sure the Aero video on channel9 mentioned that they’re going to have better theme support.
Remember how the MS apologists have been saying all along that “This isn’t Aero! Aero won’t make an appearance until Beta 2!” I knew that was BS, but this confirms it, this is the same damn theme we’ve seen all along. This fantastic “Aero” they were wating for was just another empty promise from Redmond.
> Remember how the MS apologists have been saying all along that “This isn’t Aero!
> Aero won’t make an appearance until Beta 2!” I knew that was BS, but this confirms it,
> this is the same damn theme we’ve seen all along. This fantastic “Aero” they were
> wating for was just another empty promise from Redmond.
I don’t understand your FUD. It’s not Beta 2. They “promised” Beta 2 will be feature complete and Beta 2 will show everything about the new UI.
This new release is only a CTP not a beta build so don’t expect too much. Beta 2 will be released next year (Q1).
Still, he is right to a point; this is an early version of the Aero interface – MS have said it themselves now.
I don’t get the hostility he’s showing, though; in use the interface is actually decent, though they need to work on consistency across apps, still – and when using Gaim with it, you ocassionally get black trash left on the screen.
There are some bugs to work out, but it is promising, and looks good for the apps that have been designed for it – the new games for example look quite good, and there’s a lot of promise in Explorer.
Remember how in 2003 – 2004, whenever MS would “leak” screenshots of “Longhorn”, they always showed off the “tilting windows” that made the interface oh so 3D? What happened to those?
Might have something to do with Sun doing that in LookingGlass, maybe Sun has prior art and so it’s a legal gray area.
Aside form that the other reason I can think of is that they quietly decided to scrap the idea or postpone it to concentrate on more vital components of the OS, after all they had to dump other ideas and tilting and panning windows don’t seem like they would be a high priority.
Remember how in 2003 – 2004, whenever MS would “leak” screenshots of “Longhorn”, they always showed off the “tilting windows” that made the interface oh so 3D? What happened to those?
Yes, I know where they are. In Vista. They’re still there.
It’s still there. It’s called “Flip3D.”
http://www.extremetech.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=&s=200&a=15991…
uuuuugly. with a capital UG. seriously. i know all the under-the-hood stuff is what really matters, but it just looks so bad. i realise MS are playing catchup to OSX, but simply throwing transparency at all and sundry hardly makes for a pleasing, let-alone user friendly GUI.
plus, serious, serious lack of consistency. i know full well that OSX is often derided for just that, but come on! compared to this mix-and-match? well, at least the font seems to be const… oops, nope, not even that. italics? bleh…
given that it looks this awful, and that it’ll turn my now very nippy amd64 pc into something unusable, i’ve written vista off already. i’ve always looked forward to new MS releases and been very keen to upgrade, but not this time.
vista’s going to bite. the only reason i’d even consider upgrading would be for virtual folders. i think those are neat. not a priority (lived without them up ’til now), but neat nontheless. by the time vista finally ships, i’m some OSS will give me that functionality anyways.
in fact, in a way i’m looking forward to my leaving the debacle that is Windows. well, not quite debacle, as that implies a sudden collapse, but debacle sounds so nice. bring on OSX-x86! or linux. linux is nice, too. but a pain in the behind.
An equivalent to mremap. I suppose they would call it VirtualRealloc.
Brace yourselves. I have a feeling we will get blown away once Beta 2 hits. Beta 2 is the first public release (at least from what I have read), it will be a big improvement.
It is just a gut feeling however
I can’t wait for Beta 2. It’s going to be so different from Beta 1, so revolutionary, so innovative, you’re not even gonna know what planet you’re on!
Errr what planet are you on? You really think the next beta is going to be that big of a jump? Arent they supposed to be having Vista launched out to hardware vendors by like August or something>? You think MS will have enough time to launch a new beta with all those supposed features and test and release a satisfactorily bug free system?
Arent they supposed to be having Vista launched out to hardware vendors by like August or something>? You think MS will have enough time to launch a new beta with all those supposed features and test and release a satisfactorily bug free system?
The driver model has been finalized (and builds in IHVs hands) for months. UI and application enhancements won’t affect hardware in any way.
Edited 2005-12-20 04:49
Beta 2 will bring all the advances and amazing UI that you’ve been waiting for!! Beta 2! and if not Beta 2 then Beta 3 or GM candidate 1!
I’ve looked at some of the videos on Vista and read a few of the articles on the new things that are being put into Vista. It looks like MS really is trying to make Windows more secure and more stable.
It’s blindingly obvious that they’re playing catch up to Mac OS X. The UI in the videos looks very similar to Tiger’s UI. It was funny that they were pointing out ‘new and exciting’ features in Vista that I was playing with on my iBook while they were going through them on the video, but that’s just me being a smug Mac fanboy I suppose
I do think though that their side bar isn’t great. It takes up a chunk of the screen and at the same time, it’s not big enough to house that many ‘gadgets’. This is probably an effort to distance themselves from Spotlight and Konfabulator but Spotlight is better ’cause the widgets have the whole screen and yet take up none of the screen at the same time.
Still though, if all these improvements aren’t just marketing fluff, it can only benefit everyone.
I’m actually looking forward to the sidebar. I used a program for XP for a while that let me have a costomizable sidebar, I had an iTunes control, system information, a clock I could see, and other little thingys on it. I think it was called Samurize, I’m sure a Google search will come up with it. Anyway, I found it nice and handy, and still use rainlendar as far as “widgets” or “gadgets” go (I hate those names. They’re desktop based applications
). My point is, the fact that this was tied to the desktop made it so much easier to use than OS X’s widgets, because I can use any normal application at the same time as any one of those, and if it is covered by a window, a simple “windows + d” brings up the destop and lets me see it again. Now, I use a widescreen monitor, so I often have freespace left over on the edges, and almost never maximize windows. So, my lengthy point is, that I think this is the one thing Vista is actually implementing correctly. It isn’t always on top, like OS X’s dock, or hidden or hiding everything else, such as OS X’s/Konfabulator’s widgets, it is a part of the desktop, otherwise useless space that is being used for something, finally. Because widgets in OS X don’t “have the whole screen and yet take up none of the screen at the same time”, they either take it all up or they don’t, leaving them usless if you need to use one with a program running in normal user space.
And, honestly, I don’t like the rest of the UI for the most part, but I wouldn’t say it’s copying OS X any more than I’d say KDE is, and I wouldn’t say KDE is. If anything, Vista is moving away from the soft blues and silvers that define OS X into a more sparce, black and white coloured theme. Not to my liking, but definitely not like OS X. Also, it seems that different places (My Computer, My Docs, etc) have different colour schemes within Windows Explorer, which is not in OS X and is kind of a nice developement. I’m refering not to the costomizable themes, but to the theme within Windows Explorer itself. Oh, and, that Windows menu button that sticks up above the task bar MUST go, IMHO, ugly as hell, though losing the “start” is nice.
Edit in bold
Edited 2005-12-20 03:51
Unfortunately, I’ve been using OS X for the past four years, so nothing in Vista is exactly new to me. The interface is typically Microsoft-ugly (everything is PACKED with ugly links and looks like a webpage..and what’s with all the gaudy plastic highlights? Geez).
The very fact Windows is so utterly crappy and insecure that it needs to ship its own antispyware program should tell you a lot. It’s amazing the American economy has come to rely on something so…unreliable.
“The very fact Windows is so utterly crappy and insecure that it needs to ship its own antispyware program should tell you a lot. It’s amazing the American economy has come to rely on something so…unreliable.”
And yet…here we are. Kind of hard to argue with success (even though people try…constantly).
“And yet…here we are. Kind of hard to argue with success (even though people try…constantly).”
Yeah, one billion flies can’t be wrong. Eat shit!
>>And yet…here we are. Kind of hard to argue with success (even though people try…constantly).
So I guess AOL is the best ISP because it has the most users. Can’t argue with success, right?
economically speaking, most of america’s success is paid for by other countries – you can’t imagine how big america’s dept to china, japan and the EU is.
and the US is the ‘western’ country with most ppl living in poverty. well done, yeah. ppl die of hunger in the US, how the heck is that possible in one of the richest countries in the world?
personal rights are being taken away, and i wouldn’t call it a democracy either (a 2 party system? call that democracy? hahahaha!).
americans might have lots of money and a big army. but thats it.
…because brushed metal is so much better than plastic highlights… not.
“…because brushed metal is so much better than plastic highlights”
Er. Actually, yes.
I am one of the biggest fan of Windows but this UI is plain sucky UI. It pisses me off to see some people at MS designing such shyt.
Look at the control panel of OS X here:
http://www.fsr.com/pages/support.asp?ItemID=147
It is so much more organized and less clutterd. Why on earth MS doesn’t design something clean
Make CLEAN interface not clutter called Aero….PLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
So, who paid to get that in there?
I’m in gradient hell! Why the heck do they have to gradient-ize everything, do they get feedback that people actually like it?
In the world where design in all medias, tv, web, adverts, is returning back to the more sane and professional solid colors, a single footer or header bar in vista can have a specturm of thousands of colours in between blue and green! Reading button text on a solid color is much easier than on a gradient.
Just look at that blinding bright blue bubble that is the hd capacity bar. The column headers widget (confusingly when there is actually no column in the my computer view) is also unneccesarilly gradiented. And so are tab headers in any application.
and glass border makes it look so busy, i don’t want to strain my eyes to make out the different layers of window title bars when I have to see right through 5 of them at the same spot.
The infrastructure of vista is cool, but they gotta fire their gui designer man. I don’t care, get someone in the print industry who knows very little about gui stuff, he’ll still do a better job the bubble gradient hell that it is now.
I thought the same of the XP ui…So many bright colours! I turned it back to the “win2000 classic” theme.
So im sure they will have something more simple for sane people
“‘m in gradient hell! Why the heck do they have to gradient-ize everything, do they get feedback that people actually like it? ”
🙂 Funny. Some people feel the same way about the Linux theming community. That and the predominance of dark colors, and naked backgrounds.
Yea. Put me in for:
dlsym
pthread_*
sleep, usleep, nanosleep (these are easy)
dirfd
fchdir
With the right names, right arguments, and right functionality
. And, without installing extra software.
pthread? No thanks. How about something POSIX compliant instead.
Not sure what the rest do (sleep aside).
From a Linux box:
PTHREAD_CREATE(P) POSIX Programmer’s Manual PTHREAD_CREATE(P)
From a Digital Unix box:
pthread_create(3) pthread_create(3)
NAME
pthread_create – Creates a thread.
LIBRARY
DECthreads POSIX 1003.1c Library (libpthread.so)
How exactly is it not POSIX?
I was working on a daemon a while back on linux and we were using pthreads. There was something that came up where the behaviour of certain threads was not compliance with POSIX.
I know the LinuxThreads implementation was not completely POSIX compliant.
I’ll have to ask my buddy who worked on it as well, my memory is terrible
Yea. Put me in for:
dlsym – GetProcAddress surely?
> pthread_*
Windows has it’s native threading functions instead of stupid hacks with signals to get threads not scheduled by kernel.
> sleep, usleep, nanosleep
There are similar functions in Windows API.
> dirfd, fchdir
Who needs ’em ?
What part of the POSIX threads standard says that PThreads must be implemented using “stupid hacks with signals to get threads on shceduled by kernel” [sic]? POSIX just defines the API; they’re very, very careful not to tell you how to implement that API.
Just because PThreads on Linux is a bit of a mess doesn’t make the standard bad. Many OSes implement a POSIX threads API using native threads, which may be kernel schedulable entities. Syllable is one example.
Actually, I was never a fan of that until they added search. I found it confusing still, things were “organized” but that rarely helps you much.
The search is really nice to have though. But honestly, I’d love to see that control panel get about twice as large with each sub-item having about twice as many options. Things like changing the mouse acceleration settings
.
I’m sure that’d confuse some people. So maybe not twice as much, maybe 25% more?
When i hear advanced firewall i get a little more appetite.Despite Vista’s other “features” i think MS could certainly push the envelope a little more.Why don’t they integrate a real system firewall a la Novell AppArmor or SELinux and let the services known to be vulnerable guarded by enforced policy as default?
Why don’t they integrate a real system firewall a la Novell AppArmor or SELinux and let the services known to be vulnerable guarded by enforced policy as default?
Because then people will squeal “anti competative behavious” and “illegal bundling” and such. It’s a big problem for Microsoft. I’m sure MS wants to include all sorts of functionality, like Linux distros and Apple do, but they simply aren’t allowed to by law.
Sad, sad thing.
Sad thing
Excuse me… don’t you think Microsoft pushing its own firewall/mediaplayer/messenger/filemanager would make real competition impossible for another firewall/mediaplayer/messenger/filemanager? (By “real” competition I mean competition with a chance of winning)
Excuse me… don’t you think Microsoft pushing its own firewall/mediaplayer/messenger/filemanager would make real competition impossible for another firewall/mediaplayer/messenger/filemanager? (By “real” competition I mean competition with a chance of winning)
We’re talking firewalls here. Yes, I find it a shame that Microsoft cannot make its operating system more secure for its millions of users by providing an advanced firewall rivaling those of other vendors. As far as I’m concerned, the anti-bundling attitude of some people promotes that customers have to pay MORE (to get an external firewall) in order to make their computers more secure. It’s RUBBISH. Microsoft should have the ability to improve Windows’ security by including a decent firewall.
Sometimes, the customer comes FIRST, instead of letting ‘competition’ come first. If your ‘competition’ means OR less secure systems OR that cusomers need to pay/do MORE, then to hell with your ‘competition’.
Sometimes, the customer comes FIRST, instead of letting ‘competition’ come first.
AFAIK competition is enforced in the (long-term) interest of customers.
AFAIK competition is enforced in the (long-term) interest of customers.
So… you’re saying that users’ computers should be insecure NOW, so that Symantec and other can compete with one another? I’m sorry, but that is a very shortsighted view.
Look, Microsoft could make Windows a lot more secure if they were just allowed to bundle proper tools to do so. Yet, you do not want that to happen, because Symantec might get hurt?
Again, I find the user’s interest NOW much more important than the user’s interest in ten years. Symantec and others have had the chance to secure Windows with their tools for years, and apparantly, they failed to do so (many computers still run without firewall and/or AV). Microsoft gets the blame for that (partially rightfully so, they make Windows after all). Now, the only one that can do something about this is Microsoft, by bundling a decent firewall/AV tools. Yet, you are against that– I’m suspecting it’s only because you want to keep on blaming Microsoft for making Windows an insecure operating system, but NOT let them fix it.
I’ll have to ask again. Where did you get the information that they are not shipping a better solution because of the reasons you cite?
I’m not sure what grand-parent is exactly saying, but I know one thing. Monopoly is bad, if you are the buyer. As a buyer, you want choice. That is the reason, why we have anti-monopoly state offices in most countries.
The problem with monopoly is, that once a company achieves it in a market segment, it has no more motivation to inovate plus it has an easy way to get more money (read “raise prices”) from existing customers. So in the end, you would be getting less product for money.
For this reason, there is a law in most countries, which prohibits making use of monopoly in one market segment (operating systems in this case) to achieve monopoly in a different market segment (applications software, media playing software, anti-everything-bad software). The law would not prohibit Microsoft to create their own anti-everything-bad software and sell it as a separate product – box, manuals, and most importantly a price-tag.
The point I’m trying to make is – if Microsoft creates their own anti-everything sw (they actually are already doing it, if I understand the situation correctly) AND (this is important) bundles it with the OS for free, then all the other producers (Symantes, F-Prot, AVG, Kerio, etc…) will have NO paying customers left. Not because Microsoft’s product was technically better, but because it came with the OS, and for “free”*. And _THAT_ would suck. After they are all out of this market segment, Microsoft will slow down the development of the product rapidly.
You can see that with Windows, you can see that with IE. IE won over Netscape, because it was arguably technically better plus bundled. IE 4.0 was much better then IE 3.0. The changes to 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 were not that big. After 6.0, IE was not developed for a long time**. I argue that since they reached monopoly status with internet browsers, the development of their product almost stopped.
Back to Windows. In the times of DOS and the 80286, 80386, there was competition (DR-DOS, Amiga computers, Apple had a bigger share). MS-DOS to Windows 3.1 was a huge change for me. Windows 95 still had competition (OS/2) and 3.11 -> 95 was a huge change as well. 95 -> 98 was a little change. NT 4.0 was somewhere in between 95 and 98, from my point of view. NT 4.0 -> 2000 was a bigger change than 95 -> 98, but not as big like 3.11 -> 95. 2000 -> XP was a marginal change, smaller than 95 -> 98***. I argue that since they reached monopoly status with internet browsers, the development of their product almost stopped.
I can see a similar development for the anti-virus and anti-spyware software market segment. Therefore it is my opinion, that a shortsighted thing would be to let the users have better security when Vista is released and only one supplier of such software 3 years after that release.
OTOH, I believe that Microsoft should secure their OS. They should do it on the kernel level – a) that’s the correct place to do it, b) it won’t push any 3rd-parties out of the software market.
Cue in the compulsory car analogy. You have car. You need to buy tires for it. Tires are produced by a different company than your car. There are even numerous companies producing tires that could be used with your car (and with different cars, but that does not matter now). If you buy a car, it comes with tires. Later, you need to buy winter tires. You go out and buy some. Now, would you go out and buy winter tires, for cold hard cash, if your car producer would change your tires twice a year for free? For as long as you drive the car. Drive to a service point, leave with new tires. I guess not. That still would not be bad, if they were buying the tires from a different company. The tires-producing companies could still compete on who will supply tires to the car-producing company. However, what if the car-producing company decided to make tires for themselves? Then all other tire-producing companies would be out of the market, instantly and you, as a customer, would be left with no choice.
As an extra fear, imagine there was just one car producing company and they would produce only three types of cars – personal, small truck, big truck.
On a side note, there used to be a time where the line between the OS (kernel + basic tools) and application software was clear. As well as the difference between OS vendors and applications vendors. It got all messed up with Windows 95. Integrated graphics subsystem. Integrated window manager. Later, an integrated internet browser, integrated media player. Now an integrated anti-everything package is waiting behind the corner. So, what should the other software houses produce, when MS is producing almost everything for the desktop?
Side note two: we, as a society do not accept monopoly for clothing, food, cars, electronics, etc. Why do we accept almost-monopolies with our computers?
*Quotation marks, because, as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
**I never really used IE, so I might be wrong.
***One could argue about this for hours, this is my opinion as a user. I never studied the internals of Windows and frankly, I’m not really interested.
MS-DOS also came with MSAV bundled with it. It didn’t destroy the AV market by any stretch of the imagination.
“I can see a similar development for the anti-virus and anti-spyware software market segment. Therefore it is my opinion, that a shortsighted thing would be to let the users have better security when Vista is released and only one supplier of such software 3 years after that release.”
As for being short sighted, in a perfect world, Microsoft would obsolete/mitigate the need for anti-*. Seeing as that would require a serious rearchitecting of Windows as we know it and the removal of a lot of legacy cruft (then Symantec, McAfee, F-Prot, CA, et al would really be ass out or forced to reinvent themselves), the next best thing for them would be to include anti-*. It should also remain free, fully updated (unlike MSAV), and replaceable.
Microsoft is trying to establish themselves as a reformed, security conscious vendor. IOT to do this, they really have no choice but to integrate. Here is why; Too many of their customers aren’t taking it upon themselves install necessary security software on their own. Hell, too many of their customers end up zombified due to not using Automatic Updates, let alone implementing and maintaining security software. We aren’t talking about getting clobbered by Windows worms from Day 0 stuff, patches that would have stopped Code Red had been availible for months (one of many examples). Microsoft has been saying “Trustworthy Computing”, so they really have a lot of stops to pull out. You can’t do that if your name is in the headlines because of yet another worm your software is propagating and computers are zombies before the install is finished or they can reach http://update.microsoft.com upon being connected to the Internet.
For the other ISV’s of security software, if they build something better, people will buy it. Windows XP and Server 2003 both come with a firewall, but Zonealarm, Kerio and Linksys are all still in business.
In short, rearchitect, or integrate and correctly implement the bandaids. Anything less makes “Trustworthy Computing” appear to be lip service.
Where did you get the information that MS not shipping a more advanced firewall is due to MS not being allowed to do so, as it would be illegal bundling?
And why shoudl including a firewall not be illegal bundling, while including a better firewall should be illegal bundling?
Wouldn’t make much sense, would, so I’d really be interested to learn where you got your wisdom from. Thanks.
Wouldn’t make much sense, would, so I’d really be interested to learn where you got your wisdom from. Thanks.
This is the first source I found, there are more:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1874047,00.asp
Huh?
Sorry, but the article is about MS integrating Anti-Spyware software depite concerns by competitors.
So if anything it proves your point wrong.
Sad thing ?
Like it or not, as a monopoly they have some responsibilities toward letting the software market continue to be a free one, which include not abusing that monopoly position to choke other ISVs.
It’s especially true as they never have showed the slightest amount of good will toward letting this happen in the past.
The real “Sad, sad thing” is that Microsoft’s products require such protections to begin with. Microsoft does have control to fix this legally, but we have seen nothing that actually corrects the problem. Please don’t comment that a firewall corrects the problem, it does not. Windows-security is a misnomer.
The thing that jumps out at me first is the menus. I’m looking at the screenshots of Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Windows Explorer. Each has Back and Forward buttons, looking quite similar. But in IE the menu is below them, in WiMP the menu is above, and Windows Explorer doesn’t have anything that resembles menus as we know them.
If Windows Mail had the Back/Forward buttons (it’s the only app I could see in the screenies that doesn’t) would they be above or below the menu?
I’m not saying Vista sucks because of that, it’s just that consistency is something I value. Not having a beta myself, the screenshots are about all I can comment on, so forgive the superficiality please
Buy a MacTel soon, use OS X and if you still want to later, and the world still exists, you could dual boot into Vista…. If you really still wanted to….
Best of both worlds, oh-yeah, and if you want to you could also boot into Linux… If you really wanted to!
Soon things will just fall into line.
Yippy-ca-yeyoh!
Never want to see a “review” again that has something like provides users with a consistent, reliable “off” experience. Now come on, if I want to get off reliably, ain’t no way I’m gonna need my PC for that
That said, If the firewall detects abnormal behavior… it will attempt to block it. Now, I got no problem with the detect part (if it is successful, that is), but I have considerable problems with the attempt part. But hey, MS at least tries – sorry – attempts to block actions thought as being malevolent
Windows Vista also will improve the performance of starting up or running applications by optimizing the utilization of available memory
Yes, I mean that’s revolutionary. Utilizing the available memory, but ait, not just that, optimize the utilization. Now seriously, if an OS marketed as earthshatteringly gorgeous as MS wants people to believe, they’d better come up with something better than lines as this one.
Window Vista is designed to provide more consistent system responsiveness – Yes, no wonder, you’d need to have a gazillion gigahertz system to even run the damn thing, it pretty much ought to be more responsive ’cause people would throw this Windows out of their own Windows – yes, like they would care…
I see this is quite a well done beta. I specially like that shutdown responsiveness or whatever it is called. Also the control of drivers through security policy is a nice feature. Anyone knows whether they allow more than one user from the Administrator group to log on at once?
The power state transition improvements are very welcome here as I have some PVRs that I’d like to place into power-saving mode until they need to record something. Some people have gotten this working, but desktop hardware doesn’t do so well with the state transitions.
One minor annoyance that has been eliminated here is the customization of Aero. It used to annoy me that XP only had three color choices, and two of them weren’t all that useful. At least now we can adjust the color to fit different wallpapers and working environments.
Am I the only one to notice that the transparent borders now blur the text behind them? I’ve always liked transparency, but enabling transparency makes the text “bleed” into the higher windows, making them very hard to read. Blurring the text underneath seems like the right balance between a UI cue and the legibility of the higher windows – you can tell there’s something underneath, yet it’s not too distracting.
I guess I must be odd or something, but I am really looking forward to the final product. There are tons of improvements to the underlying OS, and it’s supposed to start up faster and remain more responsive than XP. We’ll have to see about those things when the final version finds its way into the hands of competent reviewers, of course, but I’m very optimistic.
As far as the comments saying that Aero will bring new computers to their knees, please stop spreading FUD. We already know that Aero Glass will be using hardware acceleration, so I don’t know of any magic incancations Microsoft can use to speed up the drawing. And if you don’t like the new effects, you can just disable them. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
I beleave as long as the firewall or spyware remover etc that MS decideds to put in use openlly documented API’s that the other ISV’s can have access to and also use, then there is really nothing to complain about.
In the case of defender, yeah it’s there, but they give you the option to use whatever you want insted of it. Same thing with the firewall, personally I use XP’s built in firewall, and the new one in Vista will be even better. I just want it to close ports and block attacks, other then that, what more “advanced” features do I need?
Looks like that is going to be one great experience in pain and suffering.
I’m really starting to hope that under the hood Windows is doing something that is a Blessing for humanity because judging from the user interface, there’s not going to be very much else to enjoy.
I’ll have fun checking out the colors of the borders…
The best thing Microsoft could do is to stop all development on Vista now, announce its proud successor, give all the engineers a 2-month holiday and then start writing Windows from the ground up, with a release date of 2009. A year more or less won’t make a difference now anyway.
This saves us from having to work with Vista, it allowes the engineers to cook up something truly awesome and start hammering away at building something that -will- be different.
You don’t have to agree.
“The best thing Microsoft could do is to stop all development on Vista now, announce its proud successor, give all the engineers a 2-month holiday and then start writing Windows from the ground up, with a release date of 2009. A year more or less won’t make a difference now anyway. ”
That advice sounds suspiciously like something said to the Xorg developers. Throw away your work, and start over. Well at least it’ll give the Linux community time to catch up.
http://www.activewin.com/screenshots/vista/5270/sysprop.JPG
wow! a titleless window! i want windows now!
which include not abusing that monopoly position to choke other ISVs.
I think Thom has made a point but the question remains wether Microsoft deliberately excludes real key features or not.I mean do they strictly follow certain certain anti monopolism rules,aren’t they capable in time to deliver similar products,or they deliberately deprive their flagship OS’s of key features so they make the circle round and everybody within happy?
A circle as MS–>Hardware vendor–ISV–MS.
Now what if MS is really capable of including a (system) firewall that is realy superior to what all the ISV’s can come up with?
Please don’t comment that a firewall corrects the problem, it does not. Windows-security is a misnomer.
I was actually thinking of a system firewall such as AppArmor by Novell or SELinux.While as a (packet)firewall is the last line of defence a system firewall would in my humble opinion certainly contribute to a better overall system security.
Besides running for example Firefox in a virtual environment you could enforce some strict rules as well.
Should the consumer be stuck with lesser products because of certain anti monopolism rules?
And still my question remains.
Where did get Thom the information that anti monopolism rules stoped MS from delivering a better firewall?
Until he finally is able to show me a link or explain to me where he got this information from, I’m pretty sure I know where exactly he pulled it from and it stinks.
Until he finally is able to show me a link or explain to me where he got this information from, I’m pretty sure I know where exactly he pulled it from and it stinks.
The article I linked to is a source, here is another one:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1868785,00.asp
This one is pretty good too:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123008,00.asp
“Microsoft’s moves into the security software market could be an agitator for more antitrust concerns over how it uses its market strength for other software offerings.”
Look, the fact that it mostly talks of antivirus instead of firewalls means fcuk all. If judges and companies are questioning MS bundling AV, there’s no reason for them to not do the same when it comes to firewalls. What the hell, they even complain over a media player!
If you still don’t believe me, then you simply have a plank in front of your face.
Look, you made a specific claim, namely that MS is unable to provide a more advanced firewall because of antitrust worries.
Now, were you able to back up this claim?
No, you weren’t, because you can’t.
So what did you do instead?
You provided links that showed that competitors were concerned about MS bundling Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware software, but that MS bundled them non the less.
Again, this does in no way back up your initial claim (on the contrary).
I may have a plank in front of my face, but I also do have a brain inside my head and I can see pretty clearly that you made a claim and went on a whining trip about those evil laws preventing MS from delivering security to their users without being able to back up your initial claim.
Pretty embarrassing Thom.
Fanaticism runs rampant on these news threads, the popular view dominated by those who believe that by bundling any extrinsic software, Microsoft is practising counter-competitive and monopolistic behaviour. To those naysayers of a complete Microsoft distribution I simply ask, “Where do you draw the line?” Should Microsoft be prohibited from distributing calc.exe lest it inhibits the end-user market for mathematical software? If you see this case as absurd, perhaps it may become clear that Microsoft including “anti-virus” or “anti-malware” programs, which are arguably as much a necessity as even a simple calculator, is no more inadmissible for their operating system distribution.
Ultimately, it boils down to producing the superior product. Before the advent of Internet Explorer 4.0, people stampeded in packs from the default installation of Internet Explorer in favour of downloading Netscape’s browser in spite of the sparse availability of high-bandwidth connections at the time. Previous to Internet Explorer’s fourth version, I was also included in the belief that Netscape possessed the superior product and would gladly spend the several hours I required at the time to download the latest version of Navigator. Future versions of Internet Explorer became more streamlined and effective, surpassing Netscape’s product in virtually every way. To even utter that Microsoft’s products have and will only succeed due to monopolistic strategy is ludicrous zealotry born of bitterness and ultimately a lack of objective product analysis.
If Microsoft’s anti-virus product sets the bar for quality in its field, perhaps they will rise victorious over Symantec and other competitors. If their included product is sub-par, it will yield the fitting reaction; word will spread from the technically inclined and individuals will spend the money required to be “safe”, purchasing a Symantec product or whichever anti-virus product they have learned to be superior. Whether the product is superior or not is questionable, but even in this day and age, I have performed in-house troubleshooting for dozens of individuals who have deemed it necessary to purchase third-party firewall software on top of Microsoft’s included solution.
Granted, this article may not be the place to post my rebuttal, but already have we seen a handful of individuals crying market-wolf in this thread. As the old tale goes though, cry wolf all you like; when Microsoft’s truthfully superior product finally does come along (regardless of how many revisions or generations of development that requires) and snaps you and the second-rate solution you advocate up, absolutely nobody will care. Despite the cries of monopoly, the harsh reality is that the software and operating system markets are simply perpetuated and empowered by natural selection.
With vista looking this good, i think that apple will lose some customers… Sadly… And why switch to intel cpu’s 🙁
Holy crud. This thing looks like doo doo. MS once again fails miserably in its attempt at yet an other Mac OS rip-off. I know Photoshop novices that can come up with better icons and interface elements than this.
I’m sure it won’t happen, but they _could_ make the taskbar as configurable, as GNOME’s or KDE’s panel is. In order to not confuse users, the default configuration would make it look the same way it looks now.
The thing’s I’d change would be simple. A window-menu instead of a window-bar (i.e. one icon, one size, always in the same place, click, menu of all open windows). Disable tray. Edit the formating string for clock. These are all simple things (as seen in GNOME and KDE). I wonder why did not Microsoft do them yet.
There won’t be any brushed metal in Leopard. So it’s really not fair to compare. It would be more fair to compare brushed metal to that ghastly “suicide blue” theme that comes by default with XP. Seriously, that theme hurts my soul. What blind retard at MS decided that should be the default theme? What drugged up focus group said they thought it looked nice?