Submitted by Someone claims to have found Vista’s release date by using a clever trick. “How do I know? Well, Microsoft EMEA has put up a website where you can guess the launch date for Windows Vista. After you submit a date, it plays a hint video. There’s actually a bunch of videos, some of which are quite funny. Anyway, here comes the interesting part: If you take a look at the page source, the videos are hosted on a Microsoft server in Switzerland. And depending on your guess, they are being loaded either from a subdirectory /early/ or another one named /late/. By simple iteration I quickly found that ‘early’ ends Nov 30th while ‘late’ starts Dec 1st. So either one of these will be the launch date. If this all is not a dirty little trick from the webmaster, of course…”
…I’ve read about it enough already – please shut up and release it 🙂
If you have already read enough about Vista….
You are in for a very long year.
December 2007 seems an awfully long time for a release. I wonder how many other features might get ditched in the process.
Not that I care that much. I’m sure I’ll have an opportunity to start running OS X 10.5 by that time.
Er, 2007?
Pretty sure they mean this year.
I think this is why Microsoft stopped naming their OSes after years. First we had Windows 2000, which would have been Windows 2001 if it were released any later. Now we have what would have been Windows 2003… in 2006…
Windows 2000, which would have been Windows 2001 if it were released any later.
No. Windows 2000 was actually released in 1999. I had it running in our lab long before the Y2K. Windows XP was actually released in 2001.
this year or … ?
Another year of propaganda straight from Microsoft is headed your way!
Vista will have enhanced security and better access to the internet; just as was claimed with WinXP, Win ME, and Win98! Not only will you have inproved access to networked shares, but so will all the spyware and trojans you are sure to get with the recent leak of Internet Explorer 7 code!
Relax and enjoy as your computer seizes up in new and unexpected ways, and witness the improved BSOD: from blue, to slaughtered chicken red!
Experience the power of Monad scripting as it launches a DRM protected worm on your system!
Millions of Windows users have come to trust that they can’t trust their computer. Why don’t you join them? Experience Vista for yourself.
Relax and enjoy as your computer seizes up in new and unexpected ways, and witness the improved BSOD: from blue, to slaughtered chicken red!
Funny. I administrate several hundred Windows machines at my job. And I hardly ever experience BSODs anymore. When it happens, it its most often due to hardware defects in a failing laptop (memory or motherboard).
Windows is far from perfect. But BSODS hasn´t really been an issue for some years. So I son´t expect to see the RSOD too often.
Agreed. I rarely see BSOD’s in 2000 or XP. In fact, 2000 has been even less prone to BSOD than our XP boxes. Every BSOD I’ve suffered through at home or at work is because of bad drivers for old equipment (old zip drives, old sound cards)
Yeah, we all know MS media tactics, but that’s their business. But the whole BSOD thing is a moot point for several years now…just doesn’t happen unless you’re doing something wrong as the user or administrator, or hardwaredriver issues. I work as a Linux & Solaris admin, but I also use XP. It’s a great OS, not perfect…but certainly not the BSOD machine that people love to dwell on.
Some things I’d like to see MS change, but that’s the same with the Linux world too, in fact likely more the case in Linux land. I watch evolution crash consistantly, Firefox lock up and other panel anamolies on a regular basis; XP can’t recall any problems. I use OS X at home personally additionally. I think XP, OS X and Linux are all great platforms, each with their own strengthweakness & environments where they excel, but to dwell on the BSOD thingy….silly.
good grief people. are you always so serious? The guy was joking. (least i assume so..
btw, bsod’s might happen rarely for you (i havent had one in over a year…) but for the average joe user, they happen A LOT. trust me. I have to work on peoples computers.
Experience the power of Monad scripting as it launches a DRM protected worm on your system!
your whole post was great. I laughed my @ss off.
//Relax and enjoy as your computer seizes up in new and unexpected ways, and witness the improved BSOD: from blue, to slaughtered chicken red!//
Funny, I’ve been using XP Pro since release, and I’ve seen maybe two BSOD’s in that time — usually after overclocking some hardware, or using crappy 3rd-party drivers/hardware (hardly the OS’s fault).
Never have had a virus, or a trojan. (yes, junior, I’m sure.)
It’s actually quite easy to avoid all that crap. Do a little research and tweaking, and XP is a fine OS for just about any need.
For the last time, the RSOD is a the fault screen color for the Win64 (and early 32bit Vista builds) NT bootloader.
The kernel bugcheck (panic) screen in EVERY VERSION of NT (including all versions of Longhorn) is, and always WILL BE, BLUE.
By hibernating Win2k, installing a different video card, and booting up again, I was once able to produce a Green Screen of Death
Anyways… while we are at it. This is what happened when one of my drives in the RAID was dying.
http://ordorica.org/misc/gsod.jpg
Even though I am a windows user, and have no major complaints for XP, I am also ready to jump ship for Mac OS when the smaller MacBook Pro’s come out. But then again.. game support.
By the time Vista actually comes out (Me thinks overnight between Nov and Dec) I’m not to sure i’ll still be impressed by it compared to Mac OS X, although it will still be worth upgrading my older pc’s to it just for the security and features sake.
In order to release the product on December 1st, OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs (Dell, IBM, Gateway, etc) will have to have the product in their hands by September 1st, in order to do driver engineering and compatibility testing. So, really, Microsoft is really less than 7 months away from shipping.
I love how MS apologists yammer about not getting BSOD’s in XP. Of course, they neglect to say that the reason why is MS disabled the BSOD display for XP. Unless you change a registry setting, the default for a crash in XP is to reboot immediately and then pop up a dialog box on the desktop asking if you wish to send a crash report to MS. See? No more BSOD! But the system still crashes like it always did.
By the way, MS acknowledges that fully one half of all crashes are their fault. They just state it the other way around – that one half of crashes are NOT their fault.
Well, I haven’t had that happen either.
I have gotten two blue screens of death, both the result of a sudden catastrophic hard drive failure.
I love how MS apologists yammer about not getting BSOD’s in XP. Of course, they neglect to say that the reason why is MS disabled the BSOD display for XP. Unless you change a registry setting, the default for a crash in XP is to reboot immediately and then pop up a dialog box on the desktop asking if you wish to send a crash report to MS. See? No more BSOD! But the system still crashes like it always did.
You are quite confused. If an _application_ has issues, it comes up with the “send crash report” dialog (unless you have turned off the asking of that question). Rebooting does not occur in these situations.
The only time I have seen rebooting is on hardware failure, usually of the hard drive itself, although XP does an exceptional job of working around partial drive failures.
Floyd
http://www.just-think-it.com
Only time my computer has EVER rebooted by itself was (a) when that RPC exploit was out, and it only happened twice before I fixed it (b) my hardware failed (processing overheating)
My other desktop has never rebooted itself. My laptop has never rebooted itself. My work desktop has never rebooted itself.
You are lucky, then. I’ve seen the described behaviour more than one time, and it is perfectly true that the default behaviour for XP in case of hardware, driver or kernel error is to reboot without showing any info.
You can check it yourself by performing these steps:
1. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System
2. Go to Advanced
3. Under the Startup and Recovery section, click Settings…
4. Under System Failure un-check “Automatically restart”
(citing from http://www.tunexp.com/tips/maintain_your_computer/disabling_blue_sc… )
In those case when an autoreboot happens you’ll have to uncheck the setting to actually see the blue screen, and normally you’ll discover that the video driver hanged the machine 🙂
//See? No more BSOD! But the system still crashes like it always did.//
That’s an *application* crashing, not the OS.
Much like what happens with the “bomb message” in KDE. Linux didn’t crash, an application did.
Get your facts straight, asshat.
You are an idiot. As others have pointed out, system crashes are often followed by a crash report requester after the system reboots. I was not talking about an application crash that doesn’t result in a reboot. As usual, MS shills try to deflect attention from the problems of the OS by attacking the messenger.
All this Vista talke reminds me of a classic dialog after a BSOD:
General: “You told us Windows 98 would be faster and more efficient and provide better access to the internet!”
Bill Gates: “It is. Windows 98 has over one million new fe-”
General: *BANG*!!!
With regards to Vista
I have tried out the Beta version, and was NOT impressed. It apeared to be something akin to a Service pack to Xp that gives a face lift and adds a ripped off version of MacOSX’s Spotlight. It was very unstable and lacked about 90% of the drivers it should have had.
How they claimed that it ready for release 2 years ago is beyond me…
Maybe they innovated Steve Job’s “Reality Distortion Field” away from apple? Or started doing black tar heroin perhaps? *sigh*
Regarding the XP crashing discussion.
I have seen it blue screen upon boot up due to a failing hard drive many times(in win2k as well). Also it has suddenly rebooted for no apparent reason just as many times(Accompanied with an annoying little pop-up message that doesnt do or say anything usefull. “YES, I KNOW it crashed! But WHY!?!?!?”).
Maybe the context page is beta as well:
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