The next version of Windows isn’t due out until at least 2005, leaving us to wonder: Will Microsoft address the big questions users have about stability, security, and features? In this special report, PCMag looks at where Windows is heading.
Where Is Windows Going?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
41 Comments
2003-10-24 8:50 pm
Anonymous
WorknMan, So, XP ships [potentially?] unstable
No, XP (and 2k) start off stable, but get more unstable as you use it, unless you follow the few guidelines I mentioned above.
only geeks like us can stabalize it? Yikes. I’m thinking that is a lot of work and nothing that “typical” computer users are going to do.
Well, I think in every OS, you need to follow a few rules to keep it stable. For example, it has been my experience that trying to run different kinds of Windows apps in Linux under Wine will bring X to its knees pretty quickly. Or at least, that has been my experience. Of course, I can accomplish the same result by simply running any of the games that come pre-installed with my Radeon 7500 vid card .. the entire screen goes black and stays that way, and no amount of CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE will save it. Of course, I readily admit that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in Linux – but it just goes to show you that any OS can be made unstable with the wrong (?) kind of user and no ‘guru’ to set things up for them 
2003-10-24 9:03 pm
2003-10-24 9:11 pm
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2003-10-24 10:34 pm
Anonymous
I’m getting pretty sick of this MS-bashing culture. I’m gonna say what every sane man (or woman) in this world thinks: I’m looking forward to Longhorn, in the same way that I look forward to Zeta 1.0 Final (hey, gotta love BeOS!) , Mandrake 10 (hopefully leaving your LG drive intact this time 
) and Mac OS 10.9 Norwegian Forest Cat (meauw!).
Get over it– if you really like computers/OS’s– you will also want to see the new Windows. Period.
2003-10-24 10:55 pm
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2003-10-25 9:35 am
2003-10-25 12:37 pm
2003-10-25 2:05 pm
2003-10-25 3:56 pm
Anonymous
Okayokay, you’re right there. Overreacted a bit. Sorry
But still, I don’t think it’s fair to judge a product that hasn’t even been released yet– in fact, it’s years away. That just doesn’t seem very fair to me.
2003-10-25 8:06 pm
I remember back in the early 90’s, when competition had fully caught up and completely surpassed MS-DOS, Microsofts response was to change the whole field and go with Windows 95. The proprietary nature of Windows 95 gave Microsoft about 5 years before anyone figured out how to make anything compatible with it. This is my prediction for Longhorn. Microsoft will break all their existing standards, introduce some internal encryption schema so that they can sue anyone that tries to make themselves Longhorn compatible, and then hype their product as the greatest revolution since Windows 95.
the XBOX is a precursor to MS’s new black box PC where the only expansion you have is through high speed ports like USB2 and Firewire.
the first steps are being taken by WXP MCE OEMs
the next version of the XBOX will probably be like what Sony just released, a 700 dollar entertainment center system.
this will allow MS to take total control over media away from the end-user.
Erm, how about 2006? At the earliest.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1335331,00.asp
http://www.arstechnica.com/archive/news/1066091967.html
Some have interpreted that to mean that the full Longhorn line (which is actually a large collection of products) will not be out until 2006.
@Debman-Where did you get this information?
“the XBOX is a precursor to MS’s new black box PC where the only expansion you have is through high speed ports like USB2 and Firewire.”
@slash –
“The proprietary nature of Windows 95 gave Microsoft about 5 years before anyone figured out how to make anything compatible with it.”
Are you talking about apps or other OS’s? Do you mean it was 5 years before there were any 3rd party apps that would run under Windows 95? That would have been the year 2000.
MS will want to move to merge the Windows file system with the internet. WinFS & the internet will both become databases that’ll be one and the same. The whole “zones” thing in IE are part of this plan.
We’ll start to see DRM. This means everyone has to be registered. Expect in the long term everyone being serial numbered world-wide. Televison, telephones, radio, books, etc, will all be merged through the internet/winfs into a user-pay-per-minute model with all your actions being tracked & recorded. Microsoft is probably going to move in the long-term from being a software company to a services company, their attempts at cleaning up their image being a part of that.
Wait & see.
down the drain,.. read these articles…
http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html#longhorn
And many of you know about this one…
http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit033.html
This kinda stuff is like something out of a bad movie
What is the issue with stability?
Mine (XP/2K) is rock solid .. even more stable than Linux (the OS, not the kernel).
Anyone having stability problems in 2K/XP, I would recommend the following:
1. Don’t use Internet Explorer. And if you must use it, refuse all ActiveX controls sans maybe Flash and Quicktime.
2. Download this program:
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
And get rid of any crap out of startup that you don’t need.
3. Install Ad-aware or Spybot and check for malware BEFORE you install anything.
4. Before using any packet-writing software (CD-RW), disable the Windows imapi CD writing service.
5. Turn OFF web folders and the active desktop
6. If any particular hardware device is crashing the OS, get yourself the latest drivers from the vendor website. (Of course, 5 minutes of researching any particular piece of hardware before buying should ensure that you have no problems, except in rare circumstances).
Well, this is what I do, and 2k/XP rarely (if every) crashes/hangs.
BTW: THere could be some unexpected benifits of DRM. For one, if they actually manage to make pirate-proof software, they’ll have no excuses not to let you return any software back to the store that truly sucks
It’ll take them that long to steal / figure out what the mac already has! I just hope they drop the registry and opt for an XML-based replacement.
Doesn’t matter, I’ve bought my last Microsoft OS.
Wow… That’s all you have to do to get WinXP stable! Why didn’t I think of that!
Shesh… And people say that configuring Linux is a pain…
1 The government should have broken up microsoft.
2 Put mandatory limits on number of XP sales.
Allow 70 % of market to Microsoft.
3 Forced OEM(manufacturers) to not carry an os on a new computer. Customers must buy from the shelf which in itself is brilliant because then that would cause Microsoft to lower prices.
4 Force software makers to make ports to linux or allow other operating systems to port t1heir software.
This is where microsofts future should have been.
Wow… That’s all you have to do to get WinXP stable! Why didn’t I think of that!
I’ve had no problems with Windows XP’s stability deployed across dozens of Dell systems at my workplace and on my Dell system at home.
Like anyone who doesn’t revert to a drooling neandrathal shouting such wonderful arguments as “MS is teh sux long live LUNIX!!!” whenever the name of Windows XP is mentioned, I will contend that stability problems experienced when using Windows XP are the result of bad drivers or issues with the underlying hardware.
Now true, the driver issues may be from drivers Microsoft signed… their QA process isn’t perfect, but Windows XP supports an inordinate amount of hardware out-of-the-box.
WorknMan, So, XP ships [potentially?] unstable and only geeks like us can stabalize it? Yikes. I’m thinking that is a lot of work and nothing that “typical” computer users are going to do. Perhaps that is why you hear a lot of people upset about instability in Windows.
/goes back to running 2000 + XP simultaneously on Mac OS X using VitrualPC
I’ve read his whole page about trusted computing and it’s really boring. It seems to come directly from Microsoft advertisement.
He should go back to school and read this
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
In short, TCPA is a very powerful tool, not necessary evil in itself, but it is easy to figure how it can be abused. What we have to fear is a jonction between TCPA and the Paladium (now NGSB) project of Microsoft. Then the nightmare can become a reality, and if we were in a democratic state, this project should just be stopped until we have basic garanties.
Of course, this FAQ is not written by a journalist, but by a security expert guy, so the conclusions may seems to be a little different.
So, again, read this FAQ
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
and share it around you
Look at the article, the date is November 11th, 2003 …. quite the future?
I also noticed they didnt mention anything about fixing the fatal design flaws of .NET. Ie, all apps created w/ .NET’s source code is freely publically viewable…
Bah.
So, XP ships [potentially?] unstable and only geeks like us can stabalize it? Yikes. I’m thinking that is a lot of work and nothing that “typical” computer users are going to do. Perhaps that is why you hear a lot of people upset about instability in Windows.
/goes back to running 2000 + XP simultaneously on Mac OS X using VitrualPC
The only stability problems I’ve ever seen following an XP install involve either a) bad hardware or b) hardware with buggy (albeit signed) drivers. The techniques mentioned are all (obviously) to combat stability issues caused by buggy third party applications/spyware/malware, a problem that plagues any platform, including MacOS X. Remember this: http://www.apple.com/itunes/alert/ (although in this case, it was an Apple application at fault)
@Anonymous (IP: —.ihug.co.nz)
Wait & see.
Great, that is exactly what we should not do.
Please, people, stop about Windows crash vs Windows don’t crash, stop about macs are better than pcs or the reverse. There is a lot more in the game.
“1 The government should have broken up microsoft.”
Yes, they should have
“2 Put mandatory limits on number of XP sales.
Allow 70 % of market to Microsoft.”
Not really practical, how do you control purchases of the software when 80%+ people want what their buddy has.
“3 Forced OEM(manufacturers) to not carry an os on a new computer. Customers must buy from the shelf which in itself is brilliant because then that would cause Microsoft to lower prices.”
This would be a step backwards and OEMs would not be too happy with the loss of sales.
“4 Force software makers to make ports to linux or allow other operating systems to port t1heir software.”
Impractical again.
“This is where microsofts future should have been.”
Agreed, Microsoft should be having a harder time, but it’s the difference between millions of dollars in marketing and the wild differences between enthusiast and zealot attitudes in other OSes.
I used XP on my home computer for over a year and I only had a few troubles with it. It was great until I started getting crashes. Which I believed were related to a monitor killing the computer(It was after I went on a plane trip with a monitor and the monitor was very old). Linux wouldn’t work either so I’m sure it’s not MS fault. Any other problems have been related to faulty non MS drivers. Even though XP was great I decided to go with linux because A. I want to learn. B. I like being able to look and change the source code(although I rarely do, but I do it every now and then. Example: When I was trying to get iTunes to work using wine). And it’s cheaper since I like upgrading my hardware on a regular basis and at some point I may want to build a cheap computer and I like having them use one operating system. On the other hand since Linux despite attempts isn’t as newbie friendly as windows so I’m putting XP on my brothers computer(I’m upgrading the hardware too, he’s using Win95 now).
BTW-On an off topic, if someone was wondering what kind of success I had getting iTunes to work in Wine. I came VERY, VERY, close to doing it. I may continue when I can figure out what COM(if any) and other installation stuff iTunes adds to the registry. I was able to get it to load to the point where you keep clicking next and other choices when you first load it up. I got to the last screen and then when I clicked next nothing happened,
I was looking at the article and Tier 2 level of OS UI graphics will require 64 to 128MB of video RAM!!!!!! Are they insane? If the OS requires so much just to be a middle-manager between the user and the apps, what will regular apps require ?!?!?!
“@slash –
“The proprietary nature of Windows 95 gave Microsoft about 5 years before anyone figured out how to make anything compatible with it.”
Are you talking about apps or other OS’s? Do you mean it was 5 years before there were any 3rd party apps that would run under Windows 95? That would have been the year 2000. ”
I’m talking about other OS’s. They did provide API’s to allow programmers to program for Windows but didn’t allow anyway for any other OS to run these applications. However, with enough stubborness, people were able to figure out and reverse engineer most of it. I don’t think people will be able to do this again since the next version of Windows is going to heavily depend on encryption so that MS can legally stop people from reverse engineering LongHorn.
http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html#longhorn
And many of you know about this one…