Submitted by “On Wednesday morning, I met with Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, the man most directly responsible for Windows Vista and Longhorn Server, the company’s upcoming client and server operating system releases. Allchin is a soft-spoken, intelligent man with decades of industry experience, the last 15 years of which were spent at Microsoft. I’ve run into Mr. Allchin at various events throughout the years, but the last time I sat down with him for a one-on-one meeting was in August 2001, when we discussed the then-upcoming release of Windows XP. With Windows Vista on track for a late 2006 release, Allchin hit the road to meet with members of the technical press.”
After reading through the artice, I’m very disappointed that Vista will be adding no new features besides for an ugly new interface. Ugh!
Did you read the article?!
Me thinks you did not.
Yes. I was being sacastic, sorry for not saying so
Well, they’re touting security as the biggest addition to Vista. However, if you’re running XP w/SP2, a virus scanner, a non-IE browser, and a little bit of common sense is really all you need. Been running Windows (in one flavor or another) since ’93, and have had one virus so far (New York virus from a floppy disk .. many years ago.) Other than that, no major issues with securiyt, ever.
As for the average user, let’s just hope Vista is as secure as they say it is. Otherwise, it’s XP all over again and the single biggest advantage they claim Vista has will be for nothing. Only time will tell, I s’pose.
Otherwise, it’s XP all over again …
One might even say it’s w95/w98/NT/2k/xp all over again.
Time will tell if they have finally learned the lesson of history. W2k3 looks pretty good so far in terms of security and stability. Hopefully that will prove be an accurate indicator of what’s coming in Vista.
“Other than that, no major issues with securiyt, ever.” How could you tell you have no viruses in your system (active or dormant) when Antivirus softwares on the market fail to detect 80 % of infections. Besides, how can you be sure there are no security holes in your network when even the top windows servers do; finally how can you be sure no one is spying on you while you use your IE.
“if you’re running XP w/SP2, a virus scanner, a non-IE browser, and a little bit of common sense is really all you need.”
That’s what I did but then my system went coco when I played a wmv file which turned to be a virus underneath.
In computer industry you cannot be sure of anything; but one thing you can which is to use the more trusted less demanding OSs like OSX or Linuxes not to be secure but to reduce your chances of getting nailed.
I agree with you on Vista, XP, and security issues. Proper prevention and a little common sense will take you a long way with Windows. I personally don’t consider it a bad OS. XP does everything I need it to do and has always been very stable for me. Plus, I can always play the latest games, -yadda yadda- hardware -yadda yadda- all the other platitudes you hear in almost every thread.
All that said, I’m looking forward to Vista. Mostly. I still have a few political/social problems with what is going to be in it (DRM) and the fact that we can no longer buy a Microsoft OS outright. I don’t even like to lease cars or apartments.
However, my biggest question to Microsoft will be if software that is installed on the machine (through user accounts, not the superuser) will be allowed to change system files. I’m not an OS expert, but it seems to me if Company A can come in and swap out a .dll at will, you’re just whistling past the graveyard as far as stability and security goes.
Now, on XP, I’ve noticed user accounts have their *own* WindowsSystem file, though I’ve never seen any software I’ve installed make use of it. Could this be used to solve the .dll swap-out and security probs? Sort of like all the .directories in *nix /home accounts?
If I’m off base here, let me know.
3rd-party software is surely one of the problems – it’s too tempting for developers to open up the system as much as they can so that installation and use are as universal and simple as possible (even at the cost of security) because <easy> = <less calls to the support lines> = <lower overheads> = <more profit>.
“Other than that, no major issues with securiyt, ever.” How could you tell you have no viruses in your system (active or dormant) when Antivirus softwares on the market fail to detect 80 % of infections. Besides, how can you be sure there are no security holes in your network when even the top windows servers do;
I fixed a lot of friends’ computers who have been infected (and taught them a thing or two about security along the way), so I can generally spot when a computer has been infected with something, especially spyware.
finally how can you be sure no one is spying on you while you use your IE.
Simple – I don’t use IE.
That’s what I did but then my system went coco when I played a wmv file which turned to be a virus underneath.
Where did you get the wmv file? Do you remember the part I mentioned about common sense ?
As far as I can understand (I don’t have a beta copy of Vista to play with), the security model of Vista doesn’t necessarily make it more secure than XP being run by someone who knows what they’re doing. Vista makes security more convenient for everyone including those who don’t really know much about security. Vista is supposed to take all of the advances that XP got from SP2, add a few more, and make them more transparent to the user. Vista has a different user policy that should make using a computer as a non-administrator user less painful than it is now. Vista even looks like it will have a few tools that were only available on XP through third party vendors, such as parental controls.
I remember when some people actually argued that if you knew what you were doing Win9x could be a stable OS. They were right to some degree, but few would bother with that argument now. Just as stability was probably the best argument for people to upgrade from Win9x to Win2k or XP, a new security model might in fact be a compelling argument for people to upgrade from Win2k or XP to Vista. This is nothing more than speculation at this point, but I’m going to hold my judgments until we are all able to see the final product.
Disclaimer: I doubt I’ll ever have a need for Vista personally, but I’m hoping that when I encounter it at work (might be a long time off), it will be an improvement over XP.
This man should have been asked to resign in 2004. That he is still employed at Microsoft in 2006 is unbelievable. How bad do you have to f–k up at MS before they fire your ass? Mr. Alchin, wasn’t the product you’re responsible for supposed to ship in late 2003?
Do you know everything that has gone in behind the scenes? No? Then shut up.
First, read this: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/47865/47865.html
Then understand that ONE MAN can not have complete control over the development of such a large piece of software. There were f–kups, and you can’t place all the blame on him.
Nice link – I’d heard a small bit (in vague rumour format) but this does explain the delay.
It seems to be widely believed that Windows development was becoming a bit patchworky. This brings hope of a more coherently organised OS at the end of it. If Microsoft could just stop changing (proprietising) standards we’d have a reasonable start to 21st Century computing.
Maybe because Microsoft just posted record revenues?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060127-6069.html
I mean seriously, talk about talking out of your ass.
“There were f–kups, and you can’t place all the blame on him” – quote
exactly why MS’s software sucks, no one has to take the blame, so nothing needs be fixed all the way. this is the same attitude our government has..
Boy, that’s a troll post if I ever saw it…
The same kind of blatantly vague/inaccurate argument could be used against open source as well, “no one has to take the blame…” (I’m assuming by your username that you are either a Linux zealot or a troll trying to come off as a Linux zealot to give Linux a bad name.) If you really are a fan of Linux, please, stop making posts like this as it doesn’t help anyone.
MS products aren’t my favorites, and I certainly haven’t been happy about all of their business practices (past or present). Regardless, if all MS products (or the sum of the parts) really sucked that much, MS would have lost the majority of their monopoly to Linux by now. There certainly has been enough media coverage, and corporations have been testing the OSS waters. IMHO few Microsoft products could really be considered “best-in-class,” but that doesn’t matter as long as they’re “good enough” to keep people from switching.
Microsoft is currently in the enviable position that they can take a watch-and-wait stance on many new technologies. They don’t have to invest their resources into implementing big new features unless they see that potential customers really want them. That means that many features won’t come from MS first, but that doesn’t mean that their products “suck.”
Allchin comes over as sympatico. He acts and talks like a normal person, so unlike the business-babble dronage that you get from Gates and Ballmer, with their interactive rich user experience situations, etc, etc.
In addition, Microsoft are on to a bit of a loser here. They may well have done a huge amount of work on security and stability with Vista – I do not know – but as this is all hidden and under the bonnet they can’t turn any of it into excitement and sales features. For that MS have to rely on the obvious stuff like eyecandy which is easy to disparage as frippery.
I’m not a fan of Windows. Microsoft’s obsession with making a buck out of every last byte was eventually too much for me. No one likes hard-faced types who stick their hand out and demand pay-up before you’ve even said what you’re looking for, let alone picked it off the rack and taken it to the till. That’s MS to me.
Vista Shmista, It’s not even going to support games less then DX 10. Plus OpenGl will be over a wrapper. DRM etc. Non-standard UI. Noone will want to work with it with the new OpenSource revolution as you see what’s happening in Europe.
Also, viruses are old hat, Adware is what the deal is today and sorry I don’t want this elaborite adware system on my computer that I don’t need on Linux. On top of that how does anyone trust MS with privacy issues anymore?
Vista is fine for now because it is the mainstream but hopefully that will change soon. Either that or maybe it wont matter since it seems they are moving everyhitng onto the Live.com site.
Security layers are ok but to create all these bulky wrappers on the OS to do it is counter-tintuitive. SP2 was bad enough at slowing things down Vista will be 10 times worse.
Vista Shmista, It’s not even going to support games less then DX 10. Plus OpenGl will be over a wrapper.
Where are you getting your info from? It’s been my experience that DirectX is backward compatible with it’s previous versions. As to the OpenGL issue, your vid card chip vendor will supply their own version of the OpenGL libs. From what I understand, the OpenGL wrapper for the Vista system will simply be a basic system “default”.
And hey, most of us want to up the penguin, but linux has a ways to go before it’s “mainstream” anywhere outside of IT/geek circles, so yes, Vista will matter.
And how exactly are you slowing XP down so badly? From a UI standpoint, XP kicks the crap out of any of my linux installs as far as responsiveness goes — even with AVG running. Are you perhaps talking about something less subjective?
And how exactly are you slowing XP down so badly? From a UI standpoint, XP kicks the crap out of any of my linux installs as far as responsiveness goes — even with AVG running. Are you perhaps talking about something less subjective?
My subjective impression is that windows slows down randomly for non-obvious reasons. I noticed this with every windows XP machine that I used, and several friends much more windows enthusiastic than me aswell.
It’s frequent and annoying occurences like opening an explorer windows and having the whole windows shell dead for durations around 10 seconds, same kind of problems with visual studio.
Sometimes the hard disk seems to begin thrashing for a while without apparent reasons either, etc.
I noticed some of these symptoms on fresh installs on new machines (including the one I use now at work which has 2 gig of memory), so none of the usual excuses (“you probably have some spywares”, “you don’t have enough memory”, “your hard disk is fragmented”, etc.), can possibly apply.
You posted the standard nonsense about how Linux is too hard to use.
Odd thing, for some reason a lot more people than a few percent seemed to be able to work with Linux long before Windows ever made an appearance. Of course they called it unix in those days, but what’s in a name?
Earlier computer systems were even more primitive and being operated NOT by MIT graduates but by Joe or Jane promoted from the typing pool.
For that matter how do you think the earliest word processors and such worked? Point and click? Nor were they being used by Harvard graduates. Just people with barely a diploma in home economics.
Nah, linux is easy. It is just called hard by the amazingly lazy who do not want to be bothered having to relearn their fine button clicking skills.
In the real world, people have used all kinds of systems and continue to do so. You would be suprised how many companies still run their essential software via ancient terminals that make you wish you were running Linux.
XP needs an antivirus, Linux doesn’t, unless you are serving files to windows machines. That slows it down. Windows needs an anti-spyware program, which takes time and effort to run, time I don’t have to waste on bullshit that I shouldn’t have to worry about.
So, keep burying your head in the sand and telling us how user-friendly and difficult Linux is. I have built a very successful business out of transitioning people to Linux, which they pay me for and for which I offer a full refund. Not once in the last three years have I had a customer come back and demand a refund. In fact, word of mouth is my best form of advertising.
Stick to your delusions, they make me money.
Odd thing, for some reason a lot more people than a few percent seemed to be able to work with Linux long before Windows ever made an appearance. Of course they called it unix in those days, but what’s in a name?
Is that so? That’s pretty impressive.
Considering windows 1.0 came out in 1985, and Windows 3.0 in 1990.
And linux wasn’t released until 1991, and wasn’t exactly competiting with windows at that point.
Yes, and linux is a unix clone.
Unix was made in the 60’s, I think.
And though you may argue about being “run” by über-geeks, it wasn’t so. You are not expected to be able to code a kernel simply to use linux. I do not know how, and I have been running FreeBSD for 4 years now, as a main desktop OS. I find windows uncomfortable.. especially XP.
My mum uses a FreeBSD desktop which I set up for her, she’s absolutely clueless as far as computers are concerned but she can use it without much trouble.
Great. Linux is *NOT* UNIX though. You said work with *Linux* long before Windows, not UNIX. You were wrong and should just admit to it.
You posted the standard nonsense about how Linux is too hard to use.
*What* are you talking about? Are you actually reading any of the posts?