It’s the hour of reckoning for Windows Vista. After five years of course changes, false starts and a host of beta and CTP builds, Microsoft is set to deliver a broad-scale build of Vista to two million testers. Microsoft is likely to drop the build – known by multiple names, including the consumer Vista CTP and Vista Beta 2 – as early as the week of May 22 at the WinHEC in Seattle, according to company watchers. And on a related note, if you want the fancy Vista look on your XP machine, check out this transformation pack.
It really does seem to fluctuate – certainly according the the reviews streaming in – interesting .
But before anybody says MS is doomed – Vista will of course ship on tons of new computers .
And the new Office & a few other new things from MS will also be arriving AFAIK with Vista .
Looking forward to the new one
The 2GB issue & slowness – hmmmm – intersting methinks .
Microsoft should seriously consider producing and controlling its own hardware in the same manner that Apple does. There would be far less betas, and more time to reap successes on awesome hardware support.
I think the stipulations of their anti-trust agreement negate that possibility, but I could be wrong.
I think the stipulations of their anti-trust agreement negate that possibility, but I could be wrong.
I think the common sense ideology behind anti-trust laws in the first place would negate that possibility, but I too could be wrong.
Microsoft should seriously consider producing and controlling its own hardware in the same manner that Apple does.
That’s a case of enough supply meeting demand. Microsoft would never be able to get enough supply out into the market via that method, just like Apple.
An army of programmers and this is the best Microsoft can do? Pathetic. Wait until it ships on new computers and people find out how slow it is. Of course it will be buggy as hell too. So what if a new version of Office is going to ship? It takes alot to get people to “upgrade’ office and most companies take years to do so. Microsoft’s model is broken.
If these are correct, it certanly won’t help already problematic Vista:
Windows Vista Home Basic – 200E or 255.55$ or 135.95£
Windows Vista Home Premium – 400E or 511.10$ or 271.90£
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition – 500E or 638.88$ or 339.87£
Windows Vista Business – 650E or 830.54$ or 441.84£
Windows Vista Enterprise – 800E or 1,022.20$ or 543.80£
source: http://bink.nu/Article7174.bink
Edited 2006-05-23 03:25
If these are correct, it certanly won’t help already problematic Vista
They aren’t. Enterprise won’t even be sold at retail, and MS only charges $400+ for servers.
“only charges $400+ for servers.”
I’ll stick with FreeBSD for my servers, as do many reputable web hosting companies with thousands of customers. If it’s good enough for them, it’s more than enough for me.
Fantastic. Why did you feel the need to make that announcement? A bit insecure about it?
Just making a point that you don’t need to pay hundreds of dollars for a high-performance server.
For the software, no. Everyone here knows that, so why state the obvious?
I don’t know, I guess to give trolls like you something to feed upon. I just felt it needed mentioning that “only $400” is not really a good deal.
//I don’t know, I guess to give trolls like you something to feed upon//
Huh? You’re the troll that started the argument, with your completely-unrelated-to-the-topic post about BSD being “free.”
How asinine these Penguinistas are …
“How asinine these Penguinistas are …”
Since when is Tux the mascot for FreeBSD? You call me the troll yet you make a comment like that. As for my post being unrelated, the post I replied to was about the cost of Windows Server, and I commented on the cost of an alternative server OS. You really need to learn to troll better.
I completely agree with that. As a student trying to pay for grad school and work at the same time I have to count every penny to get by. Vista looks interesting but I like the price of my current OS I downloaded for free: 0.00 for Fedora Linux. I couldn’t afford the hardware upgrades either for a new graphics card and such to run Vista but Gnome runs just fine on my old Athlon thunderbird.
As a student trying to pay for grad school and work at the same time I have to count every penny to get by.
So grad school costs $300-$500 per credit … and you’re complaining about a $100 OS upgrade that will last for years?
uh, you’re guessing that I actually own Windows XP. I don’t and probably never will since all my school stuff can be done on Linux since the school mostly uses web based applications and Open Office. A couple of years ago I probably would have had to buy a PC with XP but not anymore. A hundred bucks is still a lot of money for me. That is two more books next semester.
Edited 2006-05-24 01:25
They could limit the hardware the same way Apple does, by only supporting machines built within the last 2-3 years or so. I’d say not supporting any machine without PCI Express would do the trick just fime. This would at least limit the support to i915+ and nForce4 chipsets cuttiing out all that old crappy hardware in the process. Remove all the legacy crap like PS/2 ports, serial ports, parallel ports, and floppy controllers. Leave 32-bit PCI and IDE support for now until the next revision. In other words, Microsoft should only be supporting fairly modern hardware that would realistically run Vista in all it’s glory.
Edited 2006-05-23 03:33
Microsoft should only be supporting fairly modern hardware that would realistically run Vista in all it’s glory.
AGP, floppy controllers, and legacy ports have no issue running Vista in all its glory. MS already cut out significantly older systems by limiting support to ACPI and (U)EFI systems and providing a minimum spec. If they restricted it any further, they’d be cutting out a large part of their target market.
PS/2 is not to be removed until they come up with something better. USB sucks for mice, especially using linux (for some reason). Lauching applications, opening firefox tabs and stuff should never interrupt the mouse pointer. (But unfortunately, with linux it doesn’t go away completely even if using PS/2.)
Well I’m using USB mice&keyboards on all computers at home and in our company, which run Linux (Ubuntu), and I’ve never seen such a thing as you describe it. What chipsets are you using?
Tom
its most likely his X-server, not the drivers 😉
I agree that USB mice aren’t where they should be and PS/2 is still superior, but I’ve never had any issues with a USB mouse on linux and My laptop at work has a USB mouse and I’ve not had any issues yet…
Microsoft will not limit the hardware for Windows Vista even if it would do them some good. While some hardware will be deprecated by Vista (Higher Minimum/Recommended Requirements), they will not lock down their users to specific vendor-machine (like Dell or HP).
Microsoft rose to their 90% marketshare because of their incredible compatibility accross multiple hardware. In fact, it is a wonder that Microsoft successfully released Windows XP with all the hardware that is supported by it!
Nevertheless, I do not think that Vista will offer much to the end-user. Under the hood, there have been many changes, but for the non-tech people, it will merely be a new UI for their eyes and more problems with their legacy hardware/software.
“In other words, Microsoft should only be supporting fairly modern hardware that would realistically run Vista in all it’s glory.”
In other words, only people who can afford to go out and buy/build a brand-new system without legacy hardware should bother with buying Vista. Sorry, but for many people that is a luxury they cannot afford. My system is considered “legacy” even though it’s as fast and responsive as you can get both in Windows and Linux. I’m running on an nForce2 board with an AGP NVidia card and to me that IS luxury. As other people have posted, you don’t need a legacy-free system to get the full “Vista Experience”. My system meets, and in many cases exceeds, all the requirements for Vista’s eye-candy.
Did not beta 1 get “recalled”? So this is realy Beta 1.
Up to now, MS was not using any manged code itself in Vista. That is supposed to be major feature of Vista.
If it comes … it’s beta 1 (which means beta 2 they’ll be shiping as gold). Only change they did is moved DirectShow/Media inside of the OS SDK, where before it was separate. What features is it adding, its just XP.
I did years of Java and I am sick of Sun, so I want to use managed code/C# on Vista…. but, even MS is not using it anywhere.
Now what? Objective C I would do but hard to do “clickonce”.
.V
Did not beta 1 get “recalled”? So this is realy Beta 1.
Beta 1 did not get recalled. MS reset to drop dependencies on code that was itself in active development (unless absolutely necessary) and start with the Server 2003 SP1 codebase during the milestone (alpha) phase.
Up to now, MS was not using any manged code itself in Vista. That is supposed to be major feature of Vista.
Managed code is included in Windows Vista. .NET 2.0 is integrated and the new set of APIs, WinFX, is managed code.
If it comes … it’s beta 1 (which means beta 2 they’ll be shiping as gold). Only change they did is moved DirectShow/Media inside of the OS SDK, where before it was separate. What features is it adding, its just XP. I did years of Java and I am sick of Sun, so I want to use managed code/C# on Vista…. but, even MS is not using it anywhere. Now what? Objective C I would do but hard to do “clickonce”.
It is not Beta 1. It’s Beta 2. Beta 1 has been in testing since around July 2005 and has had several interim builds released to private testers and CTPs released to MSDN and TechNet members since then. Beta 2 includes .NET 2.0 and WinFX (as did later Beta 1 builds) and offers several extensibility points for managed code developers.
Edited 2006-05-23 05:09
“Managed code is included in Windows Vista. .NET 2.0 is integrated and the new set of APIs, WinFX, is managed code. ”
Yes, but almost no parts of Vista is using it as per tech artciels on the web.
Vista was marketed as USING managed code.
Why should we write managed code if MS is not!
.V
When’s the last time it was marketed as using managed code? Long before the code reset, I’ll tell you that much.
Managed code has a slight overhead which is acceptable for applications, but most people would NOT find acceptable for an Operating System.
They are however writing apps in managed code.
Yes, but almost no parts of Vista is using it as per tech artciels on the web.
Vista was marketed as USING managed code.
Why should we write managed code if MS is not!
Vista was never marketed as using managed code beyond what’s offered in .NET and WinFX (i.e., managed code in user mode, not kernel mode). Originally more of the included applications and Explorer were to be managed apps, but since WinFX and .NET 2.0 were themselves in active development, the teams kept having to adjust to breaking changes in the APIs. This dependencies on a moving codebase slowed development, so they dropped those dependencies in most places during the reset. There are managed apps included in Vista however, and MS is providing new applications like Expression Interactive Designer which is built using WinFX. Going forward, you’ll see more managed applications (Windows PowerShell, WinFS, etc.).
Also using a USB mouse + keyboard on Linux, and I’ve got no issues with it. In fact the only place I did have an issue was in Windows, when some random thing would go off shortly after login and freeze the mouse cursor briefly.
I suppose it’s possible that you might have issues on a really really slow machine, but seriously, opening a tab in Firefox doesn’t remotely stress the computer. Heck, I just tried it now with a compile in the background, with nary a stutter. So I’ll regretfully have to disagree with Mr. Unit’s comments 😛
Microsoft will prevail. And the most innovative company in the computer indutry, will once again revolutionize the computer industry.
God I ‘love’ fanboys.
Without you, people would actually keep to the subject instead of spewing “Microsoft 1337!” or “Linux rules!” every 30 seconds.
Sigh.
Indeed. Even microsoft itself says ‘we use proven technology’- which means, in other words, ‘we don’t innovate but we copy from others’.
Vista will make it, its installed on 99.9% of machines as the norm.
A better question surely would be does Vista deserve to make it?
Make or break Yeah, like if it set fire and burnt down even half the houses in the test it would somehow be pulled or derail the bloody thing is just fanfare, being melodramatic and down right silly.
ya know.. you read the daily rag.. and see ads for these $299- $399 computers… and the bargain basement bunch from DhELL and Hateway.. and you look at the hardware…. onboard graphics..shared ram..512 meg of ram…
So,,, lets just look at the actual requirements to get the whole shebang working ..Aero..and all that stuff…. Well.. so now we have to inclued accelerated graphics… double the ram…., or triple it to really get it pumpin… I could see vista actually slowing down OEM shipments…. Especially when you include the new Vista tax God only knows how this will run on lappies.
it runs fine as is on my dell inspiron 9300 laptop. Still a crap of optimizations to do but it runs as well as expected for a pre release OS from Microsoft.
I get all the nice effects, and am able to do most of what I do in Windows XP. I haven’t tested WoW with it yet, but will probably do that this weekend.
WoW runs AWFUL on my nVidia card.
I’m thinking drivers issues.
I don’t know about Vista yet, but my ATI Radeon x300 Mobile seems to work fine…but i do have to lower some of the graphics.
As it turns out, the video drivers do not yet support OpenGL except through a Dx wrapper, which is what is causing the poor performance.
eww. I wonder if the ATI catalyst drivers will work better.
As it turns out, the video drivers do not yet support OpenGL except through a Dx wrapper,
Dealbreaker right there.
because people like to argue just for the sake of arguing.