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Windows Vista... won't suck?

Phex: Dorset Doom

23:29 / 28.02.06

Point your faces at this.

These are screencaps from Windows Vista, and it's looking impressive. There are things added I've been wanting to see for a long time, such as performance optimizers and real built-in voice recognition (which, depending on the quality, will either revolutionise how we interface with our PCs, or be turned off so it doesn't delete your My Documents folder every time you sneeze). A Games Explorer is a nice touch, the Big M has been trying to court gamers recently, but I'd like to see it expanded to include video/audio and other apps.
There is some stuff that just feels gimmicky, however. The Rolodex function looks to be a strain on the graphics card that isn't necessary (seeing as the same function can be performed by pointing your eyes ten degrees downward and, y'know, selecting the program you want from the Taskbar). The Sidebar is a double plaigarisation of Apple's 'widgets' and Google's Google Desktop, and unless it is as customisable as the former I could see myself turning it off. Built in RSS support is a nice touch though.

So, seeing as how most of us are currently XP users and will very likely have to upgrade to Vista at some point, how does everybody feel looking at their O/S future in Extremetech's slideshow? Hopeful? Optimistic? Cautious? Hungry?

21:17 / 03.03.06

Hello.

I am a beta tester for Windows Vista, and I can genuinely say, although the project is still not ready for general public use yet (almost) it's very impressive compared to Windows XP. There are alot of improvement to the interface, besides the glass effect, which i quite enjoy, and to the underlying functionality of Windows. This is the biggest set of improvements since Windows 95, and I think that it will be very successful. They've taken alot of ideas from OS X, which is good.

Also, there are many, many improvements "under the hood" which the general user will not notice, but this eases development of new applications that will be more secure, more attractive and easier to use than ever before. Performance should be good, although you'll definately need more RAM to run Vista than XP. Now you can boost performance by adding USB Memory cards and letting Vista use the space instead of slower hard drive space to cache, which also speeds things up. There's tons more features, but I can safely say I'm excited to keep the stability, general ease of use of windows XP and improve on the things that sucked about it, such as nasty interface and inconsistencies.

03:30 / 04.03.06

The thing that worries me about Vista is the stuff I hear about massively built-in DRM of various kinds, all kinds of hardware locks to force your computer to talk to Bill about everything, and to allow Bill to fiddle with programs he doesn't feel you should have.

I'm being sarcastic, of course, but nonetheless, there is a sense out there that Vista is a nice interface and all, but who, exactly, is on the other side?

This might be something neuromancer could set us straight on? Or at least say if he or she can't discuss it without winding up dead in a ditch?

08:06 / 04.03.06

I've every expectation that Windows Vista will be a useful step forward, as was Windows XP from previous versions. There are some really useful features coming from the management side (I look after windows machines for a living, which I do sometimes regret) which should make adoption at work easier.

Microsoft have a track record of collecting good ideas from elsewhere and rolling them very successfully into the whole Windows framework, so it'll come as no surprise to find lots of things from OS X and other places.

quixote makes a good point, though, about DRM. Buying software is increasingly difficult if you want to maintain your machine's integrity, and DRM is going to make that even trickier. It'll be a difficult descision to use either an out of date OS or one that doesn't let me do everything I've come to expect because it's protecting some large companies' out-of-date business model.

11:12 / 04.03.06

nameinuse - have you ever considered Linux? Burn a bootable Ubuntoo CD and check it out. No DRM and not out of date. No need to install it either so you can run your old apps.

15:43 / 04.03.06

I've used Linux quite a bit before, though my current machine isn't dual-boot. A large part of my job is making our Windows desktop machines and domain controllers talk to our linux fileservers and DNS boxes.

The main reason I've not moved over to Linux is that at home I use my PC for games and for filling my iPod with music, neither of which work terribly well (AFAIK) on linux. I've been quite tempted by OS X, but not enough to actually buy a Mac, either. I just don't have the time or the patience to make everything work under Linux when it's trivially easy for me to make it work under Windows. I suppose I'll be getting Linux installed when it turns out I really can't do everything that I was expecting out of Windows.

Ubuntu's based on Debian, isn't it? Does that mean it has full apt? Aside from practical considerations on Linux, Debian's package management is truely a work of genius.

17:59 / 04.03.06

Let's not derail this thread into a discussion about Linux or another operating system (this always happens with threads about operating systems, especially the dominant one.)

I'm under an NDA as far as posting screenshots, posting windows components, games etc from vista, but I can talk about the features and experience. Besides, all the tester builds are widely available via your friendly local bittorrent search engine, so it's somewhat moot anyway, the more adventurous/masochistic among you can easily go download a build and see it yourself for at least 14 days.

DRM - I'm under the impression that DRM don't become truly an issue unless you have what is called a TPM chip (Trusted Platform Module) on your computer. All new computers by the end of 2006 (Vista Launch timeframe) and all Intel based Macs already have this chip. It's sold to consumers that they can use it for true hardware encryption and thus increases their security, but it can also be used (by Windows Vista) to restrict content that works with the technology, (such as new movies, mp3s and other files)
There is also some other technology to stop you from easily watching protected high definition video, but this also requires brand new hardware to work.

This was a necessary technology that the MPAA and RIAA have lobbied for inclusion, and also corporations and governments for the Encryption aspect of it.

The Encryption part is called 'Bitlocker' in Vista.
It allows you to fully and transparently encrypt a harddrive so that if it were to fall in the wrong hands, those without a special USB Key could not read the contents.

'Bitlocker' will also be available (at least it is in build 5308) whether you have a TPM chip or not, but i guess at some reduced functionality/speed. I have not enabled it.

Existing non licensed files do not seem to be affected. I've lost no functionality due to owning Vista, and I'm sure if in the future nasty things came to light about certain aspects of it, it would be patched by various 3rd party elements in the field.

17:08 / 05.03.06

OK - should have pm`d the linux suggestion.

What`s it`s filesize and memory requirements?

Any knowledge as to it`s developer requirements?
What`s the API like? Backward compatable or will code need to be changed?

Will new harware be required to watch things like DVD`s or play CD`s?

Most importantly What`s it like to use on a day to day basis and how stable is it?

20:37 / 06.03.06

What`s it`s filesize and memory requirements?
At least 5 to 10 GB free space and minimum 512 MB of memory, recommended probably 1 GB. Direct X 9.0 Graphics card with 128 MB of memory for the aero glass interface.

Any knowledge as to it`s developer requirements?
What`s the API like? Backward compatable or will code need to be changed?
WinFX is the new api, to supersede Win32, But you can still use most Win32 apps and continue using that API anyway. WinFX is Based on .Net 2.0 Framework, and has managed code support (ostensibly for the C# Language in mind) as all XAML support, which will allow for XML files to define the look of an application (so everything doesn't have to be a boring winform anymore)

Will new harware be required to watch things like DVD`s or play CD`s?
No.

Most importantly What`s it like to use on a day to day basis and how stable is it?
It's stable, but it's a bit slow at the moment. the slowness will be worked out, but it will definately remain slower than xp on machines with limited amounts of ram, simply because it runs more features. Now you could just go about turning all those features off, and you could rectify that, but still reap the faster, more secure kernel of windows nt 6.0 which will be at the heart of vista; However it'd probably be smarter to just load up machines with 1GB of memory to take advantage of all the features instead of turning them off.

Harold Washington died for you

04:48 / 08.03.06

How the hell they not up to Minesweeper 2?

Yes it looks amazing. The interface is soft and supple, like the interior of a very expensive car. The search features and intregration I can only imagine is fantastic. The little pictures of space shuttles and such is kinda cheesy but forgivable. And I almost certainly will not purchase it until it comes with my next computer. Microsoft has enough of my money, and the ghost in my machine is set in his ways.

16:09 / 09.03.06

Minesweeper has been revamped, as have all the games. They're given a much nicer graphic retouch and vector-scale to whatever size you want, like most things in Vista. But the basic functionality of the game is the same, they're just updated for this decade.