Vista, Up Close and Personal

[zridling]

Ed Bott has a new article on ZDNet that includes a gallery of 30 screenshots of things you won't see anywhere else.

     

     

Well worth a read.

[mouser]

nice.. i like the reliability monitor thing - this is exactly the kind of improvements microsoft should be focusing on.

[Edvard]

notice how the stability trends downward...

[jgpaiva]

notice how the stability trends downward...

Actually, I don't thing this is a good idea for microsoft. If the linux guys remember to do the same thing and then start comparing those graphics on a normal usage, things could come out bad for microsoft

[zridling]

Well, but remember, this is charting two beta versions — Vista and Office 2007 — on the same system over a 15-day period. May 21st was a bad day all around on Ed's chart!

[f0dder]

Eek, even more fisher-price than XP...

And what are the realistic alternatives to windows? Mac OS X and... uh... >_<

[Edvard]

Well, but remember, this is charting two beta versions

Ok, I'll give... betas deserve a little slack.

And what are the realistic alternatives to windows? Mac OS X and... uh... >_<

hehe... C'mon f0dder, say it... SAY IT!!

[f0dder]

Well, but remember, this is charting two beta versions

Ok, I'll give... betas deserve a little slack.

And what are the realistic alternatives to windows? Mac OS X and... uh... >_<

hehe... C'mon f0dder, say it... SAY IT!!

Not a realistic alternative for me, though. Distros like Ubuntu are getting a lot better etc., but just not there yet.

[Edvard]

yeah, I hear you... but it soon will be 'there' and it'd be good to learn it now.

[JavaJones]

Looks nice, but really it still sounds like an incremental upgrade. Like some kind of new tools suite that could have been tacked onto XP if desired. Hell I have 90% of this stuff already - a better process manager, good security, virtualization, tabbed browsing, arbitrary file searching, yadda yadda. Sure it's nice to have some of that bundled into the OS, but I really feel like MS should have been focusing on deeper core stuff. The new user management and networking stuff sounds like it has potential and hopefully it'll help guide people toward better security, but for my own use I had no problem with the existing system and have rarely, if ever, had security issues. So it kind of feels like a lot of these features weren't aimed at me. Maybe at my customers though - it *would* be nice to get fewer calls about awful spyware invasions.

Anyway, I'm always torn on this stuff. I actually feel that starting with Win2k MS has really had a solid OS on their hands. Some of the changes in XP actually really annoyed me, like the *terrible* new Start menu. So on the one hand I want a lot of stuff to stay the same. Win2k and XP are stable, so that should be kept, and improved on if possible of course. The theme of the UI? Yeah no thanks, I didn't need changes there. First thing I do when I install XP is turn the themes *off*. But I understand this was desirable for marketing and the average user (even though sys requirements will be high, hehe). But I digress. Essentially in one way I'm a conservative when it comes to OS changes, but on the other hand I am super excited about WinFS and would really have liked to see even more fundamental, progressive changes to the OS. So I guess I want to have my cake and eat it too - take everything that's great about 2k and XP then build on it, extend it.

I think what I'd really like is to see an OS that feels to me as intelligently designed as an application like Opera does. An OS that appears to know the best way to do things already, without me having to tell it. An OS that anticipates my moves and makes all my work faster. That was probably some other previous OS that failed, like Amiga, BeOS, NeXT, or something, and I haven't tried any of those. It's just a shame that kind of innovation isn't what's driving the *success* of Windows. OS X *does* seem to be introducing stuff like that fairly frequently though and it drives me nuts. I won't go into why I simply *can't* switch over to OS X here, but just trust that my reasons are legitimate and not out of random prejudice.

- Oshyan

[Eóin]

Reading this thread I feel like I'm the only one completely won over by the eye candy. I can't wait for vista.

[Carol Haynes]

Trouble I see is that MS seem to be doing the usual stuff - add in a lot of eye candy, miss out all the killer stuff they originally planned and promoted, encroach on other people's markets by adding 'free' software to compete with other people's commercial interestes (like adding blog uploading to Word to mention just one instance) and tie users further into their corporate identity by collecting evermore personal info just to run an OS etc.

Anyone noticed how a lot of MS sites not longer render properly in Firefox? Asp.NET seems to be designed to force the use of Internet Explorer ...

[Rover]

I am super excited about WinFS and would really have liked to see even more fundamental, progressive changes to the OS.

I thought WinFS was pulled from the initial Vista release?  Can anyone verify?

[Carol Haynes]

That was one of the major losses in the upgrade - it was shelved to a later version.

[f0dder]

[...]but I really feel like MS should have been focusing on deeper core stuff.

Well, afaik they did rewrite a lot of the stuff to .NET, supposedly more safe against buffer overflows etc. Whether that holds true only time can tell.

Trouble I see is that MS seem to be doing the usual stuff - add in a lot of eye candy, miss out all the killer stuff they originally planned and promoted, encroach on other people's markets by adding 'free' software to compete with other people's commercial interestes (like adding blog uploading to Word to mention just one instance) and tie users further into their corporate identity by collecting evermore personal info just to run an OS etc.

Spot on the sugar, baby!

[Carol Haynes]

Spot on the sugar, baby!

Does that make you my sugar daddy?

[f0dder]

Spot on the sugar, baby!

Does that make you my sugar daddy?

I would hope not

[JavaJones]

WinFS is coming as an upgrade to Vista "shortly after release" (or "a while after release" depending on who you talk to). I didn't mean to imply it would still be a part of Vista's initial release.

In any case I would like to say that, although my feelings above are still valid, I realize also that a lot of the things I like about Opera and software that is designed with similar intelligence are the "little things" that you really only experience when you actually use the thing. Vista may very well have such things that just aren't being pointed out by anyone. We all get access to the beta soon and I'm certainly going to take a gander. So we'll see how that pans out. Maybe anyone who decides to take a look can contribute to one big mini-review thread.

- Oshyan