My Thoughts On Windows Vista Beta 2

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Ok, here's some of my evaluation from a non-bias stance (although it is hard as I'm a die-hard Linux user and try to truely live in a M$ free environment, excluding the XBOX/XBOX 360 and its games)

 

Pros:

- seems like Microsoft knows my main weakness in a computer software... tonnes of eye-candies, I simply can't stop staring at them. I hate stuff that are boring and blah. I like crystal like stuff, all around... Maybe that's why I like KDE more.. w/e.

- seems to be more organised than Windows XP

- Windows built-in Antivirus and Antispyware.

- New feature called "Phishing" scan and detection

- Windows Media Player 11

- Windows Messenger Live! 8

 

 

Cons:

- Since I don't have first hand experience of Windows Vista Beta 2, I've heard that it's still as unstable as Windows XP final (Codename: Whistler).

- Internet Explorer is sadly installed.

- maybe they overdid the transparency thing a little too much.

- Is this even needed by anyone? or is it one of those useless features that they think that it's worth it to bloat the operating system and waste my disc space for it?:

- Windows Vista still looks very alike with Windows XP.

 

 

All of these thoughts are based on screenshots taken by Paul Thurrott 's WinSuperSite

 

xboxrulz

[Quatrux 4]

to make it short, I kind of laugh at the current situation of windows, XP now is quite old, how many years ? and the longhorn failure, now vista which will need really good hardware.. Well we will see, it is good times for other OS'esI personally am not planning to use vista in the future, unless I will see a point to do it, "why ? what windows XP can't do that vista can yet ?" I think, it will eat more resources and don't know about how stable it will be. Stuff.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Well, there is one thing Vista can do that Windows XP can't really do yet, eat up your resources and the new DRM system being built-in.xboxrulz

[derouge 0]

I sort of like the look, but looking at the Window's site it seems they emphasize it A LOT. I'd much rather see more in-depth technical info rather than a bunch of stuff about how pretty it looks and how amazing translucent windows are. Another thing I noticed is that at least two or three times they said something about how "Windows will have taken care of it, without you even knowing!" That scares me. I'd like to know if my computer has some fatal failure, even if it's been taken care of.I guess we can only wait and see. I work at a PC shop where we build a lot of custom systems. I'm sure when Vista comes out I'll be plunged right into a lot of the information. Until then I'm only an outsider looking in, so can't really accurately judge.

[jipman 0]

We had a presentation from a couple of microsoft guys a while ago at my university about Windows Vista. Besides the fact that the beta crashes every two minutes or just lags like **** (which is why it's a beta anyways).They added some nice features to vista.For instance, they are going a bit *nix style with the user-accounts style, by trying to keep some sort of a root account to handle stuff. Every normal user gets a special program files directory of his own to work in.The microsoft guys said themselves that they didn't see the practical use for transparant windows and so.ps. They also said that the beta's a free download for everyone to test. Can't really remember where though. Google might provide an answernote: It's a b e t a for crying out loud, so don't expect it to run stable which it won't. Microsoft just released this for the people to say what they're working at and what the new features will be. I'm not really pro-microsoft but it's still not fair to judge the final vista on some early beta like this.final note: They also said something about AJAX (Some XML based programming language) being built in too. It was supposed to be some simple programming language thing. (I'm not really sure about this part of the presentation, I started reading manga at that time).

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

final note: They also said something about AJAX (Some XML based programming language) being built in too. It was supposed to be some simple programming language thing. (I'm not really sure about this part of the presentation, I started reading manga at that time).

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I don't see how AJAX can be separately built into something ???? AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML - and it's not some new language, but a set of standards and new functions that have been adapted into JavaScript quite sometime back. I mean this technology has been around for at least last 2 years- but only started picking up, when Google used it extensively for Gmail.

 

Previously, when you tried fetching data from another site using JScript, if the connection failed, the code would hang right there waiting for a reply from the called site and in all probablity would freeze the browser too. AJAX took care of this by priovidng you a method to make Asynchronous Calls - i.e., you call up another web-site using a separate THREAD and then hand the control back to the rest of the code.

 

The main program carries on execution - so all other stuff on your page functions perfectly.

 

The Caller THREAD lies waiting for a response from the server - and when it comes through, it throws an event, which calls up a specific subroutine in the main program again - and hands it over the fetched data, which is usually in XML format.

 

Next with you can easily parse the fetched data and update specific parts of the webpage using JavaScript DOM.

 

The Asynchronous Calls are made with a newly introduced JavaScript object called XMLHTTPRequester.

 

You can see a live example of this in the Shoutbox we're developing at AntiLost: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

This is an integral part of JavaScript and no extra action is required on part of the called site - except to provide data in a XML format. This incidentally can be anything - ranging from customized data to RSS Feeds. At the receiving end, you simple need an XML parser to break up the data and display it accordingly on the screen..

 

So I ask you - WHAT THE HECK is there to "BUILD THIS" into Vista ?? Lol.. I think they're just trying to take advantage of mass ignorance and fool people into believing that they've added something new, nice and cool into Vista.. !! Bloody JOKERS.

[organicbmx 0]

do people on this board think that windows is now in its decline and that it peaked at win98 [or even 3.1!]correct me if im wrong but is windows the only non-unix like os still around? it appears that unless microsoft can either totally revolutionise the core base of an os or rewrite windows on a unix base its just going to keep get worse.again correct me if im wrong but im sure that we have started to see people moving away from windows in recent years. most servers are linux/unix. macs are more common and are likely to get even more common with the x86 versions comming soon. the linux comminuty is expanding with people like me getting into computers, and wanting to get out of windows, on their current hardware.i dont know about how fast vista is going to be but gentoo on my friends vista style spec laptop [64 bit/1 gig ram/good graphics card] was unbelievably fast. if windows wont keep up with the hardware it requires then many people are going to question it.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

There's actually an operating system that is not based on UNIX but also shares a concept of UNIX. It's called SkyOS. Mainly inspired by BeOS (their forums now cramped with BeOS lovers, which causes me, a "new generation" Linux user)http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/, it is the fastest operating system in the world, faster than Windows, Mac, Linux, UNIX, BeOS, AIX, Solaris, and others.xboxrulz

[organicbmx 0]

skyos looks really good. definatly one to check back on in a while, becasue it seems to lack apps at the moment. enough for most users though, but not yet for me.

[Saint_Michael 3]

I guess If I learned about linux and unix software,hardware, OS I could agree with you on some points why vista is just a car accident waiting to happen.At a Graphic standpoint the desktop looks more up to date and pleasing to the eye. (referring to eye candy).Of course last I knew was the rumored blackbox (used to report errors that happen on your computer ) that was going be included into the OS can anyoen confirm that still the case?Of Course Microsoft shouldn't even bother have the word security on their site and softwware cause the day it hits the market, everyone will find all the backdoors, security flaws within 12 hours after purchasing it and patch after patch will becoming out.Now if bill gates where smart (theirs a debate on that one) instead of whipping out a new os ever few years I take my sweet time with it and like double and triple check all the source code just to make sure nothing will give someone the edge that would be the smart thing to do.

[the empty calorie 0]

I remember something being mentioned about a lot of different versions of Vista being released, like Level 2 and Level 5 and such...as well as yearly charging users to be able to continue using their OS? Some of the things Microsoft is doing are starting to make me wonder about what direction they are going these days...My outlook on this is, (If still around) the price of Windows will be even more outrageous in five-ten years, and if they ever decide to actually go through and create an all-new operating system from scratch and drop all backward compatibility (come on, you can only do so much based on obsolete operating systems like DOS and VMS, so they'll have to do it eventually to keep up), there is going to be a large shift either to Apple, or free open source software, as they will have more available software.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

well, that's freaky, but most likely people would pay for it since most software is locked for Windows.xboxrulz

[Sarah81 0]

If I'm interpreting that screen shot correctly, Vista is set up so that users can view contents of folders that are behind active windows? If that's the case, then great - I can see myself making *lots* of use of that feature. If not, well, it's still a pretty sweet-looking screen shot.Except for the taskbar. I'd haveto customize the snot out of that thing before I could look at it without becoming annoyed.

[jipman 0]

@mseI think that part of the presentation that was about AJAX was about some developing kit then.... I suppose.Bleh.... I hate it when I make mistakes like that. :Sps. I told ya before . My puny little human mind started to drift away into something called Shonen Jump . (nevermind me)

[InitialDriveGTR 0]

A good thing for micro$oft to do is to go opensourced, or at least let the final OS's be free. Another thing the could do is stop putting adware and crap into service packs. i mean honestly, its stupid