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Windows Vista RC1 - A Technical Preview

Steven Parker   on 08 September 2006 - 12:23 · 18 comments & 9390 views

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Well here it is, a month or two prior to RTM. It seems like we would never get here. I am a Microsoft enthusiast. I will tell you that. I have made a career on Microsoft products and technologies. I have passed 18 tests on various Microsoft technologies over the eight years that I have been doing this. I have taught classes as an MCT, planned and performed major migrations over a weekend, hidden entire Microsoft-based networks from federal auditors, and hacked many security features of various database applications for customers. The landscape has changed. The quality of competing products out there is increasing dramatically. Apple has done amazing things to increase the public’s desire for their products. Google is extremely advanced and comes up with more and more cool software every time you turn around. So what about Microsoft? Well, it’s taken them 5 years to upgrade Windows. OK. 5 Years! Was it worth the wait?

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(2 replies) #1 superhuman on 08 Sep 2006 - 12:26
Same thing has been talked over and over again. Not thing new.
#1.1 jubber2002 on 08 Sep 2006 - 12:40
Quote - superhuman said @ #1
Same thing has been talked over and over again. Not thing new.
:p
#1.2 Jugalator on 08 Sep 2006 - 14:04
Quote -
Same thing has been talked over and over again. Not thing new.

I haven't heard about the VPN issues with Cisco firewalls and the upcoming Longhorn Server TS details.
Did you actually read the article?
(4 replies) #2 quintesse on 08 Sep 2006 - 12:59
Oh my god, I know he is a self-admitted MS fan-boy, but some of those remarks are SAD!

After not being satisfied with the performance of a $600 64-bit system he buys a $140 GFX card to see what it will do for the system's performance score. After wards he says:

Quote -
As you can see, the Hard Disk and Processor did not benefit much from this upgrade. They shouldn’t have. But look at the memory and Graphics ratings! I gained .6 of a point on memory, 2 points for Graphics, and 1.2 points for Gaming Graphics! Nice. I must say, I have had one of my developers using it as his primary desktop for the past few days and he loves it. He feels that it is very clean and performs outstandingly. Good job Microsoft.


WTF? He buys a computer and without even getting a feel for the system he decides it's not good enough JUST LOOKING AT A PERFORMANCE RATING and then after buying a GFX card sees an improvement in the score and says "Good job Microsoft"???

This must be ( fan-boy ) ^ 2
#2.1 Jugalator on 08 Sep 2006 - 14:05
Yes, it sounded like he actually got excited over a performance rating. :-/
#2.2 mrbester on 08 Sep 2006 - 14:34
Ilya Gavrichenchov pumped up a E6300 (Core 2 Duo) to 2.94GHz (from 1.86GHz) just by arseing around with the FSB frequency (420MHz). I guess that's due to Microsoft as well?
#2.3 Divide Overflow on 08 Sep 2006 - 17:22
It's strange, that people who come to Neowin.net, feel justified in looking down their nose at another Windows user as a "fan-boy". Pot, meet Kettle.

Nonetheless, I think the idea behind the "Good job Microsoft" comment is that they have come a long way in the last few months, and there have been vast improvements over previous builds. While it certainly reads that he is congratulating MS for the performance improvements that result from the video card upgrade, it seems to me that he joined two seperate thoughts together. One thought about the increase in graphics power, and the other thought about the general usability of the OS once it has reached a general user.
#2.4 Croquant on 09 Sep 2006 - 01:31
Quote - Divide Overflow said @ #2.3
It's strange, that people who come to Neowin.net, feel justified in looking down their nose at another Windows user as a "fan-boy". Pot, meet Kettle.

I only feel justified in looking down my nose at another Windows user when that Windows user is behaving like an idiot.
Hey, guess which way I'm looking at you right now?
(1 reply) #3 ahhell on 08 Sep 2006 - 13:13
Who cares!!!!!!!

I'm tired of listening to dumbasses talk about their Vista "experience".
#3.1 paulio on 08 Sep 2006 - 13:26
I second that, I've passed tests by alt-tabbing into Google before. One of the most boring reads I have yet to encounter.
#4 Sawyer12 on 08 Sep 2006 - 13:17
The first few lines of that article sounds like a resume
#5 KXH on 08 Sep 2006 - 13:30
That Article was so boring and biased that it seemed like it was written by an Apple Fan Boy about a new Apple Product!!!
(2 replies) #6 M118LR on 08 Sep 2006 - 15:37
It really has not been 5 years. Longhorn was the 3000 and 4000 builds, then Longhorn was scrapped and Vista started with the Win 2003 Server SP1 as a base with the 5000 series.
#6.1 Knight' on 08 Sep 2006 - 17:10
M118LR, I think you're just being pedantic. Besides, Vista has (and continues to do so) take forever to get out of the door, stating that the codebase of the OS has changed during the development is neither here nor there.
#6.2 kl33per on 10 Sep 2006 - 06:28
It's a valid point. Vista has not been in development for five years, nowhere near this in fact. Have they been working on a successor to Windows XP for five years, yes. Is a successor to Windows XP long overdue, yes. However, to say that Vista as it appears today has been in development for five years is completely inaccurate.
(1 reply) #7 xMorpheousx416 on 08 Sep 2006 - 17:28
Was it worth the wait? In my opinion, No.

When working with RC1, the biggest slowdown and the loudest at this point, is the searching index service. It ran my hard drive between 5 and 15 minutes at time. Five minutes normally, but when I plugged in the backup drive to install additional software, it went on forever. Annoying to the point of being disappointed.

And that's only one service.....out of how many more in Vista?
#7.1 PGHammer on 08 Sep 2006 - 17:48
The Indexing Service (a vastly rewritten and now SQL-based Index Server) is *supposed* to re-index when you add a large amount of data to be imported or added. That is, in fact, normal for *any* database, regardless of what it's written in (if you ever had a class in database management, this would have come up). I noticed the same thing when I added my C: drive (which contains Windows XP and the Common Downloads and Files folders) to the Indexing Service. In short, that slowdown is *entirely normal* (also, the new drive is over twice the size of the drive Vista itself boots from). Basically, the size of the database itself just tripled; of *course* it will bog down until the entire database is re-indexed! It's normal, and unavoidable.
#8 PGHammer on 08 Sep 2006 - 17:29
Oh; the codebase change is VERY much a *here or there* issue. The reality is that said codebase determines very much what is possible for the operating system's capabilities to take advantage of. UAC (in fact, most of Vista's security enhancements) are drawn *entirely* from the core of Windows Server 2003 SP1 and R2. The same largely applies to the origins of Vista's much-enhanced network stack, Windows Presentation Foundation, and even Windows Graphics Foundation (the code fork that resulted in Windows Server 2003 in the first place, combined with the additional enhancements from both SP1 and R2, took the code in a direction that XP could not be patched to reach with any degree of stability, and Microsoft was forced to conclude that it would be both irresponsible and exceedingly stupid to even try; it's exactly why a lot of the enhancements present in Vista will *never* be available in XP at all, and those that are will work nothing like their Vista-based counterparts). Anybody that thinks that a patched XP will *ever* be the equal of the released Vista is delusional.

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