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Are you sure it's two years away? Because

a) if it is, I am buying a mac. It's too far away.

b) if it isn't, I can't see how they can make it something extremely good within a year.

I'll just wait and see what progress they are doing, but until now I am extremely disappointed. We waited a whole year. Think about it, last year it was buggy, not really impressive. Now this year it looks like a pile of junk, is lacking of important features and has an overdose of un-needed features.

Microsoft doesn't know how to develop windows anymore... They change the whole Desktop properties panel, then they put the old one back. They take their time developing a sidebar, then they remove it. They take their time developing different themes. All of them are placeholders. They still keep the old stuff from Windows 3.1 in Longhorn, while they had like what, 10 years to delete it and I assume that less DLLs would mean a speed improvement (not a huge one, just an extremely tiny one, but still). They develop a new CTRL+ALT+DEL panel, then they replace it with something from Windows 2000. They change their nice icons to some ugly ones that don't even fit in Windows, while they could just take their huge icon pictures from 4 years ago, edit them a little and put that in Longhorn so that the icons can be 256*256.

Edit : Who said it was quick? When I select some files in explorer it lags like hell with my ATI Radeon 9800 PRO

OF COURSE I will wait and see how it goes. I'm not that stupid... But what I mean is that until now everything is clear in my mind. If this is what they came up with one year of work, I am not sure they're going to make something good with just another year. And Mac OS 10.4 is simply amazing.

Edited by PsykX

I have glass and all running pretty smoothly on my fx5200. Kinda ironic that this card's producing these effects. Fade in and out and the transparancy. Anyone found anything else interesting???

I forced the fx5900 driver on my fx5200 and it's REALLY smooth i can't believe my eyes.

A Microsoft source just told me how to enable DCE in Longhorn 5048. Turns out they couldn't take it out because it broke stuff, so they just hid it. I'll take pictures if I get it working.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthu...rott_46166.html

Are you sure it's two years away? Because

a) if it is, I am buying a mac. It's too far away.

b) if it isn't, I can't see how they can make it something extremely good within a year.

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If you think Macs are the solutions for your problems (whatever they might be), no one is stopping you. But the silly factor here is you're judging something Microsoft exactly didn't want consumers like you to see, yet you chose to see it and judge it. :rolleyes:

Hey, I only wanted to know where they were heading after a full year of work. It's supposed to be a little more than halfway done, so of course I'm starting to have sharp ideas and opinions. That goes with all the other applications Microsoft did lately that cause x problem on my computer. So, sorry if I am whining much these days, but I honestly think Microsoft is laughing of us.

Hey, I only wanted to know where they were heading after a full year of work. It's supposed to be a little more than halfway done, so of course I'm starting to have sharp ideas and opinions. That goes with all the other applications Microsoft did lately that cause x problem on my computer. So, sorry if I am whining much these days, but I honestly think Microsoft is laughing of us.

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Very little of the work they've been doing over the past year (or even 3-4 years) is readily visible in this release.

It's true that some work stagnated a bit because of the focus on XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1, along with the x64 ports. Now with those finished, the main Windows client team can focus more on the Longhorn release.

But beyond that, most of the interesting stuff (search and shell functions, Aero/Glass/DWM, IE 7, msh, Avalon/Indigo, etc) has all proceeded seperate from Longhorn's core development. Those features will be integrated in as they become ready.

It is my hope that around the beta 2 timeframe we'll see a Longhorn release with the new IE, fully-functional DWM, msh, new shell, and all those great features tightly integrated with the OS. I think that will be an impressive sight.

Right now we're seeing Longhorn in little pieces scattered around. I guess some people expected this release to pull together some of those elements. But that's really not what this release was about.

A lot of people are too excited about the effects and DWM... Not because it's not fully functional in this build that LH didnt improve.

Longhorn is progressing and will progress with the time.

When you do programming, you start with the base or the fundamentals and then you put or polish the UI.

You dont create the perfect UI and then the fundamentals!

Anyway my opinion, don't flame me!

What's the progress in the Longhorn over Windows 2000/XP? There are a lot of new GUI features (looks like they are making OS for noob Dell users). That's the feeling i got watching WINHEC. I only hope Microsoft makes an option (install or not to install) Longhorn components...

They are talking about transparency and glass effect o lot. I got that enabled since Radeon 9700Pro release via ATI Hydravision software. Now, I have it via NVIDIA control panel. It's nothing new.

I have feeling that Microsoft wants to make people impressed by Longhorn GUI features. Well, I'm already impressed by Doom 3 graphic, or HL2 graphic...

They are talking about transparency and glass effect o lot. I got that enabled since Radeon 9700Pro release via ATI Hydravision software. Now, I have it via NVIDIA control panel. It's nothing new.

I have feeling that Microsoft wants to make people impressed by Longhorn GUI features.

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They definitely want people to be impressed by the GUI features. But not this year.

The only reason they showed anything of Longhorn's UI at all at WinHEC was to show that Apple isn't the only one innovating in the search/organizational area.

OK for those who wish to see the new effects or at least some of them. Here is a video.

5048 Effects Preview

Guys, MOST windows users dont know about other apps that can make windows transparent and such. So to us power users it may be old, but to the average ITS GREAT!

What's so special about freaking search (that's a question for MS AND APPLE)? I organize the hell out of my own data anyway.

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Organized means nothing.. I have everything organzined but thats like 300gb of data. Why should i have to go through it all even though i know where it is when i can hit ctrl f and get it in 1second. Its all about indexing.

They all stole it from google.

OK for those who wish to see the new effects or at least some of them. Here is a video.

5048 Effects Preview

Guys, MOST windows users dont know about other apps that can make windows transparent and such. So to us power users it may be old, but to the average ITS GREAT!

585830354[/snapback]

That video is the most impressive thing I've seen from the whole LH news today. What hardware were you using to pull that?

Athlon XP 2400+ 2.00GHz

640MB of RAM

ATI Radeon Pro 128mb video card.

Its a little laggy on BIG windows. Im running 1024x768 so windows get big.

Its more RAM then video cards. I ran it on my 9200 saphire and 340mb of ram 1.8ghz alienware and it was ok. Without the effects it performed about the same as this does without em.

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