Since I’m a recovering Windows user (I still have XP at work, but I’ve switched to Macintosh and *nix at home), I suppose this belongs in Great Debates.
I was curious about the announcements for Windows Vista, and went to the Microsoft site to check it out. Interesting side note: when you visit microsoft.com from a Mac, it automatically directs you to a section of the site specifically for Mac users and you can’t get to Windows info from the menus. At least I couldn’t. I had to manually type in “www.microsoft.com/windows” to get there.
In any case, the benefits of Vista according to Microsoft (see this page) are:
[ul]
[li]reliability[/li][li]security[/li][li]ease of deployment[/li][li]performance[/li][li]manageability[/li][/ul]
Maybe my memory’s foggy, but weren’t these the exact same things that Windows XP was supposed to offer?
I don’t understand; what’s the point to debate? That if you describe an OS in five words, you can’t be very detailed? That OSs perform roughly the same task now as they used to? That MS’s product description for a product only on its first beta isn’t hugely illuminating? What?
I still think that 95+% of my day to day computer work could be done on a machine running Windows 3.11, if they wrote new programs for it. But what do I know anyway?
I guess what I’m looking for is what makes this a “new product” as opposed to an incremental update. Where’s the revolutionary change? WinXP was a dramatic change from WinMe because it got rid of the DOS underpinnings, which helped it to gain…um…those five things listed in the OP.
The debate point? Why isn’t Windows Vista just Windows XP 2.0?
Supposedly, it was to incorporate a new journalling file system called WinFS, that would be devoid of drive letters and would allow resources to be flexibly mounted (sound familiar?). AFAIK, the first release of Vista won’t have this though.
I wonder what this actually means for legacy software though, that expects traditional Windows/DOS paths…
The biggest problem for me personally is that there’s already a well-known product - one of the competing solutions in the marketplace in which I am developing - called VISTA; it’s an accounting and stock control system, primarily for publishers. I don’t particularly want to have to recommend something called Vista, as it will sound like I’m recommending that people turn away from our own product.
Er, because they thought Windows Vista sounded better? Why was OSX 10.4 called “Tiger” and not “gazornonplant”? Who cares?
Vista is a new release because it represents 5+ years of development work and is different in ways considerably more complex than are conveyed by your 5-word summary. Of course it performs roughly the same tasks as Windows XP; it’s a computer operating system. But you seem to be implying that because it tackles the same basic problems as XP, it does so in the same way. This is far from clear. Among other notable changes, Vista is set to include:
[ul][li]A completely new shell, with .NET integration to allow for more powerful CLI control and better scripting.[/li][li]Zoned security, allowing apps exposed to the internet (i.e. IE) to run in their own computing space, effectively placing a barrier between the web and your local data.[/li][li]Addressing the perennial problem of users running as admin with better privilege escalation features.[/li][li]Completely new UI - a radical overhaul that will probably be more noticeable to developers than you.[/li][li]Better desktop search integration.[/li][li]etc. etc.[/ul][/li]For more detail you could read any one of a hundred articles out there describing what’s new in Vista, rather than just picking out five words and dismissing it as a point upgrade. You could even (legally) get hold of the Vista beta and try it for yourself, to see just how different it is (while bearing in mind that the beta doesn’t include all the new features yet).
Sure, Vista is to XP roughly what 2001 was to NT 4.0, but I don’t see what the complaint is here. It’s clearly a lot more than a service pack, there are some really major changes; what the hell does it matter what it’s called? And why does an OS need a complete ground-up rewrite to justify being called a new release? Did every version of MacOS up to OSX start completely from scratch? No, they didn’t. It seems to me that you’re basically asking “is there more to Vista than my extremely cursory glance at one vague webpage suggests?” The answer is “yes”.
Mangetout, it’s my understanding that the present drive-letter functionality in XP is already an abstraction layer on top of a more unixy description style - check out your “boot.ini” file and see how the drive partitions are described there…
NTFS has had Unix-style mount points for years, so you can already have all your drives in a single heirarchy if you are so inclined. I think one of the main points of WinFS is/was to move away from categorising files by means of a directory hierarchy, and instead allowing files to be indexed in any number of ways, to make them easier to find and group together logically.
WinXP succeeded Windows 2000, not Window Me, and wasn’t hugely different. And [pet subject] Windows Me/98/95 do not have “DOS underpinnings”. A Windows 95 PC might very well never execute any DOS code apart from during boot-up.[/pet subject]
That does not mean that the Win95/98/Me line was any good
Because to be really accurate, it’d have to be called Windows NT 6.0, the next major release after Windows NT 5.1 which was better known as Windows XP.
I didn’t “pick out five words.” I l looked at the five things that Microsoft chose to stress in their product announcements. I’ve been reading Longhorn articles for three years, so I understand they’ve put a lot of time into it, but Vista/Longhorn doesn’t look like a brand new operating system to me. It looks like a new revision/update to XP/NT, stressing exactly the same improvements that the last revision offered.
I know. They could call it BlueSky 1.0 instead of Windows Vista, and that’s their prerogative, but I still think Windows XP 2.0 (or Windows NT 7.0) would be more accurate.
WinXP may have succeeded Win2000 (both being essentially versions of WinNT), but it replaced WinMe, in that Microsoft told users of WinMe to upgrade to WinXP when WinMe was discontinued.
Are you saying Win2000 and WinXP were about as similar as WinXP and Vista?
Well, I suppose it depends on your definition of “underpinnings.” My old DOS legacy code runs under WinMe, but not WinNT/XP. WinMe has plenty of architectural leftovers from DOS, and can boot into a command line mode indistinguishable from a latter-day DOS. It can communicate with devices through DOS drivers, and DOS software can access its ports. The WinMe config.sys file sure looks like a DOS config.sys to me. That’s what I mean by underpinnings.
If you define “underpinnings” as actual code written for DOS 6, then yeah, I agree with you.
Those things being features of any operating system, as has been pointed out. I’m prepared to bet you that Ford have advertised just about every car they’ve ever made as providing comfort, handling, power and so forth. Doesn’t mean they’re all the same. You are focusing on an extremely terse description of what the OS provides, which is what all OSs purport to provide, and because it’s much the same as the last one, complaining that it’s not different enough. What would you like it to do instead? Fluff cushions? Walk the dog? Cook lobster thermidor? The things in the list are core OS functions, and you’re completely ignoring how it’s doing them.
I just don’t see why this bothers you at all. And what’s “accurate” in this context? They could call it Bob The Hairy Antelope if they wanted. And for that matter, Win2K’s alternate product ID is NT 5.0, XP’s NT 5.1, which would make Vista NT 6.0, as it will probably be referred to in some contexts. So MS already refer to their products with version numbers; they just also brand them for the broader consumer market, because your average Joe identifies more with a name than a decimal. Why this is a matter of controversy is beyond me.
I’d say the difference between XP and Vista is going to be substantially larger than that between 2K and XP, which are really quite similar indeed, the new look notwithstanding.
So Windows 9x/Me has a very good DOS compatilbility layer, maybe better than WinNT/2K/XP. That does not at all mean that it is underpinned by DOS. Unless we consider Linux, say, to be somehow underpinned by Windows, because Linux has a pretty good Windows compatibility layer in the form of WINE.
They are the five key things that Microsoft chose to give as reasons to upgrade from XP to Vista. I was pointing out that they’re the same reasons Microsoft gave to upgrade from Win2K to WinXP.
As for the name, you’re quite right. They could call it Bob the Hairy Antelope if they so chose. It’s just one more way of creating confusion in the marketplace, though. I used to teach computer science, and it already takes too bloody long to explain the differences between Windows 3.X, NT, 96, 98, Me, 2000, and XP.
At the risk of a total hijack, I thought Microsoft settled with Caldera because it was proved that contrary to their claims, Win95 WAS just a shell on top of DOS, could in fact be made to run on a third-party DOS, and their hidden bundling of MS-DOS 7 with Win95 was anticompetitive? ancient news link
Not that this makes a jot of difference to the OP. Those five points, if you add ‘Total’ to the front, represent IT nirvana. Every single OS press release, from Microsoft or anyone else, promises them, with an implied ‘more’ to suggest incremental progress towards that promised goal. I’m sure Vista will be another step forward, a bigger one than implied by some and a smaller one than implied by Microsoft.
With my skeptical hat on, I would say that what makes this a ‘major’ release is that Microsoft hasn’t had a blockbuster must-upgrade product out for years now and their revenue stream must be starting to get a little thin. Win2K and Office 2K are perfectly adequate for pretty much any sensible use, and most businesses I have encountered haven’t fully implemented the current shopping list of technologies. The incremental productivity from implementing the latest releases don’t justify the costs, so they have to come up with something new to peddle to the CIOs…
The sad thing is that they should all be implied. It’s like selling a toaster with marketing slogans like “won’t burn your toast” and “won’t set your house on fire.” All operating systems should be reliable and secure. We should be seeing new OS releases touting revolutionary advances unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, not press releases listing the same features we talked about when I was an OS programmer in the 1970s (especially when they’re less reliable and secure than they were back then)!
I just don’t see why this bothers you at all. And what’s “accurate” in this context? They could call it Bob The Hairy Antelope if they wanted. And for that matter, Win2K’s alternate product ID is NT 5.0, XP’s NT 5.1, which would make Vista NT 6.0, as it will probably be referred to in some contexts. So MS already refer to their products with version numbers; they just also brand them for the broader consumer market, because your average Joe identifies more with a name than a decimal. Why this is a matter of controversy is beyond me.