Vista goes Gold!!

Well - finally done! Vista went gold earlier today. Read about it at Winsupersite:

http://www.winsupersite.com/

And for MSDN subscribers (such as myself!!), the countdown is on - 7 days or less from RTM until the download is available!!

whoo!!

Oh.
Joy.
:|


Okay, let's start a list of who thinks what will break first!

I bet that Vista's first annoying bug will have to do with deleting files that have fancy previews via Explorer.


So I don't come across as a total pessimist...
Here are some quick questions for those who have used the betas:

-Does Vista do multi-threaded or at least sane file operations yet? (That way, if one file in an operation screws up, the others still happen instead of getting forgotten!).

-Is Explorer itself multi-threaded nicely? As things get faster, it is more and more annoying when I accidentally right click on a floppy drive; The entirety of Explorer hangs for ages as it sorts out a single device. It should run on multiple threads so that the whole environment doesn't suffer when it does its various slow operations. I'm hoping Microsoft has addressed it...

Oh... Can I apply useful tags to all the files on my hard-drive so I can sort them in useful lists. Like all my music by artist, date recorded, or by genre? Or all my word docs by some tag I have given them, like.. Work, Design Docs, Stories.

no? course not.. that would be useful.

That's kind of the point of what the newfangled WinFS filesystem was supposed to offer you... Which among most other innovations got axed so Microsoft would be able to release Vista before August 2038.

The remaining Vista is little more than XP with extra bubbles and DirectX 10 bolted on top, plus a ton of DRM crapola mixed in for good measure. Pretty much all real innovation has been scrapped along the line.

Oooh.

Now, hopefully, it will devalue the cost of XP so that I can buy a spare version for emergency purposes. You never know when you will need an operating system.

I'm looking foward to it as i simply would like to play with Aero.

What i quite don't understand is why they seperated it and missed the christmas BONUS ;O) for the public audience. Does anyone know which strategy is behind this decision?

I don't think it's mult-threaded, but it finally has implemented a 'skip this dialog for the next n similar problems' option.


Explorer has been multi threaded since Windows 2000. Folder Options --> View --> Advanced settings --> Launch folder windows in a seperate process.

This way, right clicking the flopy drive (don't do that) has only ever locked up that one window.


Actually yes, smarty. Folders can be configured as music folders, in which case the standard file view changes to a music view, where you can arrange the various artist/song length/format/album label/etc fields as you would the file size/date created/etc fields. I think there's some customisation options for more or less detailed views, but I havn't used them. Not sure at all about Word documents though. Maybe when WinFS gets implemented.


Yeh, it's called the 'Vista RC2 is nice but not ready for public consumption but we're going to ship it out to manufacturers and MSDN subscribers anyway because we have penned contracts' aka 'we are distributing copies of Vista early to manufacturers so that they can get up to speed and start SHIPPING Vista on the public release date, instead of spending some months AFTER the public release date working it all out' strategy.

I'm not particularly excited about Vista from what I've seen and read. Is it just me?

Not just you. I don't see the value in a glorified desktop when I always have some kind of application running anyways.

I agree, I have yet to be won over by it. Seems Microsoft are using it more for DX10 than anything else.

Personally, I'm very happy with XP and I think that there are probably millions of other people who are too.

The piece of cheese here has to be DX10 - Microsoft think we are all rodents and will go after the cheese.

Vista to me has some very important Pros:

1. The explorer is MUCH faster. Opening folder is instant reaction, not "click - wait - wait - there it is". As navigating the HD is not a rare thing, this makes a difference

2. Vista has a true "execute as" functionality. Although XP already has something like this, it does not fully work. Often the apps will bomb. With Vista, this feature is fully implemented, so no need to run on admin account all the time anymore!!

3. MS actually learned their security lesson:
- Internet Explorer can be executed in a box, so no ActiveX etc can harm your system anymore
- Security stuff is integrated into their system. There won't be a "spreading across security dash boards" anymore.

4. WinFX is a core component as well as all .NET versions. So no non-native stuff anymore which can cause problems in some rare cases.

5. For us as game develepers, the new game panel stuff is definitely interesting as well, as it will open casual games an even broader audience.

And when SuperFetch and WinFS are integrated, along with other things, with SP1 (which is an extension similar to XP SP2 which Apple would sell as new version) it will definitely have too many Pro.

I just started playing with Beryl on the decent computer, so my urge for eye candy is quite settled :)

I agree with Dreamora; Vista does have a lot of new features that are quite good to see. I will look at how they play out and probably get my hands on Vista some day.

Thanks for telling me about that option, fun nick person.

Speaking of faster Exploder, how is its FTP stuff?

Good, just lemme know when to expect SP1 to be released.

There is no guarantee that WinFS will be implemented by SP1, though a lot of people like to think it will be. I have heard more official reports saying it's more likely to be in SP2, or left altogether until Windows Vienna.


I havn't noticed a difference, in that XP always worked fine for me.

I have noticed drastic slowdowns in performance while installing software, such as Office. Whereas XP could multitask just fine, I needed more RAM just to get Vista to do more than one thing at a time. And that was WITHOUT Aero switched on.

The only nice features about Vista that affect me is the increased stability. Two seperated layers for the gfx (one for the GUI and one for everything else) means if a game makes vid card drivers crash, normally you would get a blue screen, now it would just crash to the desktop. Also the sound processes are finally fully seperated from Windows, which means a similar thing, also MS were able to use this opportunity to make the sound mixer a much more powerful beast, which couldn't be done before.

Once the trial period for Vista is up however, I think I'll be going back to XP.

puki made a sarcastic remark!!!! Good on you puki! (and he didn't plug the new book either???)

I like the idea of seperating the vid and sound... I just wonder at the system overhead. I will wait a bit. I was an early adopter of Win2K and did not regret it because it taught me a lot about the computer (and how to figger out what wuz WRONG![picture that in a serious hilbilly hick accent]) I look forward to everyones reports!

> I'm not particularly excited about Vista from what I've seen and read. Is it just me?

Nope - I'm never an early adopter of operating systems. When I get a program that I want to run that requires vista I'll think about upgrading. More likely I'll just take whatever OS comes on my next machine.

Geez. They spend 18 months working on Vista's startup sound and this is what they came up with: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15656246/

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds absolutely attricious.

Yeah it grates the ear-drum somewhat.

Microsoft has been 'working' on WinFS (under different names) for well over a decade now, but so far each incarnation has been scrapped... I wouldn't hold my breath for it to come out any time soon.

They are still working on it and Vista SP2 or the next OS they release is not soon. =]