Originally posted by: Snapster
3 years from now (2008) would be 2011 like many have suggested in the comments so there is no way there would be an RTM in Q4 09. I don't know why there is such a push for W7 which will likely not be revolutionary but more akin to Vista SP3. At this rate it'll be the same, omg Windows 7 sucks, I hate UAC, it crashes due to crap drivers, Windows 7 = WinMe x 3 etc.
Remember Microsoft has to cater to the masses that gives them money
Originally posted by: Snapster
3 years from now (2008) would be 2011 like many have suggested in the comments so there is no way there would be an RTM in Q4 09.
Originally posted by: bruceb
The reason for the push IMO is Vista was a flop
and MS knows it. And if they insist on buying Yahoo,
we'll that's 35 Billion they want to spend. So they
need a new, nice fat income stream.
Not from me. I keep an OS or applicaton program
until it is really outdated or won't do what I need it to do.
But I will update most programs to newer versions if
there is no cost to do so (like Winrar or dvdfab) both of
which have lifetime free upgrades to newer versions.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Remember Microsoft has to cater to the masses that gives them money
Actually they don't, the masses give them money by default because they don't realize that they have a choice.
Originally posted by: stlcardinals
There could be an RTM in Q4 09. Vista RTM'd in Q4 06 and was available to the general public January 30, 2007.
Microsoft has stated that their 3 year development window started when Vista became generally available.
Originally posted by: Snapster
Microsoft stated 3 years in their recent meeting (ie few weeks ago). Knowing how Microsoft love to stick to their deadlines of every release if that was the case you'd expect Alpha's to have already been out and beta's by the end of year. You really think they'll have a full new product almost ready this time next year?
Originally posted by: bruceb
The reason for the push IMO is Vista was a flop
and MS knows it. And if they insist on buying Yahoo,
we'll that's 35 Billion they want to spend. So they
need a new, nice fat income stream.
Not from me. I keep an OS or applicaton program
until it is really outdated or won't do what I need it to do.
But I will update most programs to newer versions if
there is no cost to do so (like Winrar or dvdfab) both of
which have lifetime free upgrades to newer versions.
Originally posted by: Aberforth
Actually Windows 7 is based on old blackcomb/vienna code base. Previously i think they used windows 2003 code base then decided to write it entirely from scratch, that's how Longhorn came into existence, so they stripped major features of vienna in longhorn to invest more time on security.
Originally posted by: Aberforth
Also I think legacy hardware and software support shouldn't be taken off Windows but instead use virtualization techniques to simulate software compatibility.
I think you misunderstood my intention. If most people buy a machine of spec 'x' then they'll try support it. The consequences of not supporting a mass market specification would be too grave even for Microsoft to keep ignoring.
IMO, if they really want to maintain dominance over Apple and linux, they need to create a consumer oriented OS completely from scratch.
Make it secure from the ground up, true 3d, and tightly integrated with the web, without having to maintain the same interface that's virtually unchanged except for a little touching up since Win95 almost 15 years ago.
Basically, they need to pull an OSX, while maintaining support and sales for Vista as the corporate workhorse.
In Mac, they already know what hardware it runs with so they will make it more compatible and all the processing power that is available will be used on cool UI and eye candy apps because people never run enterprise level apps or services on MAC otherwise it will run far worse than windows.
Originally posted by: bruceb
No, not WIN98 ... My Dell came with XP
and it is working fine. Same on my home
laptop and the one I use for work. I can't
justify the cost to go to Vista with it's DRM
and User control overkill. And my Dell won't
run it without more memory which in my case
is Rambus RDRAM .. very costly if you can find it.
I also have some apps that might not run in Vista
without being the latest release. Some companies
do not let you upgrade to the newest without cost.
Such as Quickbooks or Autocad. I can't see buying
a newer copy of software, when the current version
can do what I want it to do.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
That'll never work. Adding another code base to support and one that doesn't run current software would cost them an insane amount of money and never take off. People like the compatibility, one of the biggest complaints about Vista is the subpar legacy hardware and software support and you want to exacerbate that by starting over from scratch?
I'm not even sure what "true 3d" and "tightly integrated with the web" mean. Aero is already "3D enough", sure they've crippled it for some reason so that things that should be easy, like an exposé clone, are a PITA but it works. And Windows is already too tied to Internet connectivity IMO.
Which is ironic since Apple didn't start OS X from scratch, they bought NeXT, reused the FreeBSD userland and tacked on their own proprietary UI and support libraries. And then they included a full blown OS 9 installation for legacy support. Do you really want the next version of Windows to include a copy of XP so that it can run the last release of QuickBooks?
And since most Mac users are also probably running Windows in parallels, possibly to run their "enterprise ready" apps, they tend to prefer that processing power be spent on keeping both OSes running snappy instead of eye candy. Even though I can't really think of a lot of eye candy on the Mac that's intense enough to worry about, exposé maybe but that only has any affect when you specifically invoke it. The same is true of the minimize effects and such.
Didn't they concurrently run NT/2000 and 95/98/ME side by side for many, many years before the 95 based code running on top of DOS became so absurd and unstable that they had to move NT tech into the consumer space?
When I talk about legacy, I'm talking about stuff like chipsets, video, CPU, etc. Naturally you would want support for printers, cameras, and other types of devices that you would move from PC to PC.
The point would be that this OS wouldnt be sold as an upgrade to previous Vista/XP PCs. When they can be sure that the desktop is running a certain minimum spec - 64-bit, multicore, DX10 level video, SATA etc, they don't have to necessarily build the interface to support Win95 apps and sprinkle some effects on top of it.
True 3d = windows arent merely flat 2d textures rendered by 3d graphics hardware, but the applications can be built with actual 3d geometry. Aero isnt 3D at all, it just uses 3D hardware. I should be able to push windows back and forth, scaling them rather than resizing, for instance. This is 2008 already, I'm shocked we're still using a pretty Win95 interface.
Tightly integrated with the web - Online storage should be transparent, for one thing. Broadband is almost ubiquitous nowadays. Your identity should move with you. It is such a royal pain in the ass to have to sync files between PCs, its damn near impossible to sync outlook between two PCs without an IT degree. I should be able to log on to any PC in my house, or hop on to any PC anywhere and easily access my documents, programs, etc.
And there is nothing more in need of an overhaul than the underlying technology for PC games. Sure, graphics are getting better, but everything else has barely changed in the past 10 years. Games are still forced to support god knows how many standards for hardware - not even all DX9 hardware support the same features. Sure, they've been making some positive changes in terms of standardization with DX10 outside of just graphics, but I still can't easily plug in a headset, or use a BT one and actually hear just the voice over the headset.
Every single app requires its own autoupdate functionality, if they support that at all. All of that should be built into one single application as it is with linux/ubuntu.
Naturally they'd be able to reuse a decent chunk of windows code, but dropping support for legacy internal hardware will allow them to simplify it.
And the answer to your question is yes - especially with hardware based virtualization nowadays that didnt exist back when OSX was released, it would be a fairly reasonable solution for all but the most specialized applications, that probably wouldnt matter to most consumers.
Apple wouldnt be where they are today if they didnt finally bite the bullet and shift to OSX, and it didnt take very long for consumers and developers to adopt and shift to it, because it was a light year ahead of OS9.
They created NT because 95/98 was so unstable that it was practically impossible to use for serious business.
Vista is starting to look more like an old workhorse than a true next-gen OS.
I'm just not a fan of the one size fits all, lowest common denominator approach.
the general perception of *all* of my non-techy friends is that its garbage
Truthfully, if anyone asked me what PC to get, I'd probably lean towards telling them to get a mac, because its built with consumers in mind first, and it shows. A little too oversimplified for me personally, but its well designed. Its kinda creepy, but its a definite shift in perception of windows in general that I just didnt see before Vista was released.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
And they would want to do that again, why?
I'm sure they'll keep whatever drivers still work so that would depend on the manufacturer releasing either drivers or specs.
Then what's the point? By the time they get it out the door and released the only hardware that won't be able to run Vista will be ancient.
That'll never work well as long as the physical medium is 2D. People get confused with the currrent ability to have windows hidden by other windows, imagine what would happen if they could hide them from themselves by accidentally scaling them too small and pushing them behind something else. And actually scaling windows like that is possible now without any major UI revamps, I'm sure I've seen a compiz or XGL demo doing something similar so MS could probably do something similar with Aero if they wanted.
You can already map FTP and WebDav servers to drive letters, how much more transparent can you get?
And I don't want my "identity" stored on some server maintained by someone else, espcially MS, and I'm sure a lot of other people would agree.
The hardware support problem lies with the manufacturers of that hardware, not MS. That'll probably never change so you should just get yourself a nice console system. =)
Would be nice but will never happen because of MS' monopoly and the fact that MS would never open up WU to be managed by 3rd parties. It would be opening them up to exploitation too easily. If 3rd party apps could add repositories to look for updates then installing malware without you knowing it would be even easier than it is now. And if MS implemented some security like requiring the updates be signed by MS everyone would scream foul since MS would essentially get a veto on who can use it.
And it would make it pointless since it'll end up only running on the same machines that run Vista fine by the time it's released.
Hardare VT support doesn't change a thing in this area and in some cases makes the guest OS slower. You still need a virtualization app and another copy of the old OS installed and running so that makes this solution really only feasible on machines that have no problem with Vista, again.
From what I remember it took quite a few years before most Mac users could finally remove their classic installation. And they had real cause to move away from OS 9, it was utter crap. The same isn't true for Vista.
NT 3.1 was released almost 3 years before Win95.
Good, the OS shouldn't really matter. It's the apps that run on top of it that are important.
I'm not either but they could make things better by making Vista more modular and letting you add/remove whatever you want, not by replacing it with a completely new system.
And the perception of one of my coworkers is that all Chevy cars are garbage, in both cases it means absolutely nothing.
There's no doubt that Apple's done a good job spreading their FUD but that doesn't mean it's nearly as bad as they say.
Competition from more user friendly OSes like OSX, that don't require several layers of security or dedicated IT personnel in order to ensure that a PC doesnt become compromised, for starters. Sure, they bolted on UAC, but its incredibly confusing to people that dont understand why they need it in the first place
Vista can run (albeit not very well) on ancient hardware. Everything has to conform to that lowest common denominator. That holds back innovation.
The physical medium is 2D, due to being displayed on 2d monitor, but we can still perceive plenty of depth and dimensionality in that 2d space, hence the entire concept of 3d graphics. IMO the fact that the GUI is built in 2D is a contrivance thats held over from the days when only a 2d GUI was possible, and its very hard for anyone to imagine how else it could work. Pure two dimensionality is unnatural. I won't argue that I can think of very few ways that 3d can make office work more productive, but again, theres no reason to be held to the lowest common denominator. To do it right might require input devices that differ from a mouse and keyboard, but there was once a time the mouse didnt exist either.
I wouldnt even know where to begin as to how to make that happen for my personal use, and if I cant, not a single other person I know in real life that isnt a techy can either.
Sure, I'd agree - I'd personally rather keep it on an always connected server in my home, but even that practically requires a degree at this point, even with the "user friendly" windows home server. And I can think of a great many people who couldnt care less - I can't say it really bothers me knowing my email is stored on google's servers.
The hardware manufacturers make the hardware, but they still conform to the spec set by the platform holder, and if anyone has the power to change that, its MS.
Just because its working through the WU interface doesn't mean it has to be stored by MS. Just as every app hooks into the uninstall feature of windows, they should be able to hook into the update feature/API. 3rd parties already hook into their own repositories through their own programs - I dont see how merely combining that into a system wide user interface is going to present a security risk that doesnt already exist now.
Given XP's continued popularity and userbase, I highly doubt there will be many apps written in the next 5 years or so that dont run on stock XP, and even now, the amount of memory needed to host XP is pretty small. In a few years, 4GB of ram will be average, and the 100-200mb needed to host XP in a VM will be negligible.
I was thinking about NT 4, but you can take the same argument with NT 3.1 and apply it to Win 3.1.
The applications are still limited by the OS they run on and the hardware that OS supports.
It means a lot to chevy.
Anyone I've told to buy a Mac instead of a PC has never called me back asking how to get something to work, how to fix this, how to fix that. I'm not really all that pro-apple, but in my experience the amount of problems the average non-techie user I know has with their macs than with their PCs isnt even comparable.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Sure, I'd agree - I'd personally rather keep it on an always connected server in my home, but even that practically requires a degree at this point, even with the "user friendly" windows home server. And I can think of a great many people who couldnt care less - I can't say it really bothers me knowing my email is stored on google's servers.
Most of the people who don't care don't understand the risks. Keeping some email on google's servers is one thing, but do you want them having your credit card numbers, bank account info, etc?
Originally posted by: Mem
Bottomline looks like XP days are numbered.Vista,Windows 7 etc are the future.