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See here for details on the Five Weird Habits meme...
Once Windows More-of-the-same hits the streets and Wall Street realizes just how badly you clowns have screwed the pooch on this one, I can double my money in a week.
Basically every video driver imaginable is there - such as my 7800GTX. It's amazing how well Vista is running on this machine actually.
http://samgentile.com/blog/archive/2005/12/21/3...
I don't have a non-work machine that gets anywhere close to the minimum requirements for Vista so I can't play with it. I might try putting it in a VM at work, but I'm not sure there would be any point to that.
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\DWM
DWord: UseMachineCheck = 0
Then toggle it on/off using CTRL+SHIFT+F9 when you need to.
More from Paul
"One issue Microsoft is going to have to work hard to overcome is how closely parts of this product resemble Mac OS X. These similarities go beyond surface UI coincidences and extend into bundled applications like Windows Calendar, which very closely emulate similar Apple products in both look and feel and functionality."
You'd think with all that money and all those self professed smart people, and all the chest thumping about innovation, that you guys could do better.
I've been using it as my primary OS on my home machine for a few days now and I've been extremely impressed. It's a huge improvement from 5231 and the other previous builds.
Clearly there's a lot left to do. But this isn't even a BETA - it's an interim build. It's just an extremely good one.
As for UAP and such, I love that it's there and that it works great most of the time. It does pop up too often and the dialog clearly needs some work (it's been changing almost weekly). I mean, with text like "More information will go here" you have to accept that it's just not finished. Personally I also really want an "Always allow this program to do perform this function" button. At least I think I do... problem is, this system needs to be fool-proof. It will be the single largest security improvement that Windows users could ask for. But it does require just the slightest help from the user.
You're not supposed to look at it. You're not supposed to even know it's there.
The registry is for the *registration* of COM Servers and mapping of GUIDs. If not for the registry, most every app since Windows 95 simply wouldn't be able to function. Most of Windows itself wouldn't. That information needs to be stored somewhere, and the Registry is extremely good at it.
Should applications use it to store settings? That's another matter entirely. Maybe you think they shouldn't. But one reason developers do use the registry sometimes is that it's extremely good at caching. If you're reading or updating a stored value frequently the registry is far more efficient than accessing the filesystem.
Another reason, of course, is that MS has been telling developers to store their app settings in the registry since Windows 95 (or possibly Windows 3.1 - I forget).
I never said it was a failure, Sam is the one who said he was recommending waiting for beta 2. I'm recommending people wait until SP2. ;) Did you even RTFA I pointed to? Don't know who Sam Gentile is? Robert does. Try reading his blog and doing some research on him. He's a smart guy, really, really smart. he pointed to another person having problems with the drivers, who's weblog is on LONGHORN-FRICKIN'-BLOGS.com, in the CTP. Then he pointed to two other people who said the CTP was fine. But one of them, Robert Mclaws, reported lots of tablet driver issues. The driver issues don't surprise me, especially the people reporting sound and video driver issues since those two areas have been re-worked a lot in Vista.
The biggest complaint I've read so far has to do witht he UAP/UAC stuff. Apparently MS didn't copy that correctly from OS X. The P2P-Bonjour stuff looks nice though.
http://www.longhornblogs.com/sgentile/archive/2...
Oh, and handwriting recognition is much better, especially after you spend some time training it.
But, if you say it looks like a Mac, I'll take that as a compliment. I don't see that many similarities (and I'm staying at the house of an Apple employee right now).
I didn't state that. Paul Thurrott did. I posted that, as it was in the summary of his article that you noted.
Robert, I think perhaps Apple actually should take it as a compliment that your company is copying them (Steve Jobs' snarky comment to you about IE aside). Re Tablet PC and Media Center (your snarky comment). Of course we'll see those from Apple. (my be is for a furthring of Front Row to add DVR and downladable content in January).
My point really is this though.... With all Microsoft's money and self congratulation from the top, that it should be waaaaaaaay out in front in terms of UI design and innovation. In actual fact, the company won't be until it goes back to being run in a more entreprenurial and being run with the vision of its old days.
But.... to you and yours. Merry/ Happy and I wouldn't be reading and unless I loved reading you (I do)
I have a Mac sitting right here and they don't look anything alike (particularly once you get the glass working). Yeah, you can see a common element here and there (both IE7 and Safari have tabs and similar UIs, for instance) but that's about the extent of it. Once you get deep into something like Windows Media Center you don't see any similarities.
re: We can go on all day long about where they are ahead and where we are.
Let's not.
And to all.... a good night.
I think I'll stick with the innovation leader a bit longer.
As for the registry - that was a bad idea before and its still a bad idea - here's a tip store stuff in TEXT files. Unix did this and you could change anything with vi. Apple does this via PLists and directories and you can still change anything with vi. Having fancy secret binary file formats that only a few programs like regedit can edit which are single points of failure isn't too bright.
My main problem with the registry: the size limit (can be changed, but how many home users know that or even what all the stuff is and how high to set the limit). Secondary problems: gets polluted with stale GUIDs that are hard to even manually clean out, and incomplete uninstalls put junk in the *entire* OS registry rather than a particular app directory.
Yeah, 2006 is going to be a good MS year. ASP.Net 2.0 is outstanding (compelling enough reason to rewrite legacy apps, IMO, due to personalization and webparts), as is Avalon/Indigo. The OS is clean with very high fidelity everything (and I suspect it's going to shock people with performance due to the multicore support, 3D card taking over the graphics duties, and new networking stack). This is the year I buy my own MSDN subscription so I can build a mini-network just to play with a lot of this stuff.
When you say "with all this money, you'd think they could do better", I think you fail to realize that a project can be just as thoroughly botched if it's OVER-funded.
MS has thousands of people working on Longwind, and they're demoralized, poorly led, and have almost no pride left in their work (if indeed they ever had any in the first place).
Contrast to Apple, where the largest product development group I've heard of has only 12 people, and a typical project has more like 3 to 5. (Xcode has more, but they're segmented into groups like the the GUI people, the build engine people, the compiler people, etc.)
MS's problems are systemic, and they will not get fixed until and unless the company has a near-death experience. I'm talking the kind of financial collapse that gets the top four levels of their org chart handed their walking papers.
If *that* happens, I'd take a serious look at buying some MSFT shares, but as long as that screaming maniac is in charge of the company, I'm 100% Bearish on MSFT.
Trotting out the Media Center and the Tablet might be an effective rejoinder, if either of them were actually any good. Better luck next time. (Hint: don't point to MS "bob" either.)
No Robert, although i thought about it. But, since WiMP can't scrub ahead or back worth a crap, i can't bypass stuff I'm not interested in to get to the parts I AM interested in. So, I gave up on Channel 9 videos, because I don't like using a video player that is like using Quicktime 3, and I don't feel like paying for the WM plugin for Quicktime Player.
You’re not supposed to look at it. You’re not supposed to even know it’s there.
The registry is for the *registration* of COM Servers and mapping of GUIDs. If not for the registry, most every app since Windows 95 simply wouldn’t be able to function. Most of Windows itself wouldn’t. That information needs to be stored somewhere, and the Registry is extremely good at it.
Should applications use it to store settings? That’s another matter entirely. Maybe you think they shouldn’t. But one reason developers do use the registry sometimes is that it’s extremely good at caching. If you’re reading or updating a stored value frequently the registry is far more efficient than accessing the filesystem.
Let's see,
It's fragile
it's easily abused even by Windows itself
it's a single point of failure for critical system settings
It is to date, utterly and completely unrepairable, to the point that Microsoft's answer to this has been to just make nigh-constant backup copies of the Registry, so when it does get corrupt, hopefully, you have a good copy of it.
It kills flexibility, (just try moving your Office folder to another partition and using it.)
It has no, zero, zip good maintenance tools whatsoever, so even IT pros can't easily fix registry problems.
Brandon, you say that you should never have to go in there, yet, Microsoft's support site is CONSTANTLY telling you to tweak Registry values to make things work correctly.
It is possibly the single worst, no STUPIDEST implementation of a generally good idea ever, and it should have been replaced by XML files or an XML database that CAN be maintained and repaired if need be, and the host of problems with it ensure that Vista will be just as much of a maintenance pain in the ass as XP or any other version. (Wanna know why reload windows/reformat reinstall are 90% of windows maintenance? The Registry) This of course is unheard of on any other enterprise platform.
Once again, Microsoft is trapped by DECADES of bad decisions, and they refuse to change a bad implementation into something useable.
Er, I have MCE set up, and I have two digital tuners (PCI cards) and no analog tuners. I've never had to put an analog tuner in to get MCE to recognise the digital tuners.
Researchers are developing sophisticated networking technologies that enable military commanders to share tactical information -- right from the battlefield, in real-time, experts tell United Press International.
As if out of a scene of the TV counter-terrorist drama "24," the networking software enables commanders to share -- or fuse -- information from an array of air and ground sensors. This will make the tracking of enemy ground troops, friendly troops and artillery and aircraft easier, experts said. By Gene Koprowski
-1,000,000 for not really being a fuctional OS
I have a urgent request for the Vista team. Please, please, please include a checkbox near the start of the setup process that will allow users to opt-out of being protected from themselves. Yes, I understand that user ignorance has been at the core of the black eye Microsoft has gotten over security. Yet, not all users are idiots. If you were only allowed to eat when my computers caught a virus or malware, you'd be dust by now! :) It has only happened twice, and I'm 49.
What I'm really saying, of course, is that Vista--and its setup--must allow for differing levels of user competency. I love XP, but I can't begin to tell you how many times it has hobbled me as I tried to complete a legitimate task. For my own usage, I need less security interference, not more.
Get a clue. Do you even know who I am? I have been beta testing Microsoft stuff for 22 years which is probably older than you are judging from your picture and post. I have worked for MSFT and NuMega. I understand the kernel. The 5270 LDDM drivers (THE NEW ONES IN THIS BUILD) are BROKEN and BLUE SCREEN the machine. Do you know what that is? They flat out DON'T WORK for me and everyone else on the private beta forum and THEY DID WORK LAST BUILD. You see, thats called a REGRESSION in the world of software.
And the registry hack hangs the machine with a blue screen. This build is horrible for drivers compared with the last few. And yes, I installed it on a ThinkPad but Mobility Radeon 7500's don't do Direct/X 9 and so don't do Glass.
There are a lot of problems here.
Has anyone managed to get decent drivers working and if so can they please share the info (Robert?)
Thanks very much