Posted on 04/23/2009 12:25:37 PM PDT by aft_lizard
New build hasn't been leaked to torrents -- yet
Microsoft's Windows 7 is perhaps one of the most hotly anticipated tech products of the year. Its beta builds have thus far showcased both polish and Microsoft's willingness to improve and take constructive criticism. Microsoft has over 2,000 planned bug fixes for the Release Candidate phase, and recent builds have given users just a taste of the promising new OS's potential.
Hot on the heels of the leak of RC build 7077 to the torrent world earlier this month, Microsoft has delivered a major milestone build to OEM partners and TAP gold customers. Microsoft reportedly compiled the new build, 7100.0.winmain_win7rc.090421-1700 (build 7100, for short), on Tuesday, and has already began distribution.
While some are likely eagerly awaiting the build to hit torrents, for home testing, Microsoft may actually beat leakers to the punch. Microsoft announced via its Partners page plans to launch a semi-public distribution of the release candidate by May 5th to MSDN/TechNet customers. The official release will invariably also be shared by these customers over torrent. The 7100 build seems a likely target for the release.
There's potential, though, that the posting could be a mistake, as a Microsoft Online Chat Concierge spokesperson commented, "Currently the Windows 7 RC has not been available through the TechNet subscription yet, only the Microsoft OEM partners such as Dell, Siemens are taking part in the RC's this period of test."
Regardless, whenever DailyTech get its hands on release candidate 7100, a features update piece can be expected. Until then, like the rest of community, we have to wait and see.
The date on that review is from nearly 2 1/3 years ago. Many improvements have been made since then - with remarkable improvements made in the area of graphics performance due to nVidia and ATI witting better drivers.
No one lost openGL support as every one who uses openGL for anything remotely productive uses the vendor drivers which support OGL better in the first place.
As for using the hardware less effectively - that isn’t correct. With 4/8GB of RAM techs like superfetch make the system much more responsive as do the kernel and scheduler enhancements for multicore processors.
*Is there a warning somewhere that tells us that we will need to replace perfectly functional hardware?*
That is a flat out and out misstatement of reality - Microsoft publishes a HQL and if the vendors don’t update their drivers take it up with them.
*basically another warmed-over version of Vista/XP/NT/98/95/MS-DOS.*
Divergent from reality.
As a XP-SP3 user and know just enough to be dngerous, how much memory is required to see SIGNIFICANT performance upgrades to warrant moving to W7?
What, that their active kernels are riddled with random third-party code, uncontrolled by the people responsible for the kernel itself? I find that unlikely. Not impossible, mind you, just very unlikely. In the case of Linux, you might want to alert Torvalds to your concern.
If (a) 85% of Windows crashes are due to the fact that random third-party vendors' drivers, etc. are hooked directly into the OS kernel by design/necessity, -and- (b) Linux, BSD, OS-X have the same issue, then one would expect Linux, BSD, OS-X to crash as often as Windows.
Doesn't happen that way. I know, I run them all, all the time. My Windows boxes (which are generally kept pretty clean) require restarts many times more often than the others. My OS-X and Unix boxes run for many months at a time without a hang (restarts are generally for security updates that require a restart).
Sure, applications hang in Linux and OS-X, but they rarely corrupt the kernel. The issue in question is whether random software vendors can crash the system. In Windows, their drivers are generally running at Ring0, which tells you all you need to know about why Windows crashes many times more often than the others.
A new Windows architecture can learn lots from the others. Or better, as Apple did, stand on the shoulders of a giant and get a head-start without having to re-invent the wheel.
With memory - DDR2 - being so cheap put in as much as your system will hold.
The current price is about 10 per gigabyte.
3rd party kernel mode drivers can crash the OS. To get around this you can use a microkerel - which is slow - or move as many as you can to user mode - which is what vista has been pushing people to do.
Google nvidia linux panic sometime.
You appear to not really know anything about the changes in vista - have you actually studied them or are you going on 2nd hand information?
That is part of the core problem of Windows. At its heart it’s still DOS, an OS designed for 1 thread, minimal graphics, 1 user, no communication with other computers, and a small amount of available hardware. Everything we think about in Windows today is something added onto that core, usually through a kind of psychotic hack, they’ve added all this stuff which was completely out of the design scope of the OS that still is the core. That’s why Windows is not secure, not stable, and just generally a pain in the ass. The good news is because it still has a heart of DOS the old Norton tools (you know, from back when Peter actually ran the company) still generally work, there’s a whole Norton Commander cult where I work.
*That is part of the core problem of Windows. At its heart it’s still DOS, an OS designed for 1 thread, minimal graphics, 1 user, no communication with other computers, and a small amount of available hardware.*
Either you are lying or you really don’t know what you are talking about. Ask David Cutler and his time about that and see what he says.
I’m not lying and I do know what I’m talking about. The basic foundation of Windows is still DOS, even with the move to the NT Kernel, the heart of DOS is still in there.
Proof please.
How much memory do you have now?
I upgraded my daughters machine because it was too slow under Vista and perfomed ok under XP and it is noticeably faster under W7...I was going to upgrade the memory but I didn’t need to.
It also depends on how many features you turn on but the platform is very stable and very nice to use.
Currently 2MB of memory. Although my XP has been relatively stable, it’s not the fastest when I see some Laptops w/Vista and Mac desktops.
Do you know if it uses DDR1 or DDR2 memory?
Do you mean 2gb? If so then actually you will see decent performance from W7. If you were to upgrade to 4gb you will see a very significant difference although laptop memory can still be a bit pricey...just don’t buy it from a BestBuy type of store.
I have a desktop but not sure how to confirm if I have DDR1 or DDR2 - any suggestions how to determine the type?
A good question. I have used Vista at home and at work for quite a while now and have had no real problems. I put a heavy load on my PCs/laptops and the OS is the last place I have experienced problems. We are a medium sized private university and in the information technology college we use Vista machines as do almost all of our students. With Vista we have had very few issues. Cannot say the same for our OS courses with VM linux installs.
What is the make model of your computer? If it is a Dell or Gateway you will find on the back.
Who made your system and do you know the model number? I should be able to find out that way.
If not do you know the exact make and speed of the CPU in your system.
Now is a great time to buy RAM - it is at near record low prices. I was able to buy 8GBs of ECC RAM for less than 100.00 - normal desktop ram is about 30% less.
Oh yes! and it is ever so frustrating! I am reading FR right now because I needed a break from the frustration of trying to get my very clever CSS layout that works in flawlessly EVERYTHING else to behave in IE.
But such is the life of web dev.
Just look in Windows. The DOS traces are everywhere. Did you ever wonder why you can still do Start-Run-CMD and bring up a DOS prompt? Why with that DOS prompt you can run or stop every app on you machine including Windows Services? Why all your files and folders can still be accessed by an 8.3 name if you know where to truncate? Why all your PIFs... oh sorry shortcuts still have a working folder (”start in”) and a command line? Even services still have that. Why you still have environment variables for Path and Temp?
All those questions can be answered with three letters: DOS. At it’s heart Windows is still a GUI sitting on top of DOS. NT Kerneled Windows has a nice VMS layer in there to help with a lot of things, but it’s never left DOS behind. And the DOS stuff still has CP/M in it, that’s why .com is the first entry in your PATHEXT in your environment variables. A 2009 OS still has at its core a 30-year old 8-bit OS. That’s why people say MS needs to drop downward compatibility and start over from scratch, because Windows has 30 years worth of baggage in it, 30 years worth of bugs and kludges, and workarounds. And you need look no further than your Environment Variables dialog to see some of them.
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