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.
It’s not Unix it’s the legacy issues that MS has to deal with, they would be stupid to move forward on a Unix platform where porting software would be easy to various Linux flavors thus making installing a paid OS questionable at best for most people and businesses.
If you can’t afford the extra - at most .11 cents per disc that DVD media costs in bulk - then you need to find another line of work.
It’s not necessarily about the afford, it’s about the stupidity of the path. Including previous versions causes constant pointless growth of the product, nobody even knows if there’s any useful .net 1.1 products out there anymore, but it’s part of the install of 3.5 and probably will be for 4.0 “just in case”. It’s all part of MS’s constant bad habit of footprint creep, the bigger hard drives get the more MS hoovers up with crap most people will never even use.
I respectfully disagree.
I have run Linux for eight years, and it still doesn't take the place of my Windows and Mac systems. "Free" doesn't mean everything.
Apple's fancy applications aren't showing up on Linux just because OS-X is Unix under the hood. Apple's application source code is still quite proprietary. Microsoft would be stupid to make their proprietary software "open" -- and that's what would be necessary for folks to port it to Linux.
Nope. There's no excuse. Windows could be Unix under the hood just as easily as OS-X already is, and it wouldn't cost Microsoft a single OS sale.
I would argue that it would INCREASE their sales, because they would have ditched the wormy crap they have now, which a lot of people refuse to hold their noses and buy against their better judgment.
I for one, as a Windows user and system administrator, would celebrate bigtime.
They could do it now with modern virtual machines so they could fake downward compatibility. But before VM’s took off (which was about halfway through Vista development) breaking downward compatibility (which they initially said they would do with Longhorn) would kill their market. There’s no reason to buy an OS that won’t run any of your software, and there’s no reason to make software for an OS nobody owns. Now they could include Windows in a VM on the from the ground up new OS and get away with it, but that’s a fairly recent development.
If they dump their legacy stuff, it becomes easier for people to migrate to other systems. If they don't they continue to have bloat problems.
What is so wrong windows kernel 6.0 - what advantages would moving to a totally different kernel bring?
Valid point, that VM technology is only 4-5 years old. I'm using it everyday, and my users have VMs to run older applications -- exactly what you describe. It does work.
But sooner or later Microsoft has to bite the bullet and break with the past, not carry it around in their pocket.
Microsoft still has the marketshare and clout to do it, they just can't admit that:
Advantages? Simplicity, relatively speaking. And from simplicity, better inherent security.
The Windows kernel has become unmaintainable. If you write software, you know what it means when an operating system exceeds a certain level of complexity (depending on how you measure complexity, of course). It starts failing and nobody knows exactly why, and can't fix it without breaking something else. So it's patched and jerry-rigged, by adding still more complexity.
The NT codebase passed the point of no return years ago. Frankly, some Linux distros are in similar shape, although the Linux kernel itself is still relatively slim.
BSD itself is quite compact. Mac OS-X layers a lot over it, of course, but it's application level, not kernel.
Microsoft has to cut NT loose, because it can't keep patching and patching it -- it's not only way past the point where any person or small team can comprehend it; it's past the point where even a company the size of Microsoft can keep it going. It's broken by it's own sheer complexity.
They probably will break it after 7. But a ground up rewrite will take a long time. We’re working on something similar, completely rewriting an app that’s been around for a long time, actually it’s carrying DOS baggage just like Windows, our app is much much smaller than Windows and it’s a project that’s going to take a minimum of 3 or 4 years and that’s assuming we don’t have to shelve it periodically to do some bill paying stuff. One of the biggest challenges we’re having is actually mental, it’s hard for everybody to remember it’s NOT the old app, we’re constantly tempted to do things the “old way” because it kind of works and have to be reminded (sometimes loudly) that the old way is a 25 year old dinosaur with a legacy of kludges that we’re trying to get rid of.
It sounds great to cut the ties and dump the baggage, but then you actually have to do it. Notice nobody has ever really done it before. Apple is the only guy one to really go for a from scratch punt and even they included the “classic”. In software the ties to the past are the assurances of a “safe” upgrade. The trick is finding a way to do it without carrying forward 30 year old bugs.
I don’t think they’re going to take that much of a beating, at least in the pocket where it counts, they’re always getting beat up in the press. Until the recession got going full bore Vista was being adopted at about the same rate XP had been, there were a few great headlines about Vista hatred but the market penetration was actually going pretty well, not stellar, not like Windows 95, but nobody really cares about the 64-bit jump it wasn’t anticipated like the jump to 32. The recession kind of hosed that as the new computer market has taken a vicious beating on all platforms, but MS is still making the bucks even with the recession.
You might be interested in this - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/larus/talks/upenn_singularity.pdf
85% of Windows crashes caused by third party code in kernelThere's one problem for sure. What the hell is third-party code doing in kernel space? Random drivers, for example... can you say "out of control" with regard to interactions and collisions, never mind poor quality control?
It’s out at the usual torrent sites, both x86 (for those still using it) and 64-bit. I’ve been using it since January on a number of boxes (one being my primary OS at work), and it’s been quite stable, especially the latest (until today) 7077 build. Downloading now and will likely give it a spin on a machine or two over the weekend.
I know you mean well and are just trying to help me with good advice and I do appreciate the effort.... but I work in the "real world" (a web site development and graphic design company) and I need windows to do that successfully. I know that even MAC might be a better option, but all my very expensive software is in windows. :)
I have plenty of Windows machines for using software written for windows. Fortunately most of the s/w runs under W2k. I can see a definite issue with keeping web sites running well with IE as it mutates into ever new behaviors.
Robocopy?! Never heard of it. Will look it up, thx.
What did you get for your purchase of Vista? Well, you lost (at least temporarily) support of OpenGL (with no warning - until you got the updated Vista graphics driver with the Vista ICD), you gained a huge hardware requirement (CPU, memory, Video) but Vista uses those hightened hardware requirements LESS effectively than WinXP. As an added bonus, that laser printer, that high speed $$$ SCSI scanner, your raster printer and a host of other products that you paid dearly for, no longer are supported under Vista. Why? Is it because they cannot be supported? Is it because they are worn out? No, it's because unlike WinXP which allows backward compatibility with older drivers, Vista demands new drivers. Is there a warning somewhere that tells us that we will need to replace perfectly functional hardware? Nope.
I worked for decades in the PC industry, I did WHQL testing, I did 64 bit de-bug on the Antlon and Opterons, I worked as a Quality manager for a very large company. I see this as decreasing quality coming from MSFT, while they raise the price for a more inferior product.
Sure, you "shouldn't" upgrade from Win 3.1 to Win 2K, then to WinME, then to WinXP - but millions did. This option was offered by MSFT, these products are made by MSFT, these products are supported by MSFT - so why do you excuse MSFT when people use an offered feature, and their machine is 'buggy'?? "Shame on you for using a feature that is advertized on the box",
MSFT has the financial capability to do a better job, they have very gifted people working in the field, working at Intel and AMD, at Via, LSI, Broadcom, nVidia and a host of other companies - all working (at NO COST to MSFT) to make the next OS better than the last. I have personally responded to MSFT with performance corrections to a driver (PCI protocol, induced latency with a Netgear NIC). I was paid $150K/yr by my employer to do this research, to submit that report and to track it through Netgear and MSFT to get the 'fix' implimented in SP1. That was one among a host of others, I was expected to fix a minimum of 1 bug a week in the hardware/software interface. Some were easy, some were very, very hard.
When a company extorts (and let's face it, we have no real option but to abandon WinXP and move to Win7) the public, and provides less than a smooth transistion - I reserve the right to call them on it.
Just an FYI for Freepers testing Windows 7. For others who aren’t I say create a new partition and give it a whirl, it is a fantastic OS.
Thanks for the post & review; I hate Vista :(
You do know that w Linux, the various BSD’s and OSX have the exact same issues.
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