Submitted by After 5 years of development, Windows Vista is finally finished. Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division has put together a video about the announcement where he announces the General Availability date of 30 January 2007 for Vista.
Enough said
Where is Duke Nukem Forever now?
Will be packaged as a retail with Vista!
The reason Vista took so long is because of all the trouble they had integrating the Windows and DNEF codebases
so thats the render code they are using on aero glass!
The real windows vista was previewed lot of time ago, and it was so much better compared with the RTM’ed crap…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y
Where is all that code? Man, that video totally rocks. Future Linux version can compete with the windows effects (thanks to compiz)…but the effects inside the apps, aka XAML? Linux doesn’t have anything like that (just E17, which is not a mainstream toolkit/desktop). Vista still has XAML, but it’s nowhere near to that video
This windows version does not really rock after seeing that video. I’m personally not paying a full license for this windows version…it’s not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t feels something that deserves paying what microsoft asks. _6_ years for this? I’d rather wait to pay for the next version, which will be released in 3 years (4 adding thedelays), something that really deserves my money…
Edited 2006-11-08 20:26
Using Adobe Premiere you’re able to do fake videos like that! maybe with better effects!
it’ll be on MSDN shortly,
meanwhile after looking at that video link you posted I felt that some of those ‘concept’ screens in it actually DID look similar to early versions of longhorn (but they didn’t have the effects in that video….)
have a look here to see what I mean (screenshots)
http://anyweb.kicks-ass.net/computers/os/windows/longhorn/index.htm…
that covers the following longhorn releases
* Longhorn 4008. Longhorn XP Professional/XP Freestyle ?
* Longhorn 4008. Longhorn 4008 post install screenshots
* Longhorn 4015. Checkout the Sidebar in action and the cool clock
* Longhorn 4029. Now it’s looking very sleek, installation and post-installation screenshots
* Longhorn 4051. The Slate theme sees the light of day
, lots of screenshots
* Longhorn 4053. DNS issues with this release, at least for me.
* Longhorn 4074. The most stable yet, even Quake 3 runs with the nvidia drivers installed !
* Longhorn 5048. WinHEC release, boring but at least something was released.
* Longhorn 5112. Windows Vista BETA 1 installation screenshots.
* Longhorn 5112. Windows Vista BETA 1 post-installation screenshots.
* Longhorn 5219. Windows Vista PDC installation screenshots.
* Longhorn 5219. Windows Vista PDC post-installation screenshots.
* Longhorn 5219 Video (cool). A nice video story showing Vista PDC release from start to finish.
* Longhorn 5112 videos. Windows Vista BETA 1 videos showing it in action.
* Longhorn 5231 screenshots
* Longhorn 5259. Longhorn Nov 2005 installation screenshots.
* Longhorn 5259. Longhorn Nov 2005 post-installation screenshots.
I got bored after that, but have tried out quite a few releases since then, but never got round to putting screenies together
oh well,
thumbs up to Vista RTM, I look forward to trying it out
cheers
anyweb
“Where is all that code? Man, that video totally rocks. Future Linux version can compete with the windows effects (thanks to compiz)…but the effects inside the apps, aka XAML? Linux doesn’t have anything like that (just E17, which is not a mainstream toolkit/desktop). Vista still has XAML, but it’s nowhere near to that video “
It’s called “Core Animation” now… (*wink* *wink*) and… will be shipping on a different OS.
Frankly, most of the application effects are silly and would drive you to insanity before they’d help you to work better.
Some things animations are really useful. Things like..
* Scrolling text boxes so you can see where you’re jumping to in code instead of jumping.
* List boxes that show items coming off of them instead of just redisplaying without the old item.
* Text entries that flash when you typed an invalid sequence in.
These sorts of things are, mostly, not application specific at all. Some of them don’t even require anything to change in the application binary. Some of them would require parameters (text entries would have to define what’s valid, probably a regular expression or a callback (bool callback(String text)).
In general though, the animations that are actually helpful are not application specific. The animations that are really annoying are (incidentally these are also the ones that are getting done).
And yes, few have those animations present, but I imagine they’re coming. They’re not doable with CPU bound graphics (they are, but it’d make notebooks hot and annoy desktop users by slowing down background tasks).
Not XAML (which is just markup) but WPF is supposedly bringing this things to Windows. I imagine QT/GTK + Cairo will eventually bring these things to *nix, and I think some of these things are already done on OS X.
Quote: “(bool callback(String text))”
I hope you meant
HRESULT txtclbc(const char *lpszParam) ;
Just kiding:)
I believe that they maybe decided not to use WPF for GUI effects in Vista from the start up (or widows explorer and all their relevant GUI apps are still in C++).
Perhaps they just wanted to save some eye candy for future releases (when all people will have powerful enough graphic cards to run all those effects).
There is fundamental difference between what X toolkits can do (a client-side transformation approach) and what WPF does (a server-side approach).
I consider Microsoft’s approach superior. Within Linux this would require overhauled graphic subsystem. I.e. no more X, or heavy extensioning of it to support server-side toolkits – which would in fact be some kind of plugins to compositing managers.
However it is possible that future Qt/KDE (more likely) or Gtk/GNOME compositing manager will evolve to the point of bypassing X server for most of the time and receive app scene hierarchy/vector data over a custom IPC protocol (therefore enabling additional eye candy only with a dedicated compositing manager).
Edited 2006-11-09 16:52
doesn’t have anything like that (just E17, which is not a mainstream
It’s so beautiful and such a pleasure to use, don’t know why everyone’s not using E17, gentoo makes it too easy.
I agree 100% on the beauty and pleasing nature of E17, I still like wowing people with Raster’s original moving desktop on my laptop without a noticeable loss of speed. My only concern is that even today E17 isn’t ready for wide adoption. Its API’s are apt to break perhaps once they get to a “stable/devel” model then things may change.
Vista will be released in January 2007??? *YAWN*
Wake me up when Service Pack 2 has been released…
release
here
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_rtm_galleries.asp
cheers
anyweb
Is it that they have corrected this Jaws-like flaw for Windows Vista that they haven’t corrected with all the other post-2K Windows? Is it that they did write vista from the grounds up?
http://secunia.com/advisories/22687/
Cause it will look beautiful to see Vista having its first highly critical flaw listed in secunia right on Jan 30th.
Edited 2006-11-08 20:45
This wouldn’t cause much problem in Vista because IE runs under a much less privileged account.
When will Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista be released?
I’ll just wait for someone to crack Vista so that you don’t have to activate it and I’ll keep using Beta 2. It may be a huge advance over XP, but the price is too steep. Hell, the price for XP Pro was too steep for me, I just waited until my work’s Volume License shipment came in
On another note. I know people have benchmarked Vista and said that it seems to handle games pretty well, but seriously, you need to have a pretty powerful machine just to see any of the cool effects in Vista. That kind of overhead just cant be good for game play.
The DWM (desktop compositor) turns off when a full-screen D3D app, like a game, comes up. Your game will get the full graphics card to itself.
On the other hand, WDDM drivers are not yet optimized, so things might not be fast for a while. It is also true that the new driver model has some overheads that may require new hardware to truly eliminate.
Vista turns off the DWM (Therefore the fancy effects) during Fullscreen games. Not sure what kind of magic they do for windowed games.
In theory it does. But I am sure yall have read about the 15% hit on DX 9 game performance when compared to XP? That in itself is a big turnoff for me. I mean if I buy an uber machine, I wouldnt want it to run Vista to play games at all because of this slowdown.
True, it’s selective though. Counter-Strike for example, plays horribly on Vista. I went from 100FPS on 1024×768 to 50FPS on 800×600. It really blows.
On the other hands, World of Warcraft seems to play faster and start up faster (Well after ATi RTM drivers) for me.
It seems like things will change over time, Vista isn’t released to consumers yet there is still time for more updated drivers to come out.
The latest ATi drivers fixed a really mean issue when going into sleep mode which also affected my startup/shutdown times. Since the updated it’s been just wonderful and I went from a 3.9 to a 5.2 in Aero’s Rating. (Gaming Graphics however went up from a 3.8 to a 3.9)
Agreed but this is bound to get fixed over time. I agree that drivers will get better and subsequent service packs will be released making it a decent operating system. It already is pretty decent. I have run RC2 as an experiment on a 256 mb machine on a pc which my roommates were using and they could do all of the typical functions a person wants to do, ie watch movies, surf, check email, listen to music etc etc wihtout it being unusably slow for them. Thats great!
But IIRC, Microsoft indicated that no matter what drivers etc come out Vista will be inherently slower on DX 9 games than XP. Since DX 9 games are bound to stay for a while and I do have a lot of favorite games that I will keep playing for a while into the future, this comes as a bad blow to me. Sure the hardware will be much faster, ie the Geforce 8800 gtx and hopefully that will negate the performance losses.
“I’ll just wait for someone to crack Vista so that you don’t have to activate it and I’ll keep using Beta 2. It may be a huge advance over XP, but the price is too steep.”
The price of Vista won’t be constrained to just the $$ that you pay for it.
If Microsoft get their way, you won’t be able to crack it, and you won’t be able to access any “unsanctioned” files on a Vista computer at all.
http://www.kommersant.com/p719683/r_528/
“Another component of DRM that will come with the new Vista operating system will block the files in the user’s computer that have not been licensed by Microsoft. As a result, the user will have to pay for all of those media files and for downloaded software.”
““Microsoft is lobbying for DRM as a national antipiracy standard throughout the world,””
This even reads like you won’t be able to play your existing unDRM’ed media files, and you won’t be able to run any “rogue” (read non-Microsoft) applications such as open-source applications on a Vista machine.
If you wait for Vista to become free enough to be tolerable, you may be waiting a very long time indeed.
Edited 2006-11-08 23:17
This even reads like you won’t be able to play your existing unDRM’ed media files, and you won’t be able to run any “rogue” (read non-Microsoft) applications such as open-source applications on a Vista machine.
I’ve seen numerous posts to this regard, but I have not yet seen any evidence that you can’t play unDRM’d files in Vista. Some have also stated you you can’t rip audio CDs in Vista to unencrypted audio files, even with 3rd party apps, but I haven’t seen any evidence of this either.
In fact, I think about the worst ABM’ers have come up with this time around is something about not being able to run the Home versions in a virtual machine. (It seems that the inability to transfer a license to more than one machine is no longer an issue.)
I have also heard talk (not recently) about the evil HDCP DRM in Vista as an excuse to jump ship. However, I’ve yet to hear anybody explain how you’re going to play HDCP-protected content (for those who want to be able to do so) in an alternative OS. This isn’t even Microsoft’s technology, and you know it’ll be support in OSX eventually as well. It probably won’t work in Linux at all, until DVD Jon gets around to cracking it, then it’ll work everywhere
//I’ve seen numerous posts to this regard, but I have not yet seen any evidence that you can’t play unDRM’d files in Vista. Some have also stated you you can’t rip audio CDs in Vista to unencrypted audio files, even with 3rd party apps, but I haven’t seen any evidence of this either. //
… apart from the article linked.
Note that the text you quoted says only that … the article reads as though you won’t be able to access “content” files that don’t have DRM credentials. This does not mean the article’s implications are correct.
//However, I’ve yet to hear anybody explain how you’re going to play HDCP-protected content (for those who want to be able to do so) in an alternative OS.//
Given that there is no “HDCP-protected content” available locally for me to purchase, I’ve yet to hear anybody explain how I’m going to play HDCP-protected content in any OS at all.
PS: Vista and WMP 11 is very much a “push” technology. Once it has a reasonable market share, then the provisions for disabling access to “unDRM’d” media files might be enabled remotely by Microsoft in one of their now-famous “mandatory security updates”. This however is pure speculation, but one must admit that this is functionality that Hollywood would undoubtedly like Vista to have.
Edited 2006-11-09 05:07
You say that Microsoft has provisions for disabling access to unDRM’ed files in Vista, then you qualify that by saying that “this is pure speculation”? That’s pure FUD, by definition. You have no evidence of these “provisions”, but hide behind “speculation” so that you feel free to spread unsubstantiated FUD of the most ridiculous sort.
And that people actually modded up your tripe reflects poorly on this forum, sadly.
//You say that Microsoft has provisions for disabling access to unDRM’ed files in Vista//
Actually, no I did not.
“This does not mean the article’s implications are correct.
provisions for disabling access to “unDRM’d” media files might be enabled
This however is pure speculation”
Exactly how many caveats do you require in the one post?
PS: As for evidence … the evidence was linked to. This is, after all, what the linked article actually said.
Here, I’ll repeat it for you:
http://www.kommersant.com/p719683/r_528/
“Another component of DRM that will come with the new Vista operating system will block the files in the user’s computer that have not been licensed by Microsoft. As a result, the user will have to pay for all of those media files and for downloaded software.
“Microsoft is lobbying for DRM as a national antipiracy standard throughout the world,” said Alexander Chachava”
Don’t blame me … that IS after all what was reported.
Edited 2006-11-09 10:36
Don’t blame me … that IS after all what was reported.
Plenty of false information is printed. From Iraq having nukes to extraterristrials kidnapping world leaders. Using bogus and easily debunked “reporting” to back up spurrious claims is slimy at best.
//Using bogus and easily debunked “reporting” to back up spurrious claims is slimy at best.//
True. That is why I did not do that, and why I included no less than three caveats in my post pointing out that what was reported may not be reliable.
Nevertheless, it IS what was reported, there is no denying that Microsoft is trying to mandate its DRM and lobbying governments around the world, and the conclusion that “non-DRM’d files will eventually not play any more” does sit well with the observation that there is no discernable reason why a media player should be embedded into the OS and provided with “push” technology for updates other than allowing implementation of a DRM restriction system for media files that users cannot work around by using an alternative player.
My motivation in pointing all this out is to alert end users about how they might be insidiously stripped of their rights, and have to pay Microsoft for doing it to them.
Your motivation for blindly defending anything Microsoft does is … what exactly?
This even reads like you won’t be able to play your existing unDRM’ed media files, and you won’t be able to run any “rogue” (read non-Microsoft) applications such as open-source applications on a Vista machine.
If that would eventually turn out to be true, that would leave only one option for people who need Vista for development purposes, running it in VMs only (with a separate machine for 3d and game development). The question is though that would it automatically cripple all media files or just the ones you try to play with MS apps (i.e. wmp), since if not, that’s no problem at all. Well, this is all just speculation, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Uh, there’s no reason to speculate. A lot of people are running RC2 (including me). I have been playing MP3s, MPGs, WMVs and some other media content without any problems. None of these files have DRM on them. I haven’t yet installed DivX, ffdshow, or XViD, but I have no reason to doubt that they will work.
How exactly do you think the OS is going to determine what files on your computer are media and how to block them? I really don’t understand how anyone who knows a thing about computers can believe this crap.
Uh, there’s no reason to speculate. A lot of people are running RC2 (including me). I have been playing MP3s, MPGs, WMVs and some other media content without any problems. None of these files have DRM on them. I haven’t yet installed DivX, ffdshow, or XViD, but I have no reason to doubt that they will work.
How exactly do you think the OS is going to determine what files on your computer are media and how to block them? I really don’t understand how anyone who knows a thing about computers can believe this crap.
Well, I too don't believe that MS would do anything on this regard (yet) but I think that this is fairly simple to deploy. You just need to write some application/service that checks the MIME-Type of every file being opened (by a media player application or not) and compare against a list of known media formats and if such a file is found, then verify whether it has the proper DRM restrictions in place or not. If it doesn't, then the OS could refuse to give a file handle to the application trying to open it.
I know that this would be quite CPU intensive in most cases and the performance hit would be anything but negligible but such mechanism already exists in the form of antivirus applications that perform heuristic checks on every file being used.
//I know that this would be quite CPU intensive in most cases and the performance hit would be anything but negligible but such mechanism already exists in the form of antivirus applications that perform heuristic checks on every file being used.//
For media files, this detection is far simpler. A media file necessarily contains information which explicitly identifies the encoding of the content, so that players will be able to invoke the correct codec.
There is no need for heuristic checks or signature scans such as virus checkers use, and so there would be no dectectable performance hit to add such an on-access check for media file types.
//A lot of people are running RC2 (including me). I have been playing MP3s, MPGs, WMVs and some other media content without any problems. None of these files have DRM on them. I haven’t yet installed DivX, ffdshow, or XViD, but I have no reason to doubt that they will work.//
That is the case now, when no-one has yet purchased Vista.
AFAIK, WMP 11 and Vista has “push” technology, where Microsoft can “update” the software without your consent. It is in the EULA, I believe.
There are provisions within the irremovable core of the Vista OS to disable access to files stored on the machine … it is called “DRM”. All that is required is to enable an on-access “detector” for media files and trigger the DRM restrictions if it is a non-DRM’d file.
How exactly do you think the OS is going to determine what files on your computer are media and how to block them? I really don’t understand how
Maybe you don’t but still, it wouldn’t be hard to do. Question is, why would they do such thing, it would be so much bad pr in a day that they couldn’t wash it off in a decade. I don’t believe they will do anything like mentioned above, still, speculation is free
Real gamers usually tweak the system and remove all unnecessary overhead. (For example, run through and kill all system services or other products running behind the scene that are extraneous).
I’ve heard performance is decent. Sounds like a solid, if not late, delivery. It will be interesting to see how the user base responds and all the articles that will surely start coming.
It’s been a very long journey, congrats to all the teams!
Been running the betas on my laptop for half a year now, looking forward to getting my hands on the final version.
What, already? Stone me, that was quick.
Just kiddin’ guys.
New nvidia drivers for Linux with good features.. http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-9629.html
That’s news!
//New nvidia drivers for Linux with good features.. http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-9629.html
That’s news!//
Excellent.
AIGLX now enabled for nvidia users with Xorg 7.1 & Compiz/Beryl will now work for nvidia users.
This is very much off-topic for this thread, however.
they could also say: “your copy is finished”
“I installed the new Windows and now my computer is really slow!” Happens every time.
“Enough said
Where is Duke Nukem Forever now?
”
Yeah! I want to run it on my brand new gaming box running MS Vista…
Well, try looking around in the games folder in your shipped Vista
maybe you’ll be lucky 
“Well, try looking around in the games folder in your shipped Vista
maybe you’ll be lucky 
”
No… all there is, is minesweeper, 3D pinball, patience, and “more patience” :p
Its odd that the first major release of windows suddenly does not feel that far away.
At the time I can buy I Vista…Xorg 7.2; XFCE 4.4 Linux 2.6.19 will have been released.
I’m actually quite shocked at how little Microsoft has come; How fast Linux is moving.
After pouring over the releases of Linux the past 6 years its oddly anti-climatic that Vista has been released.
I bought myself an R300 graphics card last night; lb88 pounds if your asking, my first real 3D graphics card. There is a lot of exciting things happening with the R300 driver on linux. I must have read 100 web sites looking at sites describing problems encountered differences in the propriatry drivers vs open source ones. The git submits. Whats happening with AIGLX;Beryl, watched the youtube videos to see what the fuss is about.
Some point whore always posts that that damn link to whats new in Vista. I feel underwhelmed reading it. I notice IE7 is now in XP as is WMP11; The only thing left that could excite me is the Media Center stuff…and not only is MythTV head and shoulders above it, the next version will be out before Vista.BUT its more that that I know that this will we last update till RC1, and people here are advising you should wait till then to upgrade, is Vista not ready for the Desktop. I know that before RC1 I will have 12 large updates to the kernel, 6 large updates to xorg, and many updates to XFCE.
I think windows sluggish development has helped embed itself into the minds of users, who more than not don’t like change, but if you like Microsoft and your technical, you must be bored to tears of XP.
The first DirectX 10 card came out from Nvidia just just shy of lb400. Vista is looking too rich for my blood to even consider. I’m now looking forward to the playstation3.
Sorry for the long post. I just don’t get Vista anymore. I care about its impact, but *as* something to get excited about, its just another launch day among many.
Edited 2006-11-09 09:54
Guess what: Xorg 7.2 merges the hotplug input, xrandr 1.2, and the new drm memory manager.
“After 5 years of development, Windows Vista is finally finished.”
It’s quite optimistic to say Windows Vista is finished, since most software isn’t on their release date.
Vista is so much more than just the graphics. Just check out this video on C9 with Jim Allchin about the Vista RTM:
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=254997
Vista visable benefit is just graphics, *and* extra apps, and a whole load of Microsoft pushing its Monopoly envelope. It will have lots of changes underneath that *may* indirectly benefit the user.
To be absolutely clear. there is *nothing* wrong with it just being graphics. I believe that after the dust settles we will start to see some innovation from 3rd parties with its graphics, perhaps even a revolution on the interface. I know there will be howles of copying but for the first time, a whole host of developers have been introduced to a 3D desktop with widgets.
If it wasn’t for the time frame, it feels old, maybe New graphics would be something to be proud off.
Graphics is the only piller left.
Vista visable benefit is just graphics
You say that as if that is a profound thought, but it is merely a truism: by definition, visible benefits are only graphical in nature.
I was listening to the Allchin interview. One thing he mentioned which I had not heard before was the ability to right click on a file and revert to a previous saved version. He said something about it keeping snapshots of your files. How exactly this works I don’t know but this is definitely a feature that could come in handy for a lot of people.
File versioning in Windows 2003 and Vista uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service. XP used this in a more limited and coarse-grained approach with System Restore Points, but in 2003 and Vista you can indeed revert individual files and folders of your choice. It’s pretty handy.
“Vista is so much more than just the graphics”
Yes! Vista is a way of life! Or was that Apple?
(excuse me for being sarcastic, or trying to be)
Vista will be an improvement to some people, a step backwards for others, and ultimately much less ground-breaking than originally promised.
great news for windows fans, better news for software companies, especially anti-virus companies. It’s a crazy world, on to the next treadmill.
Seriously though, as a linux user this is great news for me. With every release by Ms or Apple, the rewards of these innovations eventually find there way into every operating system via hardware advances. so as long as the top end hardware continues to advance because of bloated software (and I don’t mean that in a negative way, it’s just a fact) , the stuff I used to foam at the mouth over, is now very reasonable… and the crazy beat keeps going on and on.
This will be a big push in the back for all O.S’s to pick up the pace in the “holy software wars” now everyone point themselves to redmond and say thanks.
all the friggin hype and articles about vista finally starting to die off… a few more months worth of reviews of the gold release and then hopefully on line mags an stuff will get back to writing about stuff that actually MATTERS.
My question is what about the other applications that work without DRM such as VLC and I believe WinAmp. Is Vista going to block these programs from working? VLC seemed to actually work the best playing smoother on VistaRC2 than even Linux/BSD. In fact all my favorite cross-platorm apps seemed to work just fine if not better in RC2 such as Firefox, Openoffice and others. To note tho Vista64RC2 did have problems installing flash into Firefox which XP64 did not. So DRM aside…
The real question is will Vista checkin with the mother-ship every time I want to play a DVD or MP3?
Is that ‘work of art’ WGA available for my 2k3-64 server yet? Or will Vista64 introduce this gem finally?
These are the questions inquiring minds would like to know..
My question is what about the other applications that work without DRM such as VLC and I believe WinAmp. Is Vista going to block these programs from working?
Of course not. You can play non-DRM files just fine in Windows Media Player as well. The only difference with regards to DRM with Vista is that Vista supports more formats, such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (and thus their DRM mechanisms).
The real question is will Vista checkin with the mother-ship every time I want to play a DVD or MP3?
No, it does not.
//No, it does not.//
At this time it does not.
AFAIK, in the EULA, Microsoft reserve the right to alter that behaviour without your consent as an end user.
Hi, do we know if it will be possible to upgrade from RC2 or only from RC1 ?