It’s been only a mere six months since its first unveiling, but Microsoft has already announced that Windows Phone 7 has been released to manufacturing. This means device makers can start tuning the software to their hardware, leaving plenty of time to release devices before the holiday season.
The news was announced by Microsoft’s Terry Myerson. “Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released,”he details, “We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes. We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.”
Changes were made according to user feedback during the testing phase, and considering all these testing hours put in it ought to be relatively solid release. Whether the market will actually accept yet another mobile operating system is another story.
“This has been one of the most incredible product development efforts I’ve ever been a part of,” Myerson writes, “Today’s milestone is exciting not just because of what we’ll deliver to customers later this year, but how it sets us up for success over the long term in the mobile space… We’re really just getting started.”
Microsoft has a lot riding on this. Also, I think Steve Ballmer’s future pretty much hinges upon this launch.
Hate the idea of windows on their phones.
Windows is associated with
– viruses
– problems
– annoyances
– complexity
– crashes
– waiting
And lots more. Why didn’t MS create a knew brand, like they did with Xbox or Kin?
It might have worked or not, but I guess the Windows brand is really bad because everybody has an idea about what it means.
A new product may not do very well. The way MS hopes to get in the game with phone operating systems is to leverage its existing branding.
Their loss.
I associate Windows with stability, flexibility, and a huge software base. And, yes, while keeping a straight face, security.
Now, before you start laughing, Windows 7 is very stable, secure, and once it’s been coupled with MS Security Essentials, boosts security and takes care of much of the malware problem.
Instability and bad security stems from the Win9x era + uneducated users.
Complexity? Compared to… having to manually add modelines by hand? Or horizontal/vertical timings? I know that hasn’t been necessary in a long time, but still…
I’ve been using NT on my desk since NT4, even for gaming, and have been quite satisfied.
I do and I have a point or, should I say, vulnerabilities:
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-continues-to-w…
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Microsoft-tool-for-DLL-vulne…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Attackers-exploit-DLL-vu…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/lnk-vulnerability-in-Win…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/lnk-vulnerability-Micros…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-s-August-patch…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Quarrels-about-new-Windo…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Windows-Help-used-as-att…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-warns-of-criti…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-closes-critica…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-to-fix-critica…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Revised-patch-for-Window…
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Microsoft-finally-to-clo…
To be honest. I’d go mad if I were forced to use Windows. There have been no months during this year without any news regarding a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Windows.
Especially the current DLL hi-jack vulnerability would drive me nuts. Microsoft announced that they’re not going to fix it. Obviously, Windows has a fundamental design problem here and fixing the bug would probably mean patching a lot of applications.
See:
http://www.exploit-db.com/dll-hijacking-vulnerable-applications/
As a Windows user you should be aware of all these problems and admit that there are a lot of security issues with Windows!
Adrian
Swings and round-abouts in the end; all operating systems have vulnerabilities of some sort in the end – you can either live in a state of denial, a state of hyper paranoia rushing from one operating system to the next or simply accept that fallible humans write complex software and there will always be bugs and problems somewhere along the line. The DLL being the most problematic but now a bug fix has been issued and it is up to the individual software vendors to release updates for their software as well.
It is of zero benefit this tit of tat rubbish that occurs with people behaving like 5 year olds jumping up and down pointing whilst screaming, “look! look!”.
True. I did never deny at any time that other operating systems have vulnerabilities as well. The point is, that the number of _critical_ ones in Windows over just the last months (not years) is just tremendously high. It would start to annoy me if I had to worry about the security of my computer each week over and over again, not being able to fix the problem myself (as opposed to wrong configuration or missing AV updates for example).
No, this not true. The problem has not been resolved yet. True, one can simply remove the CWD from the search paths for DLLs, however, after that, dozens of Windows applications will stop working. And it’s quite ridiculous to blame individual software vendors when the operating system has a fundamental design flaw. Even Microsoft applications like Office are affected by this vulnerability and they still haven’t fixed their apps. This is really embarrassing.
This is how you depict it. The fact is, that there are people who use their computers for other things than gaming and browsing the internet, they’re doing serious work. If you do the accounting of your company with your computer, you will pay a lot more attention to security issues like these and naturally want an operating system which is not prone to so many attacks. Because once your computer is hacked or torn down, you can lose quite a lot of money for not being able to do accounting for a few days. That can bring your company to a complete still.
I remember when I was a sysadmin as a student job at my old university and we had to manage 500 Windows machines. The university has a subscription for McAfee Enterprise AV. From one day to another, McAfee killed all WindowsXP machines running due to accidentally recognizing substantial Windows system files as being infected. Dozens of people were going crazy because they couldn’t work that day and we had to fix all affected machines manually because these couldn’t boot anymore. Of course, it’s McAfee who is to blame here. But the fact that it’s so easy to kill a Windows machine from outside and the fact that alternative operating systems usually don’t require AV software speaks quite against Windows.
Sorry, professional experience. Not more.
Adrian
Edited 2010-09-02 10:05 UTC
I would just like to point out again that the .DLL vulnerability has been fixed.
A tool is available to prevent loading of DLLs over SMB or WebDAV shares. While this doesn’t completely erase the risk, it does mitigate it substantially. While DLL load order is a poor design choice, it is not critical. Now, to be affected, I have to load a file from a directory ON MY OWN DISK that also contains a malicious DLL. As I certainly don’t place DLLs in such directories, the appearance of them means my system is already compromised.
Well in my experience it is only easy to kill a Windows machine if it isn’t locked down properly.
The real problem is that too many organizations are lax about user permissions. Admin accounts are given out like candy and outside devices are allowed to connect to intranets. Then on top of it all you have organizations that take months to roll out security updates and are too cheap to upgrade to Win7.
As for that Mcafee upgrade fiasco that was no surprise to those of use who have been saying to avoid Mcafee and Symantec for years. That wasn’t the fault of Windows, it was the fault of AV software from a company known for its bloated and intrusive software.
Mcafee can’t even be relied upon to uninstall properly. Just look at this guide at Kaspersky:
http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208280258
Edited 2010-09-02 20:13 UTC
Genuine question : what’s the problem about admin account ?
I mean which vulnerability is worse ? Letting software mess with those installed programs in program files that are provided with an installation CD/exe anyway ? Or letting software mess around with user files, that commonly only exist in one copy in the world ?
Admin rights are close to nothing when you think of it, except a tool for sysadmins to exercise their tyrannic powers
The less lines of code there are, the less security flaws there are.
Let’s consider how much the installed base of a modern operating systems weight :
Windows and OSX : 10+GB
Linux : 3+GB
If I were a linux fanatic, I’d say that this means that linux statistically has less vulnerabilities that the two others. Instead, I’ll say that those numbers are frightening about all of those operating systems.
Do you need the quantity of information necessary to store 4 movies in reasonably watchable quality for something that most people will only use for browsing files and websites, organizing pictures and viewing multimedia files, and two-three other uses ?
For this reason, I’ll say that you’re wrong, because it’s not an inherent flaw of a modern operating system, meaning an operating system which runs on modern computers and satisfies modern use cases. A modern operating system sticking to what it should do would probably only weight a few megabytes (drivers included), a hundred megabytes as a maximum, and have little to no vulnerabilities of any kind.
As much as I dislike the iPhone ecosystem, I must admit that Apple did the operating system right : include what will be used by everyone, let users download the rest.
Edited 2010-09-03 08:22 UTC
With the exception of the .lnk and the .dll vulnerabilities, those affect older, pre-Vista versions of Windows, or affect software that isn’t included in a default Windows install. If there are any that (besides the aforementioned vulnerabilities) that apply to Windows 7, I didn’t see them, as I feel clicking 6 or 7 links from a single burst of link spam is well beyond generous.
All you have pointed out is that software has vulnerabilities. I could also generate a list of vulnerabilities that effect various Linux distributions, especially if I go back 9 years (the age of XP), or 10 1/2 years (the age of Windows 2000)
The .lnk vulnerability is not so bad. All the shortcuts on my system are created either by installation programs (which I have already trusted to make changes to my system), or by myself. As I have yet to download an app that did not need to be installed, but still included shortcuts, finding such an app would seem suspicious to me.
The .dll is not so bad. It requires a healthy bit of social engineering, requiring a person to browse to a malicious SMB or WebDAV server with Windows Explorer, and double click a file to open it, then click through various warning dialogs about the danger of opening unknown content from untrusted sources.
And, Microsoft has already released a tool that disallows DLL loading from network shares.
The iPhone has the interface experience and style as well as App ecosystem momentum, Android has openness and extensibility, RIM has business integration. What will Windows Phone have as a killer feature? I suspect they will heavily focus on integration with microsoft networks, office, and of course XBox which we’ve already seen.
Curious to see if that works out.
They’ll also use the Android approach of giving it to all and sundry and letting the handset manufacturers and telcos do their marketing for them, so as long as it’s half decent, and it seems to be, it will sell. The AT&T tie-in is undoubtedly restricting iPhone sales in the US and this will give those who want an iPhone but won’t go AT&T another viable option.
This could be a real indicator as to who really gives a crap about openness on their phone, and who just wants an iPhone’ish device on someone other than AT&T…
iPhone-ish?
Droid-X seems to fit that bill *VERY* well. And on Verizon… (yes I know)
/me is looking at his right now.
WinPho 7 requires manufacturers to follow the minimum spec for the software to be installed and it requires that the manufactures leave the UI alone (they are using the ZuneHD UI) and requires the manufactures to let MS push the software updates to the handsets (since you have a reduced set of hardware to install it on, this is doable)
so, you have the restrictions for the device makers, making it more like the iPhone, and you get an android like app store (meaning more open to submitting) and you do not have to program is fake java. and the programs do not run in a single thread, animations have their own thread for the entire phone, guaranteeing a smooth interaction with the user.
Wait, which phone OS runs their OS single-threaded? Ok, I’ve not developed anything for Blackberry, haven’t even looked at their SDK, but Java by nature is not single-threaded (though Oracle is upset to some degree because Google has forked from the official Java standard, besides the reason of money directly for licensing) and I know iOS is NOT limited to single-threaded apps by a long shot, so, is WebOS single-threaded? I’m truly curious about that one!
There is a difference between simple mutli-thread operation and having a thread JUST for the UI animations. Applications operations cannot block the UI animations making it a lot smoother, even when multiple applications are running at the same time since only one application has the UI on a smart phone at any one time.
Xbox live achievements and games.
Microsoft knows they have at least 25 million people that might be the same. (gold subscribers)
Yeah, I am on that one closed platform and dying to get locked into another! Walled gardens ftw! Prices will rise and freedom will be limited, but what do I care, bread and games is all I need.
Humanity is doomed.
For people who just want to talk on the phone and maybe play a couple games once in a while there is no walled garden.
It’s just a phone with a handy little store.
That’s all it is.
Your metaphor is not universal.
I program just about every day and I could care less about being able to load outside code on my phone anymore than loading outside code on my Blu-ray player. My laptop is my portable code executor, my phone is for going BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. My last phone wasn’t a smartphone and I could only buy a limited selection of Java games from the cell company. Perhaps you would have described it as a Nazi death camp?
Edited 2010-09-02 04:30 UTC
“my phone is for going BLAH”
I’m curious – if all you wanted in a cell phone is the ability to talk, why pay extra for a smartphone at all? Why not just get the free phone that comes with a 10-key, or a Jitterbug-like device with rock-solid voice and not much else?
I say this honestly, having used my beloved Samsung flip phone for 5 years just to talk (that dang thing just would… not… die!). It wasn’t until I bought a Nokia N900 last Christmas that my laptop fell into relative disuse. When I can run virtually the exact same apps on a computer that’s with me 24/7, including my library of custom Python apps that run my life, I only need the laptop for heavy typing or when I need a bigger (well, 10″ screen.
Just curious.
I bought a N900 15 days ago. I love it. That tablet is da bomb. I installed libqt4-dev from the SDK repository and I compiled qmake and moc (if someone need, I can provide the binaries). I can develop and compile QT C++ programs ON DEVICE! I can’t think about any other device of that size that can do that. It really is da bomb.
Now that being said, the N900 sucks as a phone. It’s a computer, not a phone. I still have my old S40 phone and I still use it to receive and make phone calls. Weeks (literally) of battery life, tiny size, solidity, price, etc… The N900 does not compare with my ^a‘not30 (unsubsidized) S40 phone. I use my N900 in the train and the subway to surf the web and develop software but I don’t always carry it. I always have my S40 phone.
Edited 2010-09-02 13:27 UTC
Well, sure – the N900 is a full mobile computer that runs a passable phone app. Android is a little less computer, a little better phone app (based on my son’s Vibrant and wife’s Cliq); the iPhone even less computer, more phone (based on several friends experiences).
None are as good of a voice-phone as my ond Samsung or (apparently) your S40.
So, if all the OP cares about is voice, why buy a smartphone?!?
That isn’t all I want, talking is just the primary reason for having it. I also like having a mini browser and I’ll play a game once in a while. The point is that it is primarily a phone to me and not something that is restrictive.
The only walls here are in the minds of people who seem to think that limited execution is a restriction for everyone. If a device meets your needs 100% then there is no restriction. The restriction only exists for those whose needs are not being met.
It’s like calling a car that doesn’t have 4 wheel drive a walled garden. For people that don’t care about 4 wheel drive there is no walled garden. They are having their needs met with 2 wheel drive.
I like the iphone because:
1. It has a mini browser
2. The game selection is far better than Android
What would I gain by going with Android? For me it would be going from a garden of high quality garden of games to a half-assed ones. I’d also lose offline movies which I like for airplane travel. Yes I know Android can play movies offline but there isn’t as similar service whereby I can just click on a movie rental and have it download and charge my account.
Well you could surf the 50% of the websites that use flash and you could change your battery when it dies. The iPhone battery does not last long when watching movies. You could also transfer your movies from your PC or from a friend’s PC easily, or via bluetooth. You could also put your movies on your memory card and have twice as much movies to watch when you are travelling.
Freedom is not only for developers, normal people benefit from it as well.
Not worth ditching the game selection and movie rentals.
The battery issue sucks but you can get it changed for about $30. Since I upgrade every 2 years it isn’t a big deal.
I don’t keep an archive of movies. I don’t pirate and I’m not going to waste my time ripping a dvd especially when I use netflix and watch Blu-rays. With itunes it is click click download watch offline. Android does not have a comparable service, end of story.
These are movie rentals, as in I could rent a couple on the rare occasion that I have a long flight.
No we are talking about features, not freedom. Just because a toaster has a bagel setting does not mean the user has been granted a greater sense of freedom. For people who don’t eat bagels there is zero gain.
You also didn’t touch upon a major benefit of the iphone which is the game selection. The Android does not have the same support from major game developers like iD software and EA games. Beneath a Steel Sky remastered is one of the best adventures games I have played in years and it is only on the iphone. Yes I know the original is free on pc but it is not the remastered version which contains improvements and better animations.
I do not recognize the Stallmanology definition of freedom. To me freedom is being able to choose a device that fits your needs. Switching to Android would be a net loss for me. There are aspects of the iphone that I do not like such as the battery and software but the game selection and movie rental service more than make up for it.
It is your opinion that I lose freedom by using it but it is my opinion that your concept of freedom is warped and inherited from a loony ex-programmer who has compared proprietary developers to criminals and ate his own toejam in front of an audience of students.
Edited 2010-09-02 21:44 UTC
No, certainly it’s not! That is not the point. The point is that you would gain something with more freedom. I was just pointing out that the iPhone is not perfect and does not cover all your needs. I’m pretty sure it does not. Going to Android, you would loose many things and you would gain other things. You made it sound like you thought that the iPhone had everything and Android had nothing.
I was talking about carrying a replacement battery so if can last twice as long. When the first battery is exhausted, you put the other one in. That is what I do with my N900. You can’t do that with the iPhone.
Again, with more freedom you could have iTunes on Android and have it all. Android lacks features of the iPhone and the iPhone lacks features of Android. Their walled gardens sucks for everybody.
No I was talking about freedom. The iPhone has a battery, bluetooth, can connect to a PC and can run flash. All of this is just locked by law.
I could install all that on a N900, but I can’t because I lack freedom. My N900 would be capable of running iOS AND has a removable battery.
There are several freedoms. You dismiss the Sallmanology freedom because you have the freedom to choose your device. Both freedoms and not exclusive.
The wise man shows the moon and the fool watch the finger. You can bash the man all you want but his point still stand.
What does any of this have to do with with freedom?
Do you at least agree that we could have had this discussion without using the word freedom? We could simply list the features of the iphone and then agree that it meets my needs better than Android.
The iphone doesn’t have a replaceable battery. Android has this feature.
The iphone has a better game selection. Android has many features but the iphone has an advantage here.
There is no reason to bring Stallmanology rhetoric into the discussion. When you buy a toaster with a bagel setting you don’t ask for a toaster with the freedom to toast bagels. It’s more accurately described as a feature, not a freedom.
The finger didn’t point at the moon. It was used to scoop up some toejam and then it went into his mouth. A touching maxim is not going to change the fact that the guy is a nutter. Who yells at a kid over saying Linux instead of GNU/Linux? Or refuses to surf the web because it violates the “freedoms” that he declared as part of his own personal war against proprietary software?
There, you do it again. I used a metaphor (with a finger and a moon) to show you something (that what the man talks about is what you should care about, not what he does with his fingers). Instead of looking at what I show you, you just stick to the finger. It’s not about the finger, you fool.
The point of all this is that freedom is a feature that normal people benefit from, not just software developers and that you would benefit from more freedom, too.
Sorry if freedom talk gets on your nerve but there is no better term.
Just wanted to say a thing : if you say this…
…you’re not an average user anymore.
Just about everyone owns pirated movies (except for some geeks like you and me). The sole exception is those that prefer streaming, which requires the use of a special player coded in Flash which is not available on the iPhone.
Well, y’know, re-reading your original post, that’s what you said the first time. Guess I was asleep at the keyboard.
Freedom is exceptionally high priority to me, but of course others’ priorities are their own and it’s not my place to criticize. I’m just glad we have several very strong choices now – and more this fall.
So I lose freedom by going with the iphone?
I own an xbox 360, do I lose freedom by using it?
Would I maximize my freedom by throwing these devices away and living in the woods?
Or do I have to buy freedom[1] sanctioned devices? Can you not see how batshit crazy this all is?
[1] Non-standard, relative definition. See Stallman’s guide to words he redefined for further details.
Wow. Over-sensitive much?
Yes. Yes. No. No. And you are raving incoherently.
I’ve never met Richard Stallman, but the probability is high that he’s less offensive than you.
I prefer that people have choices. I don’t find that *any* type of crazy. Sorry you do, and that it causes you to launch into ridiculously excessive rants.
“Live in the woods”? Seriously?!?
Goodbye.
But then why would such people be stupid enough to spend 500+^a‘not (don’t know the $ price of current smartphones) in a phone that hardly lasts two days of battery life, coupled with a keypad that’s harder to use, instead of just buying a $100 nokia/samsung/sony/whatever device that works better, lasts longer (in all senses of the expression), is more resistant to everyday life, and globally is just better for that use ?
The “it only costs 1^a‘not if you subscribe for two years on a 50^a‘not/month plan” is not a valid argument in my opinion. I refuse to admit that adult members of my race are stupid enough to decide to buy a phone first and then discover how much they lose each month.
The iphone is only $200 in the US with a 2 year plan and at AT&T the cheapest Android is $130. Both plans require a minimum $15 per month data service.
So we are talking a $70 difference or $35 a year more for the iphone.
But who cares even if people in some other part of the world paid full price. Android alternatives have only been competitive recently and do not offer 1-1 functionality. Who even cares if some people spent $500 because they think it looks cool. They still probably derive a lot of entertainment from it.
If you want to complain about humans and silly spending then you should start with women’s shoes. Paying $500 for shoes that are not at all designed around the shape of the foot is the real joke. It’s funny but also good for the economy. Consider it a voluntary tax on savings.
Edited 2010-09-03 15:00 UTC
No, no, there’s a misunderstanding there. What I’m talking about is not android devices, it’s regular, “dumb” phones. Those that cost less than $100 *without* getting into a 2-year contract at premium price.
Edited 2010-09-03 15:13 UTC
If you’re at the helm of any heavy machinery I’d be inclined to agree.
Android market / Chrome Web Store
Apple App Store / Game centre(?)
Microsoft Xbox Live
Is humanity still doomed is Sony add’s a Playstation store to their phones? Android + PSN would be an awesome games phone.
The PS3 uses openGL right? that should be possible on the right hardware.
Why would any of these major players use someone else’s store that gives a competitor money?
I just wonder. The biggest challenge for Microsoft will be marketing. Consumers have been bombarded with ads from Apple, RIM, and any variety of Droid flavors. MS is not really known for inspirational promotional campaigns. The mess that was Zune and the failed music stores come to mind. What kind of killer app could MS come up with that could cause a shift in the market place? The Kin experience is not going to inspire handset makers and service providers, unless MS throws mega bucks into play. I tend to think that MS will have a little splash in a big pond with this.
zune is a mess?
the HD is doing very well for itself.
Bahahahahahaha. Yeah sure.
Have you ever tried the Zune HD? Probably not.
Are you having a larf?
Please tell us all where exactly outside the USA that the Zune is ‘doing very nicely’?
Certainly not in Europe. You know that place on the other side of ther Atlanic that has more consumers than the USA.
It might be the bees knees but MS knows that it won’t sell over here (apart from a few MS fanbois that is)
Apple, Android & RIM have the smartphone market pretty well sewn up.
My company make Apps for the iPhone/iPad, Android and soon for the Blackberry.
When the idea of porting then to Windows came up, almost all the marketing dept fell about laughing.
We may do it eventually but not for at least a year. Android Tablets and Blackberry’s are going to be far more profitable (Even if our apps are free) for a long time to come.
What I fear is that MS will make Exchange integration from all other platforms apart from their own such a dogs breakfast that they will literally force business users away from their Crackberries & iPhones etc onto MS devices. Now that would be a real backward step.
Actually you can say that Symbian has the market pretty well sewn up. Apple, Android and RIM cover some holes in the Symbian market.
XBLA games will really help. That and MS Office integration.
The one certain thing about the mobile market is tht it is uncertain. If anything android may help MS out…its shown that real players other than Apple exists. Instead of the knee jerk iphone purchase people will see android and winpho phones sitting together at the carrier’s store. That may even the playing field.
That being said I’ve played with one of those sprint 4g phones and it’s a pretty appealing platform.
The problem MS has is that it can’t really charge much for the OS itself since I doubt android licenses are very steep. They’ll have a slight uphill with the carriers and phone manufacturers
Edited 2010-09-02 05:10 UTC
They’re only charging $15 but they get a cut of app sales.
license fee overhead of android is apparently $0 for manufacturers. Considering handset makers move units in the millions this initial cost itself doesn’t help microsoft.
With MS requiring all the handsets to look and act alike on the software side truly forces commoditization on the handset manufacturers who might consider tweaking android themselves to get a leg up over the other guys. This may be MS’s achilles heel…trying to ride the fence between apple’s holistic model and google’s totally open model.
It would be interesting to see software license + support costs over the life of a handset using the android model compared with the winpho model.
Edited 2010-09-02 18:28 UTC
$15 is unlikely to make a difference given the price of the phone. A lot of people would gladly pay $15 on the assumption that it since it is made by MS it will sync easily with outlook contacts.
And MS can always lower the price if manufacturers balk since the bulk of their profits are going to be coming from Live sales.
Or it might work out for them by attracting developers that are fed up with Android’s fragmentation problem but also don’t want to deal with Apple.
Support costs are certainly an issue with Android. God knows how many angry emails these cell companies have received over upgrade issues. Google should have tied updates to store access. I’d like to see both Wp7 and MeeGo do well, Android is a mess from Google being so lax about standards.
Interesting speculative post about the money model:
http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/market-insight-top.pag?docid=1868…
Wont make any difference. Android, iOS are miles ahead.
You do realize that iOS was miles ahead of Android until the Droid explosion of the past few months?
Ahem… no it was not only the usability was…
usability == miles ahead
And Symbian is kilometers ahead of both iOS and Android.
yeah… because I like all those symbian smart phones that work like mobile PC and connect to all my great web services… oh… no… symbian does not do that.
It does do that. Inform yourself.
Light years, sir, you mean light years
WP7 hasn’t even been released yet. Are you some type of auto-posting troll script that malfunctioned and posted too early?
I haven’t had any bad experiences with it (malware, virus) since I started using Windows over a decade ago (well over a decade ago).
I’ve had no more “blue screens of death” than I’ve had crashes on Mac OS, Mac OS X and Linux.
And now, Windows even looks good.
Well, my experiences are all over the place on this.
A competent geek with admin access can certainly make Win XP or 7 a reasonably compelling experience – minimal crashes, nice apps, a little eye candy (in 7), etc.
When corporations enforce their standards and lock things down, though, you start to see all kinds of horror stories emerge – routine crashes, remarkably poor performance, inability to automate tasks because “it violates our security policy”, etc. I’ve come to believe that at least part of Windows’ reputation for bleh-ness comes courtesy of the Corporate mindset.
Linux suffers less from this (we do use both on the desktop), partly because the Unix family has always been multi-user, and have never by default let the user run as admin (Ubuntu doesn’t even *allow* admin login by default, using sudo instead – though we use RHEL with a little side SUSE, of course). Corporate IT types thus often don’t attempt to prevent users from messing with the path or putting scripts in ~/bin or whatever. And in practice, there’s much less risk of malware exploiting those practices because the platform is only a few percent of the Corporation’s desktops – except in targeted attacks, of course.
So I think Windows’ reputation is partly a price of their success painting a malware target on their forehead (“bummer of a birthmark, dude”), and partly the result of over-empowering IT minions with too many security options and not enough guidance for their effective use.
So yeah, Windows *can* look good. But in the Corporate world, more often than not, it just doesn’t – and the result is a tarnished reputation.
MOST of my experience is in the corporate world with Windows because (up until 7) I have been a MacOS, BeOS and even FreeBSD user at HOME.
Perhaps our IT crew is just good at what they do, but I’ve never heard anyone at a meeting or in coffee conversation even mention that their PC crashed.
Don’t suppose you’d mind posting their contact info?
That’s remarkable, given with the numerous IT conferences I attend and the long list of horror stories I encounter. Kudos to your IT staff.
They are kind of geeky.
That coming from a me (a software engineer at said company). Our IT group spans HP Unix, Redhat Linux to Windows … with individuals who are more or less expert in each. They do a great job.
So maybe that is the problem with other companies, perhaps their policies are not set up correctly or some thing like that, I don’t know.
I just know that every OS has its strengths and weaknesses and that in general, if properly configured and used, is safe enough and reliable enough. Even the venerable VMS had flaws (albeit difficult to find and exploit) that I worked on/fixed when I was there over a decade ago.
Isn’t that equal to about 970.32 years?
Or am I missing something?
Or is this conversion tool I found not converting hours to years correctly?
If only there was a way that more than one person could do the testing and increase the hours concurrently…
LOL
I can’t think of a more inappropriate OS for my phone than Windows. Am I supposed to fight malware on my phone now, too? On the desktop or laptop, MSE is a good security offering — and it’s NOT bundled, so you have to know to download and install it yourself. Am I supposed to manually handle phone security as well?
To those in this thread who say they’ve had good experiences with Windows security … good for you. But if you were an IT pro who had to support Windows users I can guarantee you’d feel differently.
Competition is good, so I’m glad MS has joined the phone fray. Let’s just make sure they don’t get a monopoly like they have with PCs.
considering winpho 7 is NOT windows on a phone, your point is moot.
MSE is coming out soon for mobile devices. So is Kaspersky mobile edition. You’ll also want to make sure to keep your relatives on limited accounts. Just scan all your phones once a month to be safe.
J/k it’s a different software stack dude. It runs on ARM cpus. It would’t know what to do with an x86 virus any more than Linux.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/c…
the current CTP is pretty good, looking forward to the final release in ________ days
i wouldn’t buy a phone with windows phone 7 not even if it was cheaper than android
i suspect that wp7 phones will only sync with windows pcs
Edited 2010-09-02 20:26 UTC
and they take your women and kill the babies and cause world hunger!!!
and force feed you with atheism
While technically Windows is not a new player in the phone arena, this is the first real attempt by Microsoft to make a full touch-based interface OS and I welcome their efforts. The more competition in the smartphone market, the better off we are. And I have to give credit to Microsoft for realizing that no hacks added on to Windows Mobile were going to remedy this situation. For a company that prides itself on backward compatibility, I know that had to be a hard decision to make.
However, with all of that said, I could never see myself owning a phone with this OS. The interface looks awkward and wastes space all over the place. The home screen looks like an abstract game of Tetris with it’s weird pattern of oddly-sized boxes and only text to identify the purpose of each box. Icons were developed decades ago on user interfaces because humans recognize pictures easier than they do text. So why aren’t icons good enough for Microsoft anymore? And why is the text so huge? Are these phones being marketed to senior citizens or the vision-impaired? And why do they have huge headings for each app that take up nearly 1/3 of the screen? I don’t need a huge text banner to tell me that I’m in the photo app – I can figure that out by the fact that the screen is FULL OF PHOTOS!
I think Microsoft is slowly getting better at designing interfaces, but it looks like they still have quite a way to go. In any event, I welcome more smartphone platforms and hope that Microsoft improves the interface after getting the appropriate feedback.