Biggest download in Internet History

[chrisclick]

Hi peeps just searching google and i found that when they realesed the Vista beta 2 for free download it was recoreded as the biggest download in history

Some say some servers have broken down and som even maxed out. We all know who to blame for the the slow down on our net searches... ;)

Hopefully they dont bring out a new OS... Who knows the whole internet around the world might just go "BANG" and never be seen again for weeks, months or even years ARGHH DECADES. ;)

[Anogar]

A bunch of my colleagues have been tasked with testing out Vista compatability with out hardware, so I've gotten to play with it a fair amount. I'm pretty unimpressed by the UI changes, they're just not that great. Dunno. Kinda disappointed.

[GW02]

Vista was good when they announced it. The evangelists threw in all sorts of stuff they knew would never get done but which sounded impressive to convince people to hold off on switching to other OS's. One restart, 4 years, and many feature cuts later, it's looking a lot more like XP SP3 than the amazing next-gen system Vista looked like way back when.

Blackcomb looks to have died the same death already, and we don't even know what it's like!

[Templarian]

Cool, it was a large download. Sadly all the changes in vista can't be seen yet its all the little things they are doing with it. Full bluetooth native support for one no more dumb drivers that don't work and fail to install properly. DX10 FTW and new kernal. (I can't wait to see how pocket pc's get upgraded in the response if they keep making the things).

[teet]

I guess it probably would be the biggest download seeing as how so many people use Windows. The download is several gigabytes right? That could add up in a hurry.

I haven't had a chance to mess with Vista myself, but another tech at the shop told me that she wasn't very impressed with it. To be perfectly honest, XP will probably be the last Windows OS that I use on a regular basis. I just graduated from college this year and will be starting med school in a month. XP should be supported for my 4 years of med school and after that Linux (or another Free OS) should be mature enough for full-time, 100% desktop use. Ubuntu fulfills 95% of my needs as is. Okay, enough plugs for Linux.

-teet

[GW02]

Cool, it was a large download. Sadly all the changes in vista can't be seen yet its all the little things they are doing with it. Full bluetooth native support for one no more dumb drivers that don't work and fail to install properly. DX10 FTW and new kernal. (I can't wait to see how pocket pc's get upgraded in the response if they keep making the things).

Drivers still exist. Oh, trust me, drivers are just as much a pain as they used to be. In fact, they're a pain already since you have to find win2k3 drivers for them to work with Vista because Vista's entire codebase is based off of the Win2k3 kernel. That also nullifies your last point about the new kernel. The vast majority of underlying code for Vista is still old code. This is part of the reason it's so disappointing how it's taken them so long to release this severely trimmed down Windows. Microsoft is currently in the phase where it's pushing bugs off to Blackcomb/Vienna already. Even User Interface bugs. And Blackcomb/Vienna is supposed to be the revolutionary release that completely revamps the user experience (whereas Vista was supposed to be the technologies release). Vista itself is still written in last-generation COM+ and isn't nearly as expansive under the hood as they promised. The original Three Pillars of Longhorn technology: Indigo, Avalon, WinFS, it's all been either trimmed or destroyed. In fact, WinFS has secretly been replaced by another pillar since it's been so completely mangled.

Did you know that Avalon is much more than just a shiny new GUI? Or, it was anyway. Avalon was also about uniting the presentation layers. In current and legacy Windows systems, the presentation layer was a mess. GDI, MFC, DirectX, and a whole mess of other different technologies and services, all designed to render a whole mess of different things to the screen. The reason Microsoft made a big deal (and rightly so) out of the fact that the entire Windows GUI was to be rendered through the DirectX layer wasn't just for the sake of prettier effects and transparency. The point of doing so was that the graphics presentation layer of the system needed to be drastically cleaned up. A miniscule example: if you ever tried to take a screenshot of windows media player, or any video player, chances are what you got back was a black window. This is only one tiny side effect of the discombobulation of the Windows presentation layer.

Avalon was supposed to take care of all that. Everything would be required to run through the same system. Clean, elegant, simple. But Microsoft kept pushing the damn thing back. Push. Push. Next thing you know, there isn't time to give developers the ability to merge their products into the new system. Shoot. So guess what the presentation layer in Vista looks like now? Same as it did before. A mess of different layers. Same problem. No solution.

Not only that! Avalon had a whole subset of technologies for text presentation. Document presentation. APIs to ease developer use and display. All gone.

And WinFS? Don't even get me started on WinFS, right. WinFS was supposed to be FAR more than Mac OS X's Spotlight. WinFS was supposed to complete subsume the folders system. For technical people like us, this means little, or even means a step back in the system. Files being sorted logically rather than physically? You've gotta be kidding me. But put yourself in the shoes of your grandmother. Imagine the "My Pictures" folder actually functioning the way it sounds like it should, a place where you can go and suddenly see all the pictures you have on your system, not just a specially labelled folder like it is on current systems. Suddenly, a huge roadblock in learning how computers work for the beginning user is eliminated. Want a file? There's an easy place to look for it. A revolution in ease of use, a significant victory for the inexperienced computer user. Throw on top of that improved metadata, instant indexed searching, and a whole slew of other features built on top of the WinFS engine, not to mention developer extensibility through APIs, and WinFS sounded really, really cool.

Oops. A little too ambitious. Or maybe internal corporate resistance. Who knows? It got cut from the release. But don't worry, WinFS will still be coming to XP and Vista as a post-release download, right? Nope, now it's just dead. Never going to see the light of day. Ever.

As for DirectX 10, there's a dirty little secret about it. The version of DirectX 10 shipping with Vista is a really limited version built mostly upon DX9 technology primarily to enable the GUI to function. The actual release of the full DirectX 10 for games won't be for another year yet. It'll still be called DirectX 10. You might not ever even know when the crippled version becomes the full version. But DirectX 10 definitely is not part of Vista, not in the way that it's been promised.


You can talk about the little things, sure. Even if a lot of them aren't really little things, but in fact more phantom promises. But Longhorn has been six years and two restarts in the making. It wasn't even supposed to exist, right? It was supposed to be Whistler (XP), then straight to Blackcomb, the user experience revolution where everything we know about how we interact with computers was supposed to be thrown out the window, including the Start button. They brought Longhorn back from the dead (it was first started when the Win98 explorer shell went out the door to RTM then stopped) as an interim release. Now there's even a codename Fiji to cushion the gap between Longhorn and Blackcomb. But that was supposed to be okay. Blackcomb was a little ambitious, both for Microsoft and the end user. Better to split the revolution into two parts. Better to ease the backend of the new-generation OS in first, then when developers and users are comfortable, drop the radical new approach to computing on their doorsteps.

But that's all gone now. With Longhorn, Microsoft had a serious chance of putting a foundation for something truly great, something innovative. Something fresh. Microsoft is in dire need for such a product (and I daresay Office 12 is one such product, judging from the completely amazing beta). Microsoft needed Longhorn to be all it promised, it needed it to live up to the featureset, because with the promised featureset, it would have something in users' hands which would deny its competitors all the advantages their OS's offer over Windows, a list which is frankly growing at a remarkable pace. Longhorn could have put Microsoft back on top. Vista fails. Microsoft fails.

A disappointment? An understatement.

[Templarian]

... im tempted to quote that. I know there are driver bugs and glitches riddled though the whole system, but all I really was trying to say how little things like bluetooth are being worked into it natively.

Nice little read btw. Thanks for the insight.

[Jeff Wheeler]

*claps at Gwing*

@temp: I never tested bluetooth in Vista (don't have it on that machine), but isn't that one of those things you assume every OS has? Like, ethernet. You don't praise an OS for supporting ethernet natively, do you?

[BS]

Some one probbley already said this but Microsoft took the beta of because it would hince " slow down the internet"
I ave a Mac but I want to buy a PC just to get vista betas

[indiasfinest]

thanks for the info gwing, anyways, how big is this download.

[kirupa]

Hmm, where to begin! Avalon is a part of the .NET Framework 3.0. With the exception of WinFS, the underlying technologies are still there and getting worked on for future .NET releases. Avalon IS the display part of the system, and it provides hooks to Win32 to provide backwards compatibility. It is an API - so it tries to allow you to do what you did before, but it provides new hooks to allow you to take advantage of newer technologies. If anything, Avalon is more (and becoming) more extensible with current and upcoming work in areas involving WPF/e. (more info on end-user changes (http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/reference/presentation/default.aspx?pull=/msdnmag/issues/06/01/windowspresentationfoundation/default.aspx)) The .NET Framework 3.0 contains WPF (Avalon), WCF (Indigo), WCS (Infocard), and WWF (Workflow). Do you have any links or info to back up your claims on them being trimmed down?

For more information on the .NET Framework in general: http://www.netfx3.com/ (http://www.netfx3.com/) A technical-overview video of WPF - put your nerd hats on: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=190253 (http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=190253)

All four of the above W-technolgies work on top of the CLR (Common Language Runtime) which includes the .NET 2.0 Base Class Libraries, ASP.net 2.0, ADO.net (WinFS bits to be included later), and WinForms 2.0 (what you normally use for GUI). This allows for backwards compatability with Windows XP. In the future, you will definitely see appllications designed to take advantage of Vista's DWM and, yes, DirectX10: http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/06/09/623566.aspx (http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/06/09/623566.aspx)

I'm interested in seeing any sources you may have regarding the DX10 changes.

Regarding your comment about the kernel, it has not been rewritten from scratch, but signficant changes can be found in it! The improved scheduler by itself is a major advance for dealing with applications with threads on single-core systems. Basing something of an earlier technology and implementing changes on an as-needed basis does not equal being the same thing.

For those of you have are not sure about some of the new things in it, this link is a good overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista)

Basically, sources - any sources - to backup your claims would be extremely helpful :P

:b:

[BS]

Thanks Kirupa!
Very Interesting :thumb2:

[GW02]

In some cases, such as Avalon, my argument isn't that Microsoft has completely cut them, but rather that they have scaled back their plans. The hooks for "backward compatibility" weren't supposed to exist, everything was supposed to be required to go through DirectX. So in this case it's not implementation, but rather execution.

Some of my other information is from people working at or who used to work at msft.

WinFS is dead by evidence of posts around the msdn blogosphere.

[chrisclick]

This new OS that microsoft windows has brought out called Vista is just a Operating system but not only can microsoft make their OWN applications they copy the Mac OS applications they change the style, Compatibility and the name so they dont get caught out. Very Very sirous stuff is Microsoft is caught they wont be so micro"SOFT"

[Jeff Wheeler]

WinFS is dead by evidence of posts around the msdn blogosphere.

This does really seem to be the case… pretty much everybody has agreed on that. :P

[GW02]

This new OS that microsoft windows has brought out called Vista is just a Operating system but not only can microsoft make their OWN applications they copy the Mac OS applications they change the style, Compatibility and the name so they dont get caught out. Very Very sirous stuff is Microsoft is caught they wont be so micro"SOFT"

If you're implying that Microsoft is emulating Apple, you're both right and wrong.

I must point out again that Vista was intended to be a technology-oriented release, a revolution in the underlying structure of the system, not necessarily the front-end. Sure, there's Aero, but that was supposed to be secondary.

So, yes, Microsoft may be blatantly ripping some of Apple's interfaces (Finder->Windows Explorer, iCal->Calendar, etc), but some of the stuff Microsoft had been planning to throw into Longhorn were things Apple didn't offer. That's not to say that Apple would have had nothing left to compete with Microsoft - far from it. Apple excels at one thing it's not recognized for very often: developer communication.

Sure, there have been fallouts. The Intel switch has some people very excited and others very disgruntled, much like the PowerPC switch back in the day. For instance, one of Apple's little-known features in OS X is that there is a sort of global API that all applications can subscribe to and add to. You could use Word's spellcheck in Safari, for instance. And the thing isn't that such a technology exists, it's that people actually use it.

That's one of the things Microsoft has done poorly over the years. Sure, there have been successes. Sure, there have been failures. But to say that Microsoft is blatantly modelling Vista after OS X would be foolhardy. An OS is more than its interface.


...not to say that Vista seems to have much UNDER its interface, anymore, of course...

[Vexir]

Then what HAS the gigantic team of developers been doing at Redmond for 6 years? I refuse to believe the worlds biggest software company's flagship product is as bad as you make it out to be. BTW, I don't think WinFS is dead, its just been pushed back because the developers wanted more time (right?)

[kirupa]

Key features of WinFS are being ported over to ADO.net and SQL Server. WinFS was going to be running on top of the current NTFS protocol, but of course, no more. This does put a dent in MS's plans for having a relational file system, but if what you really want is fast indexing/finding of files, then you will get that with Vista - though it is a bit buggy at this point.

Gwing - I'm sure you'll understand why I'm skeptical of your sources, for what I am working on currently in the .NET CLR (the underlying infastructure for Avalon, Indigo, etc.) team and what you claim are quite contradictory. The hardware-acclerated DWM is a massive step over XP, and as Vista adoption grows, you will see increased use of Vista's GPU (ATI/nVidia card)-powered user interface bypassing the traditional Intel/AMD-based CPU for drawing your applications. OS level support for the .NET framework is another massive under-the-hood change for making writing .NET apps more appealing for developers.

Yes, it is unfortunate that WinFS was removed from its proposed form as an improved file system, but pointing to that as the main reason for claiming nothing significant changed under the hood doesn't seem reasonable.

[BS]

Off Topic
...................................
Kirupa are you still in Redmond??

[GW02]

WinFX is largely untouched, that I know for sure. But a lot of the time what is going on isn't necessarily lack of technology but lack of implementation. The stuff is there on some level or another but some point or another of almost everything has been lost.

I'm really tired right now so I can't flesh out exactly what I'm trying to say, but that's overall what I'm saying.

Yes, he does. He works down the street from me a ways. :P
Post number 2000.......AGAIN. (-:

Edit: And also, I have certainly not tried to argue that nothing has changed under the hood. Even the very fact that the Win2k3 codebase is being used is an improvement. I'm just saying that Vista does NOT look like the Longhorn of 2003, and it's 3 years late.