Windows rocks

[Steve]

Perhaps that's a little bit of an exaggeration. However, today I was reading an article over at The Register about IE7, and it made me realise how much better Windows is these days.

The move from 98 to 2000 lead to a far more stable system - it's just a shame the drivers were sh... bad. Then XP came along and things got better still, unfortunately it turned out XP had security that was... pants. Of course, that's quite different now, for the most part at least.

To that end, I've written a short news piece reflecting on how far security has come over a short period of time, much of it focusing on Microsoft's efforts. And before the Linux advocates get on my back, I'm still a big fan of Linux and F/OSS in general, but you can't deny that Windows really has got better.

[dangel]

I wouldn't disagree - yes Windows is good. Doesn't crash anymore (except as you point out with bad drivers - Vista will cure this), it's fast (at least for this old man) and it's pretty secure (in the context of 'old' windows anyway).

Piece by piece MS have worked to break down the detractions of other OS' - stability in the post 2k era, security with SP2 and Vista will bring configurability and expandibility through modular design (and of course, the bling ). I (as a Windows Software Engineer) have seen a huge shift in them over the past 2 years - they've gone from a company that just built on bad code to one with reall aspirations for their new products. Vista is (essentially) a rewrite (me = stunned) and they've even junked the Office UI in favour of something new (me = stunned and actually looking forward to using Word!).
Right now i've got build 5231 of Vista installed (AND YES ITS LEGAL THANKS) and I expect the Office 12 beta to be in my hands pretty soon too.

The one thing I do hate still is their inability to produce stable, bug-free development products - Visual Studio 2k3 is a mess of needless bugs/irritations and i expect Visual Studio 2k5 (due this week with luck) to be as bad if not worse. It all went pear shaped when they abandoned service packs and shifted to the .NET framework.

[TiG]

Better is a subjective word.

OS are supposed to work for the user, windows with successive OS's have got more and more bloated. Sure as time has gone on the more people have been able to pick up a computer and use them.

No need to mess about with emm386.exe to make use of your extended or expanded to get games to work.

But i don't think i'd say better is the right word, different maybe. For all the UI fixes and ease of use improvements, more overheads, more system requirements, more security holes.

Win64 lack of driver support, lack of new OS for years?, new ones are going to have to be superb otherwise i think we could soon see potential challengers to the MS OS range.

TiG

[Matt1eD]

I think it has improved greatly. Development wise it's great to have THE operating system to develop for, and the .NET framework to manage everything. I think the integration of their server OSs is wonderful. But I have to agree it gets more bloated, but I would say for the better.

[autopilot]

Yes it's better for sure, but it's been an unnecessarily long and painful journey getting to this stage.

I'm just waiting for the DRM maddness that Vista will bring. I just hope Microsoft back down a little

[Jonny M]

Originally Posted by dangerous_dom

I'm just waiting for the DRM maddness that Vista will bring. I just hope Microsoft back down a little

I don't think a lot of people understand this, it's not Microsoft putting DRM in for the hell of it, if Vista is going to be able to play back HD content, it needs to have DRM built into it. The DRM is being put there because the studios want it there, nobody wants to buy a Vista system and not be able to watch their movies on it.

[Stoo]

The HDCP tech is already here, most of the new HD screens and the newer dvd players have the technology buit in..

[DR]

Its done via HDMI - I suspect that someone will bring out some clever cable which can drop the secure connectivity - or a firmware hack

[Stoo]

Also via DVI-D on some of the higher end ones.

Interestingly enough there is apparently a firmware hack out for the Samsung HD950 which disables HDCP etc and makes it multiregion iirc..

[Xaneden]

I have been using IE7 for a while now, and the tabbed browsing when combined with the faster rendering I've always experienced with IE makes it a winner in my books.

As for Vista itself, I find its use very limited. As pointed out many times, it doesn't have any real 'striking features'; I'm starting to wonder what 'new features' will be listed in the setup routine.....

.... Just realised, Vista isn't going to have that 'installing devices' routine

[zhenboy]

looking forward to trying out Vista beta sooon

[username]

You simply have to remember that even though Windows is the most used OS out there, it will always be somewhat less secure that BeOS, OS X and Linux for one reason, it is the most used. It is the largest target on the map. If someone is going to build a virus, its going to be for a computer that is used by consumers and businesses alike, not for a couple of Linux servers, or some multi-media OS X or BeOS boxes. At a certain point, Microsoft is going to be in trouble. Considering how many times they have ”upgraded” Windows, just by slapping new features onto a decade old OS until it is so heavy and covered in messy code, I’m surprised that it hasn’t crumbled and needed to be overhauled yet. With BeOS, Mac and Linux boxes, they all share a common point. They were built right from the start to incorporate changes and innovations to the core of their respective OS’es. No one knows when, but soon Microsoft will end up having to rebuild their OS from the base, and include backward compatibility for win32, which will once again start the fuse to more problems. Of course Windows XP’s highlight feature is gaming, but besides that all of the other small OS’es out there can do everything that Windows can do, and most of the time do a much better and faster job.

Nick Anatala
nickanatala@gmail.com

[Xaneden]

Woah, thread back from the dead?!

[FatalSaviour]

And so the debate sparks up again...

[Lee @ SCAN]

Originally Posted by FatalSaviour

And so the debate sparks up again...

Indeed - great timing as well as the new Vista Beta is made public as well.

I wonder if Steve is going to install this OS and then see if MS have indeed made windows better than previous versions

I'm downloading it now @ home so tonight I'll be mainly playing let's break your "JBOD" array of "storage drives"

[directhex]

i stand by my usual position - every time i try to like windows, it flings faeces at me