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Windows Vista SP1 Beta positive review

Published by nb October 9th, 2007 in Article/Analysis and Windows. 1 Comment

Windows lives and dies by its service packs. I can’t recall the last initial release of any Windows product that didn’t have at least some problems. Microsoft has often used the service packs for some serious after-release polishing of the OS. In the case of Windows XP, the first service pack made a difference in speed and software compatibility, with a few nods to security. But XP really took off with the release of Service Pack 2 (SP2)—effectively a rethinking of the entire security underpinning of the OS that bought Microsoft extra time to get Vista ready for release. Now, roughly nine months after Vista started hitting desktops, Service Pack 1 (SP1) has started its beta run. The latest iteration of the SP1 beta, which is closed to the public, reveals a useful set of OS updates, but one that’s not as critical as SP2 was for XP. SP1 speeds up a few operations and enhances third-party program compatibility, but it changes little you’ll notice in your day-to-day experience. Once again, the bulk of the development effort has gone toward upgrading security subsystems—elements that enterprise clients find appealing but consumers and small-business users won’t really notice. Still, given that Vista is essentially a rewrite of XP meant to enhance security (and, of course, media features), I’m not surprised to see Microsoft take this route for the service pack.

Installation

Once released, this update, like all its predecessors, will appear in downloadable form on the Microsoft Update site, but you’ll likely be able to order it on DVD and will certainly be able to purchase a DVD that will bundle both the full, installable version of Vista and SP1.

Although many will argue that a service pack behaves better as an entirely new installation of the OS (a “clean install”) rather than as an upgrade to your existing OS, often that’s simply impractical. Most people have already installed most of the programs they need on their current version of an OS. Applying the service pack to the OS in use rather than doing a clean install is the only realistic option.

I tried both, though. The clean install worked perfectly and went much faster. The update didn’t install properly the first several times I tried, but that’s typical with an early beta of any service pack, since the whole point of the process is to find and fix bugs. I finally got the update to work by upgrading my office machine from XP to the first Vista release—a process that took over 2.5 hours—then applying SP1, which took about 30 minutes. That resulted in an immediate speed improvement, although not as much as with an installation on a clean system (it just makes sense that Windows slows down as you clutter it up with all kinds of start-up programs, drivers, and the like).

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Vista SP1 analysed in-depth

Published by nb August 12th, 2007 in Article/Analysis and Windows. 0 Comments

It’s no secret that there’s a leaked beta of Vista SP1 floating around, but no-one yet has really taken the time to analyse it in detail to find out what it really does.

I made it my mission this weekend to trawl through the registry and file changes in SP1 to find out as best I could exactly what SP1 does.

First up, I can say that there is a very noticeable performance increase. It is obvious that since Microsoft released Vista to manufacturing, it has been optimising the code ever since. (I suspect this revelation will fuel the fires of the people who say Vista was released before it was ready for prime-time.) There?s far less hard drive thrashing and in general the system seems much smoother and more responsive.

Amusingly, the build of SP1 we saw (which in this beta comes fully integrated into a 3.2GB Vista install DVD, rather than as a standalone update) still has Microsoft’s internal network shares embedded as the source of the updates. For example:

\\\\winbuilds3\\longhorn_SP1Beta1\\longhorn_SP1Beta1
\\6001.16549.070628-1825\\x86fre\\packages\\ServicePack”

Not that that info is really useful to anyone, but it mildly tickled our curiosity bone (next to the funny bone) to see the file layout of Microsoft’s internal distribution shares.

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Vista SP1 delay won’t hurt enterprises

Published by nb June 26th, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 0 Comments

Many large enterprise customers have said they will wait for the first service pack for Vista to deploy the software across their companies. Some were expecting SP1 before the end of the year after Microsoft Senior Vice President Bob Muglia said in a published report last November it would be released with Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, due by the end of 2007.

However, rumors swirled last week that the release of the pack would be pushed into 2008 after Microsoft said in a court filing dated June 19 it would have only a test version of Vista SP1 out before the end of the year. According to the document, filed as part of the ongoing antitrust case with the U.S. Department of Justice, the software is to be released by then to answer a complaint by Google that the OS’s built-in desktop search capability interferes with the use of Google’s competing search technology.

The rumors caused investors to worry about enterprise adoption of Vista being pushed further out, and company stock declined 2.4 percent Friday, opening at $30.03 and closing at $29.54.

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Microsoft’s state of Vista: The first 100 days

Published by nb May 9th, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 0 Comments

Microsoft is making a concerted effort to counter the perception by many in the industry that Windows Vista is floundering, 100 days after launch.

On May 8, company officials shared (via a phone call) new data on the Vista “ecosystem” to prove the company’s contention that Vista is more market-ready than any previous version of Windows. Courtesy of Dave Wascha, director of partner platform marketing, here are Microsoft’s latest compatibility statistics, based on the first 100 days of product availability:

* There are now 1.9 million devices certified to work with Vista, up from the 1.5 million that were certified on January 30, the day the product launched. Microsoft believes it has Vista support for 96 percent of all the devices for which users are seeking support.

* Of the remaining group of devices that still don’t work right with Vista, 4,000 devices are accounting for 85 percent of the compatibility/reliability/manageability/performance issues that customers are having with Vista, Wascha said. (Microsoft maintains a 4,000-row spreadsheet detailing any devices for which the company has received more than 500 problem reports, Wascha said. “We’re chasing the long tail of the ecosystem,” he joked.)

Full story @ source.

Dissecting Silverlight

Published by nb May 3rd, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 0 Comments

Two new technologies from Microsoft should be on the radar of every Rich Internet Application developer. The first is Silverlight 1.0, a canvas-like control which is programmed by browser JavaScript. It’s fairly light weight (1.4M download), and works in all major browsers on Windows and MacOSX (no Linux yet). It is currently in beta.

The second is Silverlight 1.1, which builds on 1.0 by adding a virtual machine for running logic inside the plug-in. This is much closer to the approach used by the Flash player. The advantage of bundling your own language and runtime is that developers are isolated from browser inconsistencies (it’s hard work to write a Javascript program that will run in all browsers now). Silverlight does Flash one better by supporting more than one language (currently C#, VB, JavaScript, and Python). The Flash player is limited to ActionScript.

Silverlight 1.1 is not quite as light weight (4.3M download with the current alpha) because it does a lot more than 1.0. Let’s take a look inside the install packages to see what you get. I’ll just look at the Windows version because that’s what I have.

Silverlight 1.0

Silverlight 1.0 installs only two files:

agcore.dll (2.2M installed) - This is the core ActiveX control that is responsible for Silverlight rendering and events, including audio and video decoding.

npctrl.dll (460K) - A wrapper for agcore.dll that makes it run inside Firefox.

Full story @ source.

Microsoft Sees Complex Future for Software

Published by nb May 1st, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 0 Comments

The software industry has a strong future regardless of whether its products are delivered as a service, as a component or in packaged form, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, said April 30.

Mundie, delivering the lunch-time address at the New Software Industry conference here, said that whatever the delivery mechanism, the bottom line was that there will be an ongoing demand for software in the future.

Acknowledging that services have a role in this future, Mundie noted that current communication capabilities had reached the point where services could now be offered in the cloud to complement them. “So, clearly, there will be services in the future,” he said.

According to Mundie, the next generation of applications will include both local software and global services.

But the word ’service’ is a bit of an overloaded term. What is a service? It is going to be very important to tease these things apart in the future,” he said. “For me, this is software provided as a service through the network, which is a large part of what Microsoft is trying to do with its Live platform, where every one of our products will have a service component in the future,” he said.

The traditional concept of the platform is also not going away, he said, adding that there will rather be new ways of using the network to buy, install, service and deliver software.

“There will also be a class of infrastructural services like identity and presence that will have to be jointly developed,” he said. “So, when the platform takes on a service component, it too becomes a platform, and developers will depend on the Web APIs, the services they can invoke. So what we are looking at is a persistent hybrid model.”

Full story @ source.

5-minute guides to AJAX, Expression, Live, WPF, and WPF/e

Published by nb February 21st, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 0 Comments

MSDN UK Partner posted cool collection of guide for Microsoft’s technologies and tools including AJAX, Expression, Live, WPF, and WPF/e. Continue to read at UK Partner Blog.

If you don’t Satisfied with Vista, go back to XP

Published by nb February 17th, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 2 Comments

Perhaps someone got this question, if they purchased Windows Vista and not satisfied with it “Can I go back to Windows XP?”. Then talking about downgrade right. According to ‘Microsoft Select License, Open License, Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) License, and Full-Packaged Product (FPP) License Downgrade Rights‘ document provided by Microsoft, only OEM user of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate who grants downgrade right to Windows XP Professional but not for retail customer and Home versions.

Rights to OEM versions of systems software are granted in the OEM License Terms. The OEM License Terms for most OEM versions of systems software do not grant downgrade rights. The exception is the OEM License Terms for the Windows® XP Professional operating system and the Windows Vista™ Business and Windows Vista Ultimate operating systems, which grant downgrade rights. See the full text of the OEM License Terms for the specific downgrade rights.

And:

Downgrade rights are not granted under FPP (Full Packaged Product) system licenses.

An example from FAQs provided by the document:

Can I downgrade my OEM version of Windows Vista Business to Windows XP Professional?

Yes. OEM downgrade rights for desktop PC operating systems apply to Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate as stated in the License Terms. Please note, OEM downgrade versions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate are limited to Windows XP Professional (including Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and Windows XP x64 Edition). End users can use the following media for their downgrade: Volume Licensing media (provided the end user has a Volume Licensing agreement), retail (FPP), or system builder hologram CD (provided the software is acquired in accordance with the Microsoft OEM System Builder License). Use of the downgraded operating system is governed by the Windows Vista Business License Terms, and the end user cannot use both the downgrade operating system and Windows Vista Business. There are no downgrade rights granted for Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium.

So, if you purchased an OEM version of Windows Vista Business and Ultimate you have that rigth.

DirectX 10: why it’s exclusive to Vista

Published by nb February 16th, 2007 0 Comments

When Microsoft officially announced that DirectX 10 (DX10) would only be available for Windows Vista, many gaming fans yearning to be on the bleeding edge were upset. In order to get the most from their video cards, users would have to upgrade their operating systems to Vista. Some have attributed Microsoft’s decision to be purely based on marketing, but that’s not entirely the case. What other factors were in play?

According to Microsoft DirectX guru Phil Taylor, development for DX10 wasn’t complete until late in Windows XP’s lifecycle, and during the time of its development, things became clear that DX10 simply would not fit into XP.

Given XP shipped in 2001 and it was late 2003 when the DX10 design solidified - it should be obvious that ‘what the OS was’ was well beyond XP before serious DX10 work commenced. Heck, the Longhorn reset was in 2004 and DX10 wasn’t done until later. The build that was demo’ed [sic] at WinHEC 2004 with the texture memory management was a very fresh build and wasn’t feature complete - and that was April or May 2004. The 1st DX SDK supporting DX10 didn’t appear until Dec 2005.

Taylor also noted that it would take a tremendous amount of work if the company were to retrofit DX10 into XP. “Given the new features in the driver model and hardware (with GPU task switching, GPU memory management and more) all of which require kernel support - hoisting a driver layer like that on XP is rewriting it to be Vista,” he wrote on his blog.

Full story & source: ars technica

Why Vista is defective by design

Published by nb February 16th, 2007 in Article/Analysis. 0 Comments

Vista’s DRM features have been drawing ever more criticism, but it’s just the latest step among many that takes liberties out of the hands of users and into the media megacorps. So what are you going to do about it?

Even Vista is, of course, just the most recent example in a litany of anti-consumer devices designed to protect monopoly distribution for the media cartels and, most certainly, Microsoft at the expense of the you, the customer.

In his recent column on Forbes, Bruce Schneier covers off all the essential arguments, including Microsoft’s interest in implementing DRM, which I couldn’t have said better myself. In my piece on 10 reasons not to get Vista, some of the comments in response suggested that the point about the inclusion of DRM in Vista was unfair, that Microsoft’s hand was forced by Hollywood. Which is, of course, a gigantic load of wombat poo. As Schneier puts it:

“It’s all complete nonsense. Microsoft could have easily told the entertainment industry that it was not going to deliberately cripple its operating system, take it or leave it. With 95% of the operating system market, where else would Hollywood go?”

But the problem didn’t start with Microsoft. Copy protection, and its newer perverted cousin DRM (Digital Rights Management, or more accurately Digital Restrictions Management) has been around for a rather long time now. And it’s not that products shouldn’t be protected, it’s that frequently these protections comes at a cost to the very people who it isn’t intended for — those who legitimately buy the products.

The problem is that, while piracy is real, Hollywood and ilk make the assumption that everyone in the entire world is guilty until proven innocent. Apparently it’s all too hard to do the right thing, so why not just treat everyone as guilty and be done with it?

It doesn’t matter if you legitimately purchased your DVD or CD, it doesn’t matter if you wish to format shift this product you own to another device you own, and doesn’t matter that you routinely go out and buy more music and movies to enjoy — you’re a criminal, deal with it.

Full story & source: apc