text: Longhorn M4 Build Review 418
  Gsurface writes "I finally got my hands on the new Longhorn build, 4008, that was announced two days ago. After installing it and looking around through it, I decided to write a review expressing some thoughts on the new build. This new longhorn build, upon the prompt to "press any key to boot from cd..." jumps directly into a GUI that is unique. This build Microsoft decides to abandon the setup interface of XP and dress Longhorn on its own. "
  Only a FP up, and the server is dead (Score:5, Funny)
  Anyone manage to sneak in and get a mirror up?
  Re:Only a FP up, and the server is dead (Score:5, Funny)
  great..... (Score:5, Insightful)
  Re:great..... (Score:5, Interesting)
  Let's give Apple some credit here - they have only changed their UI design once in the 20 year history of the Mac. In fact they were routinely getting hammered by the computer press for having an outdated UI.
  Re:great..... (Score:4, Informative)
  There was the change to "Platinum" at OS 8.0 that added some little nuggets like the pop open windows and drilling down to where you want to move something, then closes all the windows behind you, and it added the drawers at the bottom of the screen.
  When I saw the bit about another Windows UI change, I cursed. Thats just what we need at the support level, having to train staff on yet another Windows UI. Because you know at some point MS will ban the sales of XP and all the new computers with come with Longhorn and then places like schools will have Win2K/XP/LH running at the same time.
  Re:great..... (Score:5, Interesting)
  Compare that with OS X. You fire it up and you've got a Dock (new), Apple menu is totally different (new), menu bar doesn't operate close to the same way (new), trash can is not on Dock (new), control panels have disappeared (new), Finder by default opens column view (new)...rather than evolution, Mac OS X completely redefined how every single control worked and operated. I read of no one having trouble moving from System 7.5 or Mac OS 7.6 to Mac OS 8 having problems with Platinum, but many Macphiles had serious issues with OS X, and even though I am extremely comfortable with Unix, even I think that Classic was just plain simpler and more intuitive in many, many ways than OS X. Since Mac OS X 10.0, however, Apple has mostly gone back to evolution rather than revolution, which I think is a good thing. No major new UI changes have arisen out of newer releases of OS X except that Apple randomly makes its apps brushed metal now.
  Ignoring the depth of change, though, compare the Mac's steady evolution too Microsoft's jumps and spurts. Ignoring Windows the first four incarnations of Windows, Windows 3.0/3.1 to 95 was the first major UI switch that Windows underwent. Internet Explorer 4 was the second major paradigm shift. XP was actually in many ways closer to the adoption of Platinum than the OS 9 to OS X switch, since just changing the window dressings makes XP look like the steady evolution of Win 2K (with the Start menu and the control panel reorganization being the two big changes), but Longhorn looks like it will be yet another major paradigm shift with the addition of Microsoft's very direct ripoff of NEXTSTEP's Dock and reworking of the control panels. That means that Apple has had a major shift once over 19 years; Microsoft will have had four major paradigm shifts over the last eleven years with the release of Longhorn. That's just ridiculous.
  Re:great..... (Score:2, Informative)
  -Sara
  Re:great..... (Score:2, Insightful)
  Most people who can figure out how to change the theme to Win98... Do.
  -Sara
  Re:great..... (Score:5, Funny)
  and "Nay" when MS changes it's GUI (Luna? *ACK* designed by color blind mentally defective lunatics.)
  I take offense at this. I can easily prove that I had nothing to do with Luna.
  Re:great..... (Score:3, Interesting)
  What's goofy is, the classic interface was great. The OS X interface is just as great if not better IMHO. Why can Apple get it right twice, when Microsoft is still trying to do it once?
  By the way, this comes from someone who doesn't own a Mac anymore. Wish I could afford one again
  Re:great..... (Score:2, Insightful)
  Re:great..... (Score:4, Interesting)
  When Win95 came out, a lot of people I knew reverted back to using progman as their shell. In many ways I prefer it to the start menu. In fact I don't use the start menu any more, I have a quicklaunch bar spanning my second monitor (it was a row above the taskbar before I got the the second monitor). Having to click more than once to lauch an app seems unintuitive to me.
  Or even DOS 2?
  Have you used DOS 2? *shudder*. Having said the cmd prompt is the first icon on my Win2K quicklaunch bar, so I guess that implies I still do go back to the old DOS interface quite regularly.
  I'm a girl.
  Why do you feel the need to tell us this? Suffering from some insecurities are we?
  :->
  Re:great..... (Score:3, Insightful)
  (Side note: does anyone else, like me, hate the stupid rounded edges of the windows? If you have a window that's taking up the whole screen, but isn't maximized, you throw your mouse cursor up in the corner to close the window, and you close the maximized program behind it. Grr!)
  Re:great..... (Score:5, Interesting)
  My lesser-computer-inclined family folk love XP, and have finally started to be able to do things like make their printer work, remember where they saved their files, etc.
  I think that the blue rounded-corners give the end-user the illusion they're playing with a toy, and puts them off their automatic defensive "I don't know how to DO ANYTHING! IT'S A COMPUTER FOR GOD'S SAKE! IT'S THE BRAIN-SURGERY OF 2003!" mode.
  In addition, unless the user changes it, the default location to save things is *always* the user's home folder, and the user is logged out (Not logged off, if they re-click their icon at the login screen, they'll be returned to their applications just as they were. Although there seems to be an issue with another user being able to log in, re-run the application, and force the termination of that app under the other's user account.) after a short period of inactivity, which enforces users to log in as themselves instead of doing account sharing which was common under Win95-WinME. This forces users to save to their home folder most times, which drastically diminishes the number of "Oh my god, I lost my file that I just spent 10 weeks working on." incidents.
  I don't seem to have any problem with overshooting rounded corners. But, I think I overcame that with Apple's Aqua interface, in which I was initially doing stupid things on a regular basis.
  -Sara
  Re:great..... (Score:3, Insightful)
  Because the Windows 95 interface was better in many tangible ways than the Windows 3.1 interface. I'm sure there was some resistance to the changes, simply because there is always resistance to change, but I don't think there are many people that would want to go back to 3.1, having experienced the improvements in 95.
  The XP interface, however, was not improved significantly. They just took the old interface and gave everything bright colors, that in my opinion and in the opinions of many others, was a significant step backwards. The point is that there was no functionality added in the new interface, so we have lost nothing by switching back. The only effect is that we have created an environment that we consider more asthetically pleasing.
  There were a couple of improvements in XP, like the new Start menu, and an improved taskbar, but those things are completely independent of which widget theme you choose.
  Re:great..... (Score:2)
  Re:great..... (Score:2)
  Guess I shoudn't have swithced... (Score:2, Funny)
  Re:great..... (Score:2, Interesting)
  Did they try it? (Score:5, Interesting)
  In fact, I've found the XP interface to be pretty granular in control so if you don't like something, just turn it off.
  A lot of people don't like new things just because they are different. Sit a new user in front of Win2K and XP and I bet they prefer XP, especially after tweaking it to their work habits.
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:3, Informative)
  XP is extremely customizable, though not as much as linux...the look and feel can be changed and a lot of system resources can be changed because of turning off the overall look of windows xp. I agree with you...people using xp should try blkviper.com to get a thorough way to tweak their xp or win2k systems.
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:2, Troll)
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:5, Funny)
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:5, Funny)
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:3, Interesting)
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:2)
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:5, Insightful)
  Which changes are you referring to here? As far as I could tell, aside from the new Start menu the interface was pretty much exactly the same as the old one, only with ugly garish colors.
  I gave it a couple of days, then switched it back. The old look is much cleaner; more "professional" I suppose.
  As for the new Start menu, I gave that a few days and then turned that off too. I tend to dislike interfaces that are heavily oriented around my recent activities... I prefer consistency.
  exactly, turn off what you don't like (Score:4, Insightful)
  Sure, maybe you can tweak the new l&f so you can be just as productive with it. However, the point wasn't that it's inherently bad, it was that _changing_ it around all the time is a very bad idea, and as the old one is just as good for most people, most people are better off continuing to use the old.
  "Pointless 'innovation' considered harmful." I read that somewhere today, probably Wired News. Definitely applies here.
  Re:Did they try it? (Score:3, Informative)
  Besides, the less services the better. My computer started taking over 2 mins to boot and windows was using over 200MB RAM at startup. Just a few services disabled and I'm down to 45sec boots and 160MB RAM used after IE, AIM and Outlook Express are all opened. Stupid bloat...
  Re:great..... (Score:2)
  Setup UI != OS UI (Score:2)
  The desktop is clean similar to its predecessor, XP.
  Re:great..... (Score:3, Insightful)
  People do this all the time... If the content they are trying to say can't stand on its own, they try to wrap it in a pretty package, and some people are fooled by that....
  But that's my 2 cents...
  Accessories seldom updated (Score:2)
  Re:great..... (Score:5, Funny)
  Many of these employees feel so threatened that they have turned to driving huge, tank-like SUVs to provide them with a greater feeling of security -- yet we go to war in the Middle East to assure getting enough oil to feed these very same SUVs.
  Yes, the true social TCO of Windows upgrades will perhaps never be fully assessed. Research has just begun to scratch the surface. But we already know that our society is on the brink of disaster because of them!
  Re:great..... (Score:2, Interesting)
  So? Woopie, they didn't have time to mess with it so MS gave them the option to revert. Oh yeah, damn them for that.
  I got news for you: People want their interfaces updated, but at the same time they want to be able to use their machine. MS was a little more bold with XP, but arguably it was a good move. It was intended for the people just getting a PC for the first time, and from using it for the last couple of months I'd say that they did a good job. Simple example: Now Explorer gives you a list of your drives, but organizes them so you know which one's a CD-ROM and which ard HD's. Before it just gave you a: through z: and you had no idea what was what except for an icon. XP's full of little things like that to make users more aware of what is going on inside their PC.
  I agree with you that changing the interface so that you have to relearn it is painful for the experienced users. However, XP's not that different despite how different it appears. The stuff you want is still there.
  I also agree that their default color scheme's a bit.. uh. loud. That's easy to fix too, change it's scheme to 'Silver' and you get a nice tasteful interface. Don't like that? Go make your own scheme if you're that picky, or revert to the 2k look.
  Sorry, I'm going to defend XP's interface. It's not MS's fault that CompE majors weren't capable of spending a few minutes with it.
  Re:great..... (Score:4, Insightful)
  Re:great..... (Score:3, Insightful)
  For new users, who are not used to old ways, the new interface is usually better. So novice users have no need to customize interface - the default is usually better for them.
  A good example is standard File Open/Save dialog. You are probably well familiar and comfortable with it. But why do we use it? Should not we drag and drop from File manager, would not this be more intuitive?
  The answer is yes, it would be more intutive. But since first Macintosh was single tasked OS, you could not have Finder and your app running simultaneously. So you could not drag and drop from one app to another. File Open/Save dialog was born. Now we are so accostomized to it, that we think it is very natural and convinient way. But the only reason for its existance is restriction of 20-year old OS.
  Funny.. (Score:4, Insightful)
  Re:Funny.. (Score:3, Interesting)
  Re:Funny.. (Score:5, Funny)
  The same for me. Luna always seemed to me to be like the ugly fat chick who wears way too much make-up to try to hide the underlying ickiness.
  A lot of people ... (Score:5, Insightful)
  Things change; it's the nature of our business as computer users and professionals. Adapt and learn about it, or pay people like me hordes of money to teach you how to reset your shell to look `the way it used to`.
  Re:A lot of people ... (Score:2)
  My only real grief with the Luna UI is that it takes 47 thousand different clicks/double clicks to get to where you can meaningfully change network settings. Since we're rolling out XP, and I run DNS, I've had to go through that sequence a LOT recently on various clients.
  Re: A lot of people ... (Score:5, Insightful)
  Furthermore, NEW users had a hard time hitting the correct button, accidentally closing windows they meant to resize, etc. This usability problem is why the WinXP interface makes the window control buttons larger and makes the close button a different color than the other buttons. It's a known usability bug in the Win9x design.
  If the site loads slow . (Score:5, Informative)
  I will express my initial reactions to the new Longhorn build that was introduced by neowin. The installation was initially done using Virtual PC to capture some screenshots of the install process. The desktop screenshots were taking after installing Longhorn on my D: partition.
  The install went through very smoothly, and minimal procedures were encountered. We no longer see the old setup which we were so accustomed to when booting from CD-Rom and installing Windows XP or 2000. This new longhorn build, upon the prompt to "press any key to boot from cd..." jumps directly into a GUI that is unique. This build Microsoft decides to abandon the setup interface of XP and dress Longhorn on its own. The setup continues after a small waiting period by collecting information and copying files needed for setup to continue. This process lasted for about 20 minutes, actual time being less because the initial installation was done using Virtual PC. Choosing this method first because I must admit that like many others, I was also skeptical and wanted to make sure this was not a fake before I made a partition on my hard drive.
  Interesting fact about the content of the cd, there is no i386 folder which we typically see in other NT based OS's. Could this be prone to this build only? We will have to wait till the final release to answer this question.
  I was greeted by a blue screen with the text "please wait..." for about ten minutes. I assumed this wait was due to Longhorn detecting my hardware. I would have been impatient during this stall and assumed the installation had crashed, but a friend of mine commented that this was usual, so with patience I held my horses. In no time, the installation went back into action. And before I knew it, it was done. Longhorn was installed on my pc. I have to say that this is one of the fastest Microsoft install to date. In total the installation completed in approximately 30 minutes using the Virtual PC. After I saw that it was the real deal, I went ahead and partitioned my hard drive and did the installation again. The whole installation took about 20 minutes. My system specs are Athlon XP 1800, 1GB Ram, 80 GB HD. I was never prompted about network configurations during the install process. This quick installation, reminds me of when installing Lindows.
  The welcome screen is presented, where I am logged in automatically. During the installation I was asked to enter a username, by default this username was given full administration access. Maybe not such a good idea according to some security experts.
  Immediately after login, Longhorn attempts to detect any hardware and prompts for drivers of unrecognized hardware. After installing some drivers here and there, a reinstall is necessary. I notice that, similar to the previous longhorn build, this build also hangs at the login screen before restarting (I wonder if I'm the only one that has encountered this problem).
  The sidebar is started once logged in. A new feature is added to the star menu, a shortcut to "My Contacts"; where you can manage your contacts.
  Interesting, even though I installed longhorn on the D: drive, it is seen as the C: drive by Longhorn.
  The look of the devices in my computer is different than that of the previous build. No longer do we see the status bar indicator under the hard drives. Too bad, I kind of liked the status indicator. There is a new properties bar on top which shows details of a picture, video or icon selected. Right above the taskbar, the address field has been replaced by drop down menus. Even though you can toggle between the address bar and the drop down menu, they should have made it an add-on instead of a replacement of the address bar.
  Going into the control panel, it's funny how the administrative tools icons still haven't been replaced to match the longhorn or XP look.
  The sidebar doesn't seem to have undergone any new changes. Of course I may have overlooked some details.
  "My Contacts" seems to be a new feature included in this build. The "My Contacts" folder seems to be a fresh add-on for longhorn since not much navigation was added to it. To add a contact, a right click on the folder will do the trick.
  Windows Media Player 9 build 2991 is bundled into the M4 build.
  The desktop is clean similar to its predecessor, XP.
  My initial reaction of this new build is that it has notably come a long way from the previous build. Noticing the installation changes we are able to determine that Microsoft is taking a different approach wit Longhorn. I didn't encounter any crashes while playing with Longhorn, even though I would have loved to see what kind of errors I would have gotten. I'm sure a couple of more minutes while browsing would have done provoked Longhorn to squeal. Even though longhorn is still in alpha phase, Microsoft is slowly beginning to unwrap the future of its OS, codename Longhorn.
  Re:SUCK ASS, YOU FUCKING KARMA WHORE (Score:2, Insightful)
  If only.. (Score:4, Funny)
  Note to Desktop Developers: (Score:5, Insightful)
  Great article (Score:3, Funny)
  New Security on Longhorn (Score:4, Funny)
  Re:New Security on Longhorn (Score:4, Funny)
  /.ed (Score:3, Funny)
  Yay for biases? +1 for an article, though. (Score:5, Interesting)
  The welcome screen is presented, where I am logged in automatically. During the installation I was asked to enter a username, by default this username was given full administration access. Maybe not such a good idea according to some security experts.
  That's standard behavior of Win95 and 98 (you're just the admin by nature), Windows NT (you start as the admin account), Windows 2000 (creates an admin account, then prompts you to create a user w/ full administrative rights) and Windows XP (see Win2k).
  Does any *nix installation *not* start you off as Root, with the ability to create more accounts?
  By the way, Windows installations from Win2k onward will not prompt you to create a local admin account (i.e., Please enter your Username so I can make you an admin, too) provided that you're joining a domain right off the bat -- which, as the installer of this OS, is the only case where your local account's security rights becomes a real concern. If you're doing it at home, for yourself, you're already the installer/admin. You know the admin password. Meaning, the user will know the admin password.
  So, non-issue.
  I didn't encounter any crashes while playing with Longhorn, even though I would have loved to see what kind of errors I would have gotten. I'm sure a couple of more minutes while browsing would have done provoked Longhorn to squeal.
  "I said it died screamin' like a stuck Irish pig!"
  (with props to Untouchables)
  Likewise, I'm sure that me evalating any Linux kernel of your choosing could smash it into a million pieces through careless use of rm * -o , whack Solaris by repeatedly throwing the power while it's doing disk writes, or break any other *nix operating system you choose to name.
  *Any* operating system can be broken through maliciously beating on it. "I bet I can make it squeal" doesn't imply "I am going to conduct a fair and extensive beta test of this newest distribution to see where it's faults still lie". It implies "Let's see what we can destroy".
  Work on your bias. Good work submitting the article; news is news, regardless of the bearer.
  Re:Yay for biases? +1 for an article, though. (Score:5, Funny)
  My inability to mod this up is going to have to be sated by a me too post.
  Back on topic, this review is pretty much useless asside from the screenshots showing off the *GIANT BITMAPS FROM HELL*. The details are pretty marginal in and of them selves. The most obvious change(*GIANT BITMAPS FROM HELL*) didn't even get a mention, while other featurs that have been around a while (box displaying file properties) get a mention. An examination as to if there is a checkbox in the Tools>Folder Options panel that read "Turn off *GIANT BITMAPS FROM HELL*?" would have been nice.
  This was obviously a "Get the review out and up on Slashdot before anyone else" review(and a successfull one too). Not to say that's the most horrible thing in the world (the pictures were certainly of some use), but I hope a real review will make it onto the front page in a couple weeks.
  Re:Yay for biases? +1 for an article, though. (Score:5, Informative)
  Yes, it's different. It's an issue. Are you trolling? Many unix types consider running as admin to be a security risk, whether or not you know the admin password. When you run some shareware app you downloaded, it has access to the entire computer. Trojan horses are a serious risk. If you are running as a limited user, the trojan horse cannot infect other binaries, cannot install kernel modifications, etc.
  Agreed, however, that the reviewer may have been biased. I'm just picking nits.
  Re:Yay for biases? +1 for an article, though. (Score:2, Insightful)
  I hardly concider browsing the web malicious activity, and any box that crashes from that sole activity will not be used for long by me.
  Re:Yay for biases? +1 for an article, though. (Score:2)
  Re:Yay for biases? +1 for an article, though. (Score:5, Interesting)
  Most have you create non-root accounts at installation. All RedHat installers in the last couple years have done this.
  You know the admin password. Meaning, the user will know the admin password.
  So, non-issue.
  If you misunderstand the issue (that by default the user is logged in with full admin privs) to be the an issue user _could_ login with admin access, then it is a non-issue.
  But in fact, the issue is that ordinary, unskilled users will by default be running with full admin privs, rather than a set of privs that are adaquete for the tasks they normally would do and protect them from accidental mistakes and malicious code they may be duped into running. Some people might say "well, they chose to run as admin", but in fact they just clicked-their-way-through without paying much attention. Good design and security practice is the make the default settings as secure as possible. This is a basic, well established principle... on of those things all Microsoft developers were supposedly off to "training" for a month after Bill's famous "trustworthy computing" memo. But it appears that even now, Microsoft is still making the default for ordinary users to run with full admin privs.
  For sake of comparison, in Redhat 8, users are likely to run the system as ordinary users. The installer encourages them to create non-root accounts. The first time the GUI is started, it will complain with a warning dialog box if the user is running as root. Thing like this warning go a long way to helping protect users. Some other apps will also complain if the user is running as root. The other notworthy feature in Redhat 8 (and possibly other distros) is that GUI-based configuaration programs prompt for the root password, and a security manager maintains the root access for a while so the user isn't punished by having to retype the root password constantly as they tweak settings. And most linux-based apps are designed to run without root access. All of these factors work together, most of the time, to cause users to run without root privs and all the unnecessary risks associated with it.
  Compare to Microsoft land, where by default the unskilled user runs with full admin privs, and nothing warns them and attempts to get them to "do the right thing".... and historically lots of things "just don't work" unless the user logs out and logs back in as the administrator. Those conditions all conspire to drive ordinary users to run with admin privs (when 99% of the time it's not necessary and needlessly opens them to unnecessary risks).
  Ordinary users just want things to work, and they usually take the path of least resistance. Modern linux-based systems make that path relatively secure. But Microsoft, despite their "trustworthy computing" marketing still appears to take the easy approach, where they make the easiest path one with unnecessary security risks.
  commentary (Score:4, Informative)
  Plus, there is a Longhorn 4008 wallpaper [pcmodkingdom.com] for those really interested.
  NeoWin also reports [neowin.net] that they got their hands on a new leaked version of Windows Longhorn. "The reporter insists that these are original shots. Lots of grandients are going on in the UI and while this is an alpha and the final version might look different (that's what happened with XP's Luna, MS only revealed XP's final design only a few months before the release, while most betas used another theme), these shots showing there are just pretty ugly IMHO. Bad taste on colors, no easy distinction between elements, it all looks like a big bad web page."
  Finally, there are some nice screenshots available at
  Suhit
  A Mirror (Score:3, Funny)
  Re:A Mirror (Score:2)
  Re:A Mirror (Score:3, Funny)
  Just look at those tacky varnish borders
  Screenshots (Score:5, Insightful)
  cheesy mirror (Score:2, Informative)
  It may be a new build... (Score:5, Funny)
  Microsoft Does it Again (Score:2, Funny)
  Re:Microsoft Does it Again (Score:2, Funny)
  Looks a bit better... (Score:2)
  Re:Looks a bit better... (Score:2)
  That new start menu seems in XP seems to be more about keeping the desktop clean and looking flashy. The frequently used items menu can be annoying as it can change, and some users just skip that list because they can almost never be sure what they are looking for is there, so why bother looking?
  Everyone I know stuck with XP switches at least to the classic start menu first. A lot of business users I have dealt with insist on the classic look, because the new look doesn't look professional...
  Yeowza! (Score:5, Interesting)
  He either one brave fellow or all his other data are belong to the recycle bin.
  I wouldn't let an early beta o/s on a system that even had another partition or drive in the same room. I'm still pissed from when that dumb-assed release version of Win2k "upgraded" my NTFS 4 on another drive to NTFS 5 (making it incompatible with NT4) WITHOUT WARNING when I simply looked at the other drive. Yes, they warn that it could happen during the install if you have any NTFS 4 partitions, but this was after the install, when I connected another drive to copy some files over! Luckily, I had imaged the drives beforehand just in case.
  Oops. Correction: (Score:3, Interesting)
  I was thinking of a different bone of contention I have when I said that: FAT32 support, which MS never provided under NT4 right up to SP6A (I mean, the provided it under '95a/b for goodness sake!). They probably thought that it would eat into Win2k sales. I have read-only support of FAT32 with a free driver from System Internals [sysinternals.com]. You can also purchase the driver with full read/write support from Wininternals [wininternals.com].
  It was a couple of years ago, but I now remember that the problem was that the (SP4-6A) NTFS5 support was half-assed - you could no longer use low level disk tools (including MS's own *cough* tools) if you had NTFS5 under NT4. And that certainly qualifies as NFG IMO.
  But that's not what really pissed me off. I knew that and didn't want NTFS upgraded. What pissed me off was that Win2k did it anyway and without warning. And that is unacceptable.
  Longhorn M4 Build Review (Score:2, Informative)
  The more things change.. (Score:4, Interesting)
  Having survived the Windows 98 to ME, Windows ME to 2000, and Windows 2000 to XP migration curves, I have to say, that until this thing reaches release candidate status, all bets are off.
  I remember installing every single Win 98 beta that came out -- what a buggy headache (especially the early Active Desktops) -- when I could have spent my time being productive, and waiting and watching.
  This time, I will wait and watch.
  So far all I see in Longhorn is Windows XP with a few new panes, some screen reogranization and some pretty icons. Until I see a dynamic, functional difference that is not just screen reogranization or eye candy, I'll be convinced that this is just more of the same, in a new package, with some bugfixes, speed optimization and additional hardware support (like DVD burning, for example).
  Oh, and I forgot
  I could have guessed those "improvements", without even seeing one screenshot. Come on, MS, where's the real innovation?
  Time will tell.
  Chris
  Fight club (Score:3, Funny)
  New "File Replace" dialog (Score:3, Informative)
  And what's the point of having a slideshow in the taskbar [neowin.net]?
  Enlighten yourselves. (Score:5, Insightful)
  You can't have it both ways.
  There's always a third camp around here (of which I'm a part), which seems to be strangely under-represented in this thread today. This camp believes WinXP is actually a perfectly fine OS, its UI is perfectly functional and easy to use. These people look at Longhorn and think "well, it's no worse than XP, and probably a little better."
  Lots of people use Windows XP and lots of people like it. Heck, lots of people even use its new swanky GUI - I do, my wife does, and everyone else I know does too (including most of my co-workers... all of the ones running WinXP, that is). I'm not sure why anybody would expect MS to make any drastic changes to a formula that works, and that a lot of people are used to using. Honestly, the core functions of the GUI haven't changed since Windows 95/NT 4 (which were very similar with the exception of the added administrator functions in the NT 4 GUI). Some of you seem blinded by bright lights - the XP GUI is almost no different than the Win2000 GUI underneath, and what *is* different (the control panel layout, start menu, etc.) can be easily changed back without removing any of the functionality or the prettiness. For my part, I find the new start menu much more useful than the old.
  And from what I'm seeing of Longhorn, it's hardly any different from the XP GUI. It's a bit flatter, with fewer 3D effects - an attempt at being a little more tasteful and understated without going back to the ugliness of Win95 (though I'm not a fan of rounded window corners - especially when maximized, they just don't like right). Still has the start button, the systray, the quicklaunch, very few desktop icons, etc. A few new transparency effects on the new sidebar. Honestly, if anything I'm disappointed they haven't made more visual improvements to the UI, though this is still an early build, and most of the visual flash comes last in any software development. I'm sure the final release will look even better than this.
  I think you all need to stop expecting Windows to be Linux (or BeOS, or whatever), and accept the fact that not all of us want to worry about customizing every last bit of our GUI or working in terminal consoles to get anything meaningful done. This doesn't mean we don't have "half a brain", it just means we want to spend less time with our OS and more time with our work. But it's nice if the OS looks good out of the box, so we don't *need* to spend time with it to make ourselves comfortable with it.
  On the other hand, it seems KDE and Gnome are both trying to move closer to the Windows GUI. They both have "start" buttons of their own, they both have quicklaunch equivalents, etc. They're both even going for eye candy lately. So what are some of you complaining about? This is what most people want, and it's the way most people are used to working. Just deal.
  Re:Enlighten yourselves. (Score:2, Interesting)
  Oh, and Longhorn is looking more and more like KDE, not the other way around. KDE looked like this back when 2k was a twinkle in NT4's eye. MS is looking at a the neat stuff created by developers free to express themselves (instead of serving a marketing target) and picking what they think best suits their market.
  And heres another one... (Score:5, Interesting)
  ----
  Well, I finally got around to installing Longhorn build 4008 on my laptop, and have decided to write a mini review. Rather than writing a full review of each possible screen, I will concentrate on changes from previous versions of windows.
  Installation
  Behind the scenes a lot of changes have happened to the setup program.
  * Rather than having all files in one folder (i386) there is now a directory dtructure in 'boot' which resembles the structure of the system once installed.
  * Rather than having a text-mode preinstall upon booting the cd which then spawns a graphical setup, the entire Longhorn M4 setup is graphical. This seems to be based on Windows XP PE (preinstall edition).
  The changes look very promising, although the GUI is clearly unfinished and seemingly rushed;
  * In many places the wording is quite unproffesional
  * You are informed you will be informed when you can "just walk away" and "setup will complete on its own". While setup requires little user interaction, you are not informed when your input is no longer required.
  * There is a nice treeview for selecting the installation partition, but your options are quite limited. In XP you can select Fat32/NTFS, FULL/QUICK format. In LH M4 the only option you have is a checkbox - "Format this partition (NTFS)".
  * The layout will need more work. Currently everything is centered, giving a kind of pyramid look. The previous setup style with several 'panels' proving information looked more visually pleasing.
  I am sure the little flaws will be ironed out sooner or later, but one thing is for sure, a lot of work has gone into improving the setup wizard which until now had remained largely unchanged ever since windows 2000.
  Visual and Features
  When longhorn M4 first starts, you are greeted with a much nicer screen than in Longhorn M3. In M3 there were a lot of visual imperfections and the plex theme looked worse than the luna theme on many windows. Now these imperfections have been ironed out and longhorn looks truly beuitiful as far as visuals are concerned.
  The sidebar, in additional to being much nicer visually, now has a few essential features that were missing in M3. Namely, there is a tray icon tile, so you do not lose access to trayed programs when using the sidebar in place of the taskbar.
  Glitches, Speed, Stability
  I tested M4 on modest hardware - a laptop with a 600Mhz P3 and 128MB of RAM. Longhorn ran SIGNIFICANTLY slower than
  After altering the screen resolution the sidebar seemed currupted. Hiding and then reenabling it made the sidebar completly invisible.
  Stability is difficult to comment on because I have only been running LH for a short time so far. Till now I have not had a single crash or even error message.
  Rant on WinFS's implementation
  A lot of effort seems to be going into WinFS. The idea behind it seems brilliant - store files in an SQL like database so you can search for files, run queries, and receive results in a fraction of a second rather than having to wait for the computer to scan through each folder and take several minutes to search through the entire drive. Unfortunatly if the implementation in M4 is anything to go by, MS are going in completly the wrong direction. The new search panel prompts the user to enter a search string "Example: 'Pictures from John' or 'What is a firewall?'". It can search both the local files. This seems very newbie-oriented. Computers are usless at interpreting natural language queries. They should do what they are good at - fast indexing by filenames and keywords in the files contents. Also, searching a local filesystem for a jpeg and searching the internet are two entirely different activities. Combining them into a single search seems to make no sense and will just confuse advanced users.
  The current search system in XP is good enough as far as the interface is concerned (at least after you kill the faqing dog - again classic newbie-oriented bloat). You can search by filename, modified/created date, and a files contents. It is layed out in a perfectly logical way, and you know exactly what you are asking the computer to do. If only this was based on SQL and queries lasted under a second it would be perfect. Why replace this clean, logical interface with a textbox claims to supposedly understand plain english questions and automatically decide for you if you are looking for an email message, file, internet document, or application. Pointless artificial intelligence which will be far from perfect. I think ill stick with 'grep' and 'ls -R' - they do everthing I need them to.
  Re:And a bit I just added... (Score:3, Informative)
  > really shells?
  explorer is a shell. Post Win95, progman and litestep are very limited shells.
  The last version of Windows to have a shell in the classic sense of the word was Win3.1: progman (default), winfile, norton desktop, etc.
  But explorer.exe is a very *deep* shell, in the sense it provides a (rather rich) set of services (not in the NT services sense) to Win32 apps as well. For example, the FileOpen/FileSaveAs common controls use Explorer to enumerate the system namespace. IIRC, it manages the desktop as well, and show MRU history in dialog boxes.
  There's no good way to *really* replace it short of re-implementing each of the shell interfaces, which no one will likely do because (a) it's too much work, (b) too little documentation unless you have access to MS' shell team (c) it probably won't sell very well because most people are so overwhelmingly familiar with explorer now (which is why you'll never see a Norton shell for XP).
  Which is why running litestep doesn't take you away from explorer: it runs every time you hit File|Open in notepad.
  Bottom line: post-Win95, Windows' shell was just not *designed* to be snap-in replacable (although it is very modular indeed) the way the Win3.1 shell was (or X is).
  Vector graphics, AA, and GPUs (Score:2, Insightful)
  This might also be why they bought out some SGI OpenGL patents; they don't want to risk some patent issue on their GUI.
  Also, there may be design issues with ATi, nVidia, Matrox because of making the entire desktop from vector graphics.
  Blue Screen of Birth!?! (Score:2, Funny)
  [looking at screenshots]
  Blue Screen of Birth? [flexbeta.net]
  Nice move, slick (Score:3, Informative)
  Nice move.
  Looks like eye candy . . . . (Score:3, Funny)
  Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
  Which unfortunately makes them look just washed-out and lacking in attitude. It's like the safe corporate version of Aqua, only instead of being Playskool like the previous attempt, this time it's "OK, we'll make it all blurry and stuff!".
  God help them, this is pretty sad.
  It reminds me of a Roger Ebert review of 'Heaven's Gate': "When you don't enjoy even the physical act of looking at a movie, the director is in deep, deep trouble." Well- Longhorn appears both annoyingly blue, and annoyingly washed-out and contrastless. This is the best they could do? Windows 95 was more appealing, in a crude-but-cheerful way. Do you suppose they know they are downward spiraling?
  Re:problem (Score:5, Funny)
  Re:problem (Score:5, Informative)
  Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) AuthMySQL/2.20 mod_log_bytes/1.0 mod_bwlimited/1.0 PHP/4.3.0 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 on Linux
  Re:try this link at neowin.net (Score:4, Informative)
  Re:Screenshots (Score:4, Insightful)
  My idea was, when you do a copy/move function and the computer finds filenames in the target directory which are the same to filenames you're processing, record these names and then display them in a dialog box list, which should look like this:
  | Original Name | Conflicts with target | Rename original as | Rename target as |
  foo.jpg foo.jpg foo.jpg foo2.jpg
  with buttons to auto-generate names for the original or for the target (but not for both), and the ability to click the rename columns to choose a name you want.
  Like I said, I don't think it would be too intuitive, and in the end you won't remember what the files were called.
  Re:Let the speculation begin. (Score:4, Insightful)
  Are you paid for that?
  Re:Let the speculation begin. (Score:2)
  Re:Let the speculation begin. (Score:5, Funny)
  I agree - It's terrible!
  I met this GNU/Linux guy, and he wanted to give mt a disk with over 5000 peer-reviewed, stable and interesting peices of software. And get this, the fucker even tried to give me the source code!
  God, I hate those GNU bastards.
  Re:Let the speculation begin. (Score:2)
  A true zealot considers Longhorn revolutionary and improved without every using it only because it came from Redmond.
  Yours is the only post so far raising the issue of licensing models.
  Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to it.
  I think you are.
  Re:Let the speculation begin. (Score:4, Funny)
  You have gno idea what you are talking about. I gknow for a fact that gnobody is trying to brainwash you into gnusing GNU/Linux.
  Re:jeepers (Score:3, Interesting)
  Re:jeepers (Score:2, Insightful)
  What else is it going to be compared with? MacOS 7? Might as well compare it with the thing that (a) most people interested in the new OS are currently occupied with, and (b) it's intended to eventually replace. Anyway, the guy presumably got it off usenet last night like everyone else, so he's hardly likely to be aware of the extent of any underlying changes.
  For anyone who still can't get through to the site, it really is nothing but a bunch of screenshots of the first hour's desktop experience.
  - Chris
  Re:jeepers (Score:5, Funny)
  OMG, now we've
  Load Test (Score:3, Funny)
  too bad it's a cluster of 486's
  :-P
  Re:where can i sign up for longhorn? (Score:2)
  Re:Yawn... (Score:2)
  Re:longhorn is a system resource hog???? (Score:3, Funny)
  Re:So sad (Score:2)