The Truth About Vista..

[IGBT]

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Confusion Persists
As I mentioned at the start of the article, there is still a lot of confusion. Much is this is due to the fact that Microsoft has changed/redefined Vista so much. Also, Microsoft was rather quiet about the fact that many "dropped" Vista features will be included after all. Finally, there is a lot of misinformation on the internet. You can find numerous websites that haven't been revised in the past two years, still listing the "latest news" as Vista features being dropped. And many people still incorrectly post this as a fact.

 

[ProviaFan]

I don't get it. The conclusion doesn't really follow from the article, at least from my perspective after reading it very quickly. All the author does is re-hash all of the features that Vista has, while making no references to Microsoft having previously stated that they were going to drop "many" of the things that are in Vista now.

 

[drag]

There is no WinFS in Vista. There is no Avalon or Indigo. There is no rewrite of the explorer shell in managed code. Those are the original 'Three Pillars' that got people excited. The managed code stuff was to eliminate all buffer overflows and related items and make the Windows shell ultra-security.

There is no Palladium, which was a sceme to run 'protected' apps in a virtual machine environment with a specialized 'operating system' all of which was protected and controlled with the aid of trusted computing modules.

There is no telling when our how things like Avalon or Winfs are going to be added back into the system. There is a decent chance in my eyes that it may never happen. If it happens it's not going to be 'mainstream' for a couple years now. It all depends on how popular Vista gets and if people are still clamoring for database file systems and whatnot.

Remember all the fun stuff with XP and service pack 2? 'Overhauling' a operating system mid-life is rarely a good thing. I think MS would rather concentrate on getting a new server operating system out the door, it's 'home entertainment' division stuff, and would start working on it's next generation desktop operating system rather then fling a bunch of features onto Vista that would increase incompatabilities, increase support costs, and not make them them any money.

I expect to see Avalon as a add-on to XP and Vista, but that's about it right now.

 

[stash]

There is no WinFS in Vista. There is no Avalon or Indigo.

Avalon is there, it's called Windows Presentation Foundation. It's exposed through WinFX.

Indigo is also there, now called Windows Communication Foundation.

WinFS will not be in the box, but will be probably be released very close to Vista, and will also work on XP.

 

[drag]

Well it's very pared back from what they were originally talking about.

Just like the original efforts for WinFS-type stuff years and years ago lead to improvements in NTFS and such.

In my eyes this isn't a bad thing. If they kept going and kept everything they promised then Vista wouldn't be out for at the very least for two more years and this way Windows users get the improved security model.

 

[stash]

Well it's very pared back from what they were originally talking about.

Er, which is pared back? You've gone from claiming that three features of Vista are non-existent to claiming they are pared back. Which is it?

There are very few software projects (read: none) that include all of the things talked about during the envisioning phase. That whole reality of limited resources starts to take over pretty quickly.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: stash

Well it's very pared back from what they were originally talking about.

Er, which is pared back? You've gone from claiming that three features of Vista are non-existent to claiming they are pared back. Which is it?

Both. Palladium is gone. Managed code-based explorer shell is gone. Winfs is gone. Avalon is a bit reduced in scope, same thing with Indigo.

There are very few software projects (read: none) that include all of the things talked about during the envisioning phase. That whole reality of limited resources starts to take over pretty quickly.

Ya sure. If you considure the first 3 or 4 years of Vista development as the 'envisioning' stage. Because it's during that time when I learned about all these neat things that Longhorn was going to do.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Vista is XP with a pretty interface and more bloat. Ill pass.

 

[archcommus]

What all did/does Avalon include exactly?

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: wazzledoozle
Vista is XP with a pretty interface and more bloat. Ill pass.

and your an @ssclown that doesn't have a clue what you're talking about

 

[Aluvus]

It appears plans for WinFS have been revised again.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060625-7128.html

 

[imported_Ned Flanders]

Originally posted by: wazzledoozle
Vista is XP with a pretty interface and more bloat. Ill pass.

They re-wrote a lot of the kernal to make it more secure, some drivers now run in usermode and so are more secure,.

But by the looks of the BETA Ram usage, there is a lot of extra bloat too.
I'm in two minds about the OS tbh.

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: Ned Flanders

Originally posted by: wazzledoozle
Vista is XP with a pretty interface and more bloat. Ill pass.

They re-wrote a lot of the kernal to make it more secure, some drivers now run in usermode and so are more secure,.

But by the looks of the BETA Ram usage, there is a lot of extra bloat too.
I'm in two minds about the OS tbh.

Not to mention that a lot of the new GUI is rendered by the GPU (no more fade effects rendered by the CPU) so simply stating "the GUI is more complicated therefore it's bloated" is misnomer.

Also keep in mind that performance will become a much higher priority as they get closer to RTM. If you really want to see bad performance go and run the post Beta 1 builds, compared to them Beta 2 isnt that bad

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Ned Flanders
But by the looks of the BETA Ram usage, there is a lot of extra bloat too.

Did they remove all of the debugging stuff from the beta?

I can't wait to install WinFS on my XP machine!

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: Ned Flanders
But by the looks of the BETA Ram usage, there is a lot of extra bloat too.

Did they remove all of the debugging stuff from the beta?

I can't wait to install WinFS on my XP machine!

They have not removed it, but it's not running full debugging by default (only a subset) so the perf hit is less.

I'm curious, why do you want to run WinFS on your machine? Are you doing software development that requires queries against file system? Not that I'm saying you shouldnt (I ran Beta 1 for a while there) but am just curious what you're looking to use it for. AFAIK the future of WinFS is still up in the air.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: spyordie007

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: Ned Flanders
But by the looks of the BETA Ram usage, there is a lot of extra bloat too.

Did they remove all of the debugging stuff from the beta?

I can't wait to install WinFS on my XP machine!

They have not removed it, but it's not running full debugging by default (only a subset) so the perf hit is less.

I'm curious, why do you want to run WinFS on your machine? Are you doing software development that requires queries against file system? Not that I'm saying you shouldnt (I ran Beta 1 for a while there) but am just curious what you're looking to use it for. AFAIK the future of WinFS is still up in the air.

I'm a geek, I like technologies. It could be fun to mess with.

 

[Tarrant64]

I was pretty upset about WinFS too. I'm no extreme geek or anything, but it was something to check out. Finally something 'new'.

Some big things promised and nothing as of right now.

 

[jonessoda]

Originally posted by: drag
Palladium is gone.

And you're complaining?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: wazzledoozle
Vista is XP with a pretty interface and more bloat. Ill pass.

Good. With that level of ignorance we don't want you loading it up and pestering us with questions for the next two years.

 

[CQuinn]

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
I was pretty upset about WinFS too. I'm no extreme geek or anything, but it was something to check out. Finally something 'new'.

Some big things promised and nothing as of right now.

Nothing? Maybe you haven't paid attention to what is still there.

 

[stash]

Some big things promised and nothing as of right now

:disgust:

Read this before you make such clueless statements.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I just installed Vista Ultimate Beta2 on my laptop... oh my, the bloat, bloat, bloat.

It uses 550MB of RAM just for the OS alone! (My laptop only has 512MB.)

Common tasks now take longer, becuase you have to click around through the new "task-based interface". Personally, I much preferred the W2K UI, because it was very direct, none of this hand-holding crap.

One other thing that I noticed - at time, the entire screen would briefly flash all-black, and then redraw, sometimes with errors. Clicking on items in the UI often took several seconds for the new dialog to pop up. Not to mention, waiting for "Preparing desktop" when you login.

I never thought that I would say it, but Windows XP is "lightweight" compared to Vista.

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

I think the minimum memory required is 512MB with 1GB as recommended and 2GB+ is BEST. Although I think it's possible to make a "better" and more optimized (faster) Windows Vista than Windows XP, Vista simply requires more horse-power and memory to run things smoothly. It's probably because of hardware "progression". Is Microsoft working on speed optimization right now? Or fixing bugs and adding features?

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: jonessoda

Originally posted by: drag
Palladium is gone.

And you're complaining?

Nope. But without palladium there would be no VT or Pacifica extensions to Intel/AMD chipsets and proccessors. So I like that.

I'm a geek, I like technologies. It could be fun to mess with.

Well don't hold your breath.

http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/26/648075.aspx

Is WinFS dead?
Yes and No. Yes, we are not going to ship WinFS as a separate, monolithic software component. But the answer is also No - the vision remains alive and we are moving the technology forward. A lot of the technology really was database stuff ? and we?re putting that into SQL and ADO. But some of the technology, especially the end user value points, are not ready, and we?re going to continue to work on that in incubation. Some or all of these technologies may be used by other Microsoft products going forward.

So yes. WinFS is dead. No add ons for Vista or XP, ever. Another vaporware bites the dust. Probably for the better though.

If you want a database file system maybe try out Reiserfs4... it has some database-ish things going on.

Or better yet you can go on Ebay and get a old IBM AS/400 machine with OS/400 on it and experiance the joys of having to compile every file into a fully relational database file system.