News Windows Vista

Coupons to Promote Windows Vista

2006-10-28T22:58:00.000-07:00

People who buy certain Windows personal computers this holiday season will be offered free or heavily discounted coupons to upgrade to Microsoft Corp.'s new operating system, Windows Vista, under a program designed to spur sales despite Vista's delay, Microsoft said Tuesday.

Vista is currently scheduled to be released to consumers sometime in January, after numerous delays that pushed the launch date beyond the holiday season. It's also scheduled to be released to big business clients in November, although launch dates for both versions haven't been made public.

The coupon program begins Thursday and runs through mid-March. Particulars of the deal will vary depending on the computer maker and retailer. Manufacturers involved include Hewlett-Packard Co., Gateway Inc. and Dell Inc.

(c) 2006 Tulsa World. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Microsoft adjusts Vista licensing for frequent upgraders

2006-10-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

When Microsoft announced that it is only legal to transfer Vista from one computer to another once, there was a lot of negative feedback. Since Microsoft defined a new motherboard as a new computer, people do not like the idea of having to pay for a new copy of Windows Vista every time they swap out their motherboard. Microsoft has clarified their policy. Windows Vista features a new version of Windows Genuine Advantage that is much smarter. Users that swap out individual components and have to reinstall their copy of Windows Vista because of doing so will no longer be accused by Windows Genuine Advantage of having a non-valid copy of Windows. And even if Windows Genuine Advantage cannot validate Windows, users can call Microsoft by phone and get their copy "remediated". The Windows Genuine Advantage program was instated by Microsoft in an effort to curb software piracy.

Microsoft Clarifies Vista's One Machine Transfer Policy

2006-10-27T05:43:00.000-07:00

Microsoft finally attempted to clear up confusion over licensing of Windows Vista for power users who rebuild their PCs on a regular basis. But the answer from the software vendor did little to placate some users, who are still upset about Microsoft's one-machine transfer policy for Vista. Microsoft users who frequently change the hardware configuration of the system running Vista may fail Vista's new Software Protection Platform software-validation feature more than once. If they did, they would be required to purchase an additional license or use Microsoft's support services to activate Vista on a newly configured machine. Microsoft's product-activation process for Vista compares information from the initial validation -- which includes the hardware configuration of the device -- against the new configuration to transfer the license to a new piece of hardware.

At that point, a customer can use the one-time reassignment of the license they get with their purchase of Vista to transfer the license to a new hardware configuration. However, if after a user does this, he or she "again exceeds the tolerance for updated components. "The customer can either purchase an additional license or seek remediation through Microsoft’s support services." The situation is similar to what many XP power users experience today, and that Microsoft has improved the algorithm used to determine what hardware configuration changes constitute a new device. The bottom line is that the hardware tolerance of product activation for Windows Vista has been improved and is more flexible than that for Windows XP. Microsoft believe these improvements will better accommodate the needs of their PC enthusiast customers.

Windows Vista WrapUp

2006-10-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

Lots of information and posts today concerning Windows Vista, so I think I will try to touch base on all the ones I am interested in, in this post, instead of making a post for each.

The first one I saw today was Hidden Costs of Vista Upgrade Coupon from the PC World blog. In it he touches on what it will really cost you to use the Windows Vista coupon that will be available from retailers, and he’s not just talking about price either.

First, looking at the various prices of the four different editions of Vista that will be available at retail gives me a headache. (An Enterprise version will be available only under volume license.) PC World did a complete breakdown in September, with a comparison to Windows XP pricing.

How much you’ll have to pay for an upgrade ultimately will depend on where you buy your PC. As reported today by The Wall Street Journal Online, major OEM’s will offer different pricing structures. For example, Hewlett-Packard will allow you to buy certain models and upgrade for free. Depending on the HP retailer, however, you may have to pay shipping and handling fees.

If you use this coupon program, you are committing yourself to personally upgrading your own PC. Are you up to the task? Are you ready to fork over some extra dough if necessary? And are you ready to spend the time the upgrade process will take?

Ultimately, he recommends waiting until Vista shows up on a machine you buy, to save yourself the headaches of upgrading to Windows Vista, and the potential data loss that can occur. As with most operating system upgrades, you should wipe the drive and install a clean copy, so you don’t end up with all of the baggage from the previous installation, so unless you plan on upgrading your current copy, you will have a lot more time in it than you would like. But, if you are experiencing some problems anyway, spyware, popups, sluggish machine, you should probably re-install anyway, so, may as well do it with Vista, if your machine can handle it.

The second article I read was What you need to know about Vista upgrades from PC Magazine, via Yahoo. It lists your upgrade options and what it will cost you when you buy from various manufacturers. Here are some small quotes, more info is available in the article.

Acer: Any Acer Windows Vista Capable or Windows Vista Premium Ready PC bought between October 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007 includes an Express Upgrade to Windows Vista option, automatically. Redemption must be completed by March 31. Users can check to see if their PC qualifies under the offer by clicking here.

Dell: Spokesman Bob Kaufman told eWEEK that while the company plans to charge $45 plus shipping and handling to move from Windows XP Home to Vista Basic, the upgrade from Windows XP Media Center Edition to Vista Premium and from Windows XP Pro to Vista Premium will only incur a shipping and handling fee.

Gateway: A Gateway spokesperson reported that all eMachines and Gateway PCs were eligible for a free upgrade to Windows Vista, starting Oct. 26.

HP: North American consumers who buy a new HP Pavilion or Compaq Presario desktop or notebook PC, or HP Digital Entertainment Center, with a qualifying Windows XP operating system that is designated “Windows Vista Capable” between Oct. 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007 will be eligible for a free upgrade to Vista. Customers should visit HP’s web site to request their upgrade. Proof of purchase will be required.

Lenovo: Lenovo’s Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Program will allow customers who purchase a Lenovo Vista Capable or Vista Premium Ready PC between October 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007 to receive a license and copy of the Windows Vista operating system when Microsoft places it on the market in early 2007. (The PC must carry the “Vista Ready” logo above, and consumers should be ready to supply a proof of purchase.) Customers must redeem the offer by March 30, 2007.

Toshiba: To qualify for the program, users need to have purchased a notebook PC pre-installed with “qualifying” Microsoft Windows XP software between October 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007. While Toshiba has made a Web site available to facilitate the Windows Vista upgrade transition, it was not working as of Oct. 26. What or if Toshiba will charge for an upgrade, or what format it will arrive in, was not known at press time.

And lastly, on an article on bit-tech.net titled Microsoft clarifies Vista activation to bit-tech hacks, Microsoft is trying to reassure people about the licensing terms of Windows Vista.

A Microsoft spokesman from the Licensing Dept told bit-tech that this would not be the case. He told us that Windows Vista will not require a system re-activation unless the hard drive and one other component is changed. This means that enthusiasts will be able to swap CPUs, memory and graphics cards out without any worry about having to re-activate with MS, either on the internet or by phone.

Should you change the hard drive and another piece of hardware - for example for a major upgrade such as a motherboard change that requires a re-installation - Microsoft will allow you to re-activate up to 10 times. You will not, however, be able to have more than one machine activated concurrently.

That sounds a lot better than what was previously thought, but I am sure if some of this becomes a case by case basis, you may have problems as people interpret things differently.

Vista Tip: Manage International Messages with Windows Mail

2006-10-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

Many languages are present in the land of e-mail. While some—even most, arguably—of e-mails not in English are legitimate, non-spam communications, to most of us that only speak English, they might as well be spam. If I receive a message in Korean, there’s no point in my even trying to read it; no offense to the sender intended, of course.
With Windows Mail, you can select messages sent in certain character sets and automatically mark them as junk mail. To do so, from the Message menu, select Junk E-mail Options from the Junk E-mail menu, and then navigate to the International tab. Click the Blocked Encoding List button, and on the resulting screen that appears, click the boxes beside each character set you don’t want to see, and then click OK.
You may also correspond with a limited set of people that are only in a couple of countries; therefore, you don’t care to see any e-mail originating from a sender whose domain is internationalized in another country. You can automatically block these messages from the same menu location; just click the Blocked Top-Level Domain List button and check the boxes beside the domains you’d like to block. Click OK when you are finished.

Install Vista, Buy Graphics Card

2006-10-17T17:56:00.000-07:00

Microsoft's Windows Vista is nearing completion for retail distribution in January, but many buyers will discover that a stand-alone graphics processor or card is required to reap its full benefits.
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have already talked up their CPUs' importance in Vista's features and OEMs have begun touting "Vista ready" PCs before the operating system's release. But it is now more apparent with the recent release of the latest beta version of Vista, called Release Candidate 2 (or RC2 for short), that a simple CPU with an integrated graphics processor will not always be good enough. A separate graphics processor, usually reserved for the gamer set, is almost always needed to take full advantage of Vista's graphics capabilities for the most graphics-rich version of Vista, or Aero, on what Microsoft calls "Windows Vista Premium Ready PCs."
Officially, you can run a stripped-down version of Vista without a video card in a PC or a stand-alone graphics processor in a laptop -- but you might not want to.
"To realize the charm and brilliance of Vista, the user has to have a decent graphics card, because otherwise it looks like crap: It is all washed up and the colors look bad," said Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research.
A PC needs an 800-MHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM and an integrated graphics processor that can handle Microsoft's DirectX 9 graphical interface just to run Vista, according to Microsoft. For a PC that is Windows Aero ready, the requirements are more stringent. A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC for Windows Aero needs at least a 1-GHz CPU, 1 GB of RAM, DirectX 9 graphics, 128 MB of graphics memory and pixel shader 2.0, which means an external graphics card or processor is almost invariably required.
During a Wired News test, an HP Compaq 8430 laptop with a 2-GHz Intel T2500 CPU, 1 GB of RAM and a stand-alone ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor with 256 MB of video memory could handle the RC2 version of Aero. Vista's graphically intensive features worked well and the operating system's glasslike windows and icons were nice to look at, but in this writer's opinion, a 3-year-old version of SuSE Linux's operating system is just as beautiful.
With the stand-alone ATI graphics processor disabled during the test, the images became glitchy and the resolution poor. Attempts to play a video file with Windows Media Center did not work. The laptop's integrated graphics processor was just not good enough to handle the load by itself.
However, the TV-recording function of Windows Media Center did not work when the graphics processor was enabled or disabled, which might represent one of the bugs Microsoft hopes to fix before Vista's release date in January. But as Microsoft says, a graphics engine with at least 128 MB of memory is required to record TV with Vista.
When installing Vista, the operating system automatically assesses your system and adapts itself to your PC's CPU, memory and graphics-processing capabilities. But as our test showed, Vista on a PC with a 2-GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM with a stand-alone graphics processor disabled does not look that great and certainly does not deliver what Microsoft calls a full "Vista experience."
For PCs without the requisite graphics capabilities, adding a graphics card will be enough to take advantage of Vista's graphics; however, investing $100 in a graphics card for a $500 PC just for the operating system will probably not make sense for most users.
When vendors begin their mass rollout of PCs with Vista installed next year, most systems shipped will still not be able to run the Aero version of Vista without the added expense of a graphics card, according to Peddie.
Some users may not opt for Vista's power even if they have a high-end PC with the requisite graphics engine.
"Even with a (high-powered graphics processor), Vista extracts performance and more battery life, so it is pretty yet costly in terms of machine resources," said Nathan Brookwood of Insight64. "With a notebook environment when you are not plugged into the wall, you may very well want to turn off the extra graphics because your battery is going to get sucked up."
Vista's power hungriness represents a shift in Microsoft's approach compared to when the company launched Windows XP, and before that, Windows 95, which was introduced more than 10 years ago. Both operating systems offered a range of more graphics-oriented user interfaces compared to their predecessors, but they did not require significantly more processing and graphics computing power.
"If you are a reseller, Vista is probably good news," Brookwood said. "If you are a customer or someone who buys hardware in order to run software, preferably with (graphically intensive) interfaces, it will be frustrating."

Windows Vista and transferability: why it's a waiting game

2006-10-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

Late last week, word broke that Windows Vista's license had undergone some terrible tweaks. While most aspects of the story are indeed true, much of the commentary and contextual analysis was not. To make matters worse, the most important details are still up in the air. In what follows, I hope to review the situation and offer a few comments on what remains to be seen.
First, the basic facts. In a nutshell, the new Windows Vista retail license says that you may transfer your copy of Windows Vista to another machine once, and that's it. The license reads: "The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the 'licensed device.'" This is a change from the Windows XP retail license, which has no explicit language governing the number of times the OS can be transferred.
The upshot is that this winter you buy Vista, install it at home, and at some later date you can also install it on one other PC (provided that you no longer use the original PC that contained Vista). Subsequent transfers are not allowed. After transfer, your newly "licensed device" does not gain another "one time" transfer right. It's not a cycle, in other words. I've seen this interpretation offered online, but when I checked into it with Microsoft, I was told that it is indeed a one-transfer lifetime limitation.
Same as it ever was?
One key bit of information that has been lost in the shuffle pertains to the applicability of the retail license. This license is quite different from the OEM license that accompanies new PCs—the way in which more than 90% of all versions of Windows are sold. Thus we must immediately note that the retail license affects far fewer users than the OEM license.
Indeed, Microsoft's OEM license for Windows forbids any device transfers at all. A new Gateway PC with Windows is accompanied by a license that forbids you from using that copy of Windows Vista on any other hardware. This isn't new with Windows Vista, either. Microsoft has been using this kind of language in their licenses for several years.
When asked about this approach to licensing, a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars Technica that the emphasis is on per-device licensing. "With Windows Vista, Microsoft has provided clearer language about the association of the software with a specific device—i.e., one machine, one license—and new provisions for making backups, license transfers and license reassignments," the spokesperson said. Translation: Windows is licensed by device, not by owner. Retail customers get one transfer, OEM customers get none.
The device-centric approach is a strong signal that Microsoft knows that it has much to gain from per-device licensing in a world where the PC industry is still growing (more and more PCs sold means more and more copies of Windows in a per-device world). Licensing the same software on a per-user basis in the retail channel could harm sales. The company hopes that the one-transfer rule will appear generous, but it also seems acutely aware of the fact that only a very small percentage of their users would ever be affected by this provision.
How is it going to play out?
All of this talk about what is and what is not allowed ignores one critical thing: it's really the activation component of Windows that first enforces the license. Above I mentioned the fact that OEM licenses forbid the transfer of the OS. The fact remains that despite this, users do it every day and Windows Product Activation (WPA) doesn't stop them.
Indeed, on the eve of Windows XP's release, there was much ado about Windows Product Activation and how it would "force you to buy a new copy of Windows" if you changed your motherboard or added a new hard drive. Reality proved to be far less eventful; in the event of a problem, one might be inconvenienced with a phone call to an automated license activation system, but that was about it. The apocalypse never came.
To put all of this in perspective, let's review the changes as they affect two mythical users. First, there's Joe O'Hehem, who always buys his boxes from Dell. For Mr. O'Hehem, nothing has changed. His computers come with a new OS when he buys them and the licenses say "no" to transfers. Next door lives Brock N. Mortar, who likes to buy his components and software at a local store and build his own machines. His retail version of Windows now explicitly allows only one device transfer.
For both of these users, attempts to move the OS to a new device will eventually meet Microsoft's new Software Protection Platformwhich both authenticates new installations and also monitors them for evidence of tampering. The question is, will the situation be like Windows XP and WPA, or not? Right now no one outside of Microsoft knows, but there's good reason to expect that the status quo will be maintained. First, Microsoft was cut deeply and embarrassed by the Windows Genuine Advantage tool and the scandal related to constant monitoring. I know for a fact that Microsoft has worked to make sure that modest hardware changes on a box do not trigger a transfer because the results would be equally embarrassing, especially for an OS that is expected to spur users into upgrade mode.
Second, Microsoft never really added any teeth to WPA, even though they could have. By this point everyone knows that a WPA problem is nothing but a formality, unless you're truly pirating software. It's irritating, frustrating, and an inconvenience to have to pick up the phone in the event of a problem, but Microsoft seems to pass the wand of clearance over just about everyone who calls. The company apparently thought that a cross-breed of nagware and oversight would be enough to discourage abuse among casual pirates.
So why tighten the language now? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd pin a good deal of the responsibility on Windows Anytime Upgrade. Per device restrictions solve the "problem" of users thinking that their Vista Ultimate key is a free "upgrade" to later Vista purchases through OEM or retail channels. At the very least, if you expect Joe User to get a new PC every 3-4 years, a per device license increases the likelihood of additional sales down the line. But here, again, the OEM limitations are not new.
In the end, although the language of the retail license has changed, MS perceives those changes as being no more than a change in semantics. It's puzzling that MS would switch to language that seemed guaranteed to antagonize its users, but sources assure me that while many people are outspoken about the issue, their own data shows that it affects very few users that aren't pirating software to begin with.
The one thing that we can all agree on in the meantime is this: it won't be clear how Microsoft is going to actually react to people attempting to transfer their Vista licenses until the OS is in the wild. If Windows XP's WPA is anything to go on, enforcement will be nearly all bark and no bite.
You can check out Vista's retail license for your own edification.

Windows Vista Media Center Remote Control

2006-10-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know there are some Vista enthusiasts out there dying to see a picture of this beauty. But here she is—the official Microsoft-licensed remote control for Windows Vista. It looks like a pretty average remote control, except for the big ass blocky black buttons around the middle. It does have a unique form factor with squared corners that is supposedly easier to hold and uh, sit on a table.

Vista’s Media Center Remote Sneak Peek

2006-10-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

Vista enthusiasts will already know the Windows Media Center viewing and recording suite will be included on all higher-end copies of Vista. No longer a separate SKU, Media Center is now ready for a mass market audience - and so is its remote. And just like all mass market technology, its streamlined and made easier to use.
Compared to the old Media Center remotes, the new Vista remote has most of the buttons intact: number pad, stop, play, volume and channel keys are all there. The four colored keys at the bottom will most likely correspond to the “Recorded TV, Guide, LiveTV and DVD Menu” options present on the MCE2005 remote. We love the older remote, but having these menu keys on the very bottom of the remote seems unwieldy. It’s good that they placed the volume, navigation, and playback controls near the middle where your thumb sits, but those four important keys need to be moved up higher.
Nevertheless, the remote features square corners which reportedly is as easy to hold as the old remote. We’re looking forward to testing it out ourselves

Microsoft's Vista Changes Could Backfire On Disgruntled Rivals

2006-10-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

IE7 will explicitly ask users which search engine they want to set as the default. The first time the browser is launched, it will display a list of search engines that will include Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and others--making it perhaps too easy to switch around, one analyst says.

Microsoft's decision to bow to the European Union's demands that the company modify its new electronic document format and how Internet Explorer 7 is assigned a changes to Vista's security features, Microsoft also said that it would alter how its next-generation browser integrates with a default search provider, and promised that it would submit its XPS (XML Paper Specification) to a standards-setting organization. Both changes came at the request of the EU's Competition Commission, which is headed by Dutchwoman Neelie Kroes. The commission has voiced concerns throughout 2006 about possible antitrust violations in Windows Vista.
In IE 7, which will be released this month for Google raised questions about IE 7, and claimed that the update process of using IE 6's current search engine was giving unfair advantage to Microsoft. The two companies compete in several areas, including search, where Microsoft has just 12.8 percent of the market share compared with Google's 43.7 percent.
Although the U.S. Department of Justice has said that it didn't see how IE 7 gave Microsoft an advantage, the EU saw it differently. "The Commission advised us to make changes in the upgrade process for users moving from Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, in a Q&A Friday. "We agreed to make these changes."
Now, however, IE 7 will explicitly ask users which search engine they want to set as the default. The first time the browser is launched, it will display a list of search engines that will include Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and others.
"IE 7 will make it easier to change search engines," said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with JupiterResearch. "But the choice page could work against a default provider -- who you'd think would be Google for most users -- as work for the search engine."
By Wilcox's thinking, offering everyone a choice may actually cost big-name search services such as Google. "What about users who have IE 6 and Google because their computers came that way? Maybe they didn't know how to switch [search engines]. Now they suddenly have a choice, and they might pick something else besides Google."

Microsoft also agreed to send its XPS electronic document format to a standards group to satisfy Kroes' agency. XPS is a file format intended to compete with Adobe's popular PDF. "[The commission] advised us that it wanted us to submit this new specification to a standards organization. We have agreed to do so," said Smith.
The XPS brouhaha came out of threats made by Adobe in June that it would sue Microsoft unless the latter dropped Save As PDF features from Office 2007 and gave OEMs the ability to strip XPS completely from Vista. Microsoft gave in to Adobe on both counts.
In its newest concession, Microsoft has not specified which standards body it will submit XPS to, nor a timeline.
That could mean trouble, said Wilcox. "The devil is in the details. But Microsoft will take XPS open-source, and that the format will be available not just on Windows, but on any platform or device." How that helps Adobe, Wilcox added, is hard to see. Taking XPS to multiple platforms -- a characteristic that Adobe's PDF boasts -- would make Microsoft's format a stronger, not a weaker, competitor.

Windows Longhorn Review

2006-10-14T20:18:00.001-07:00

It's been a long year. On May 4, 2004, Microsoft group vice president Jim Allchin provided a keynote address at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2004 (Windows Vista WinHEC 2004 Show ), during which he demonstrated Longhorn builds 4067 and 4069 and discussed such Longhorn features as Avalon, Indigo, and Aero. The company then provided build 4074 to show goers, and to MSDN subscribers. It looked like Longhorn was finally on track.

Not quite. Unbeknownst to those outside of Microsoft, Longhorn was about to take a major detour. The 4000-series builds that Microsoft had just shown off and handed out had already run their course and were destined for the technological dustbin. The problem, I was told recently, was that the underpinnings of Longhorn--then based on the Windows XP code base--were struggling under the weight of all of the technologies that Microsoft planed to implement in this release.

I'll make available an exclusive write-up about what happened next sometime in June 2005, but for now let's just say that Longhorn's architects went back to the drawing board. The 4000-series builds were scrapped, and the company started building Longhorn again from scratch, using the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 ) code base (as it did for the x64 version of Windows XP (Windows XP Professional x64 RC2 ). The idea is that Longhorn needed to be better componentized from the start, so that the company could offer more discrete versions of the product to customers and more easily add-on the many disparate technologies it was developing. These versions of Longhorn are identified by their 5000-series build numbers.

Late last month, Microsoft finally issued its first public build of Longhorn, build 5048. Also known cryptically as the Longhorn Developer Preview, Longhorn build 5048 was actually created on April 1, 2005 and does not reflect some of the advancements Microsoft has recently made. That was by design: Longhorn build 5048 is designed largely for device driver writers and, as such, does not include many of the user interface niceties we're expect from Longhorn. Furthermore, it actually represents a usability back-step from last year's build 4074. That's because some features, like the Sidebar and the new system-wide Contacts utility, are missing in action in 5048. There are reasons for these omissions. None of them are particularly good.

In any event, Longhorn build 5048 was issued at WinHEC 2005 (WinHEC). Between WinHEC 2004 and WinHEC 2005, and while Longhorn was silently being re-engineered, Microsoft publicly revealed that Longhorn was changing somewhat. First, the WinFS data storage engine would be delayed until after Longhorn shipped, though Microsoft promised a beta version of WinFS around the same time that Longhorn was completed and vowed to include most of the instant desktop search functionality in Longhorn regardless. Second, key Longhorn technologies, such as Avalon and Indigo, would be ported to Windows XP with SP2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, and the x64 versions of XP and 2003, to ensure developers that they would have a big enough market to target. Microsoft also vowed to ship Longhorn in 2006.

Um, you're joking, right?

I have to be honest here. After a year without a single new Longhorn build and very little concrete information about what was going on with the project, I had high expectations for build 5048. And a pre-WinHEC briefing with the software giant did nothing to assuage those hopes. Plus, I've seen advanced Longhorn UI work and I knew how cool this thing was going to be.

Build 5048 communicates none of that. And that's a shame, because Microsoft had a chance to ramp up the momentum of a product that, quite frankly, could use a little momentum. On the one hand, we have Windows XP with SP2, which many people describe as "good enough," a phrase that will haunt Microsoft for years to come as it tries to foist new Windows and Microsoft Office versions on them with decreasing success. On the other hand, I present the competition, Linux and Mac OS X. The Linux market may be convoluted and disjointed, but Linux, too, is "good enough," and it's free, along with "good enough" applications like OpenOffice.org and better Web browsers, like Firefox.

It gets worse. Apple's Mac OS X, recently upgrade to version 10.4 ("Tiger") is more than "good enough." In many ways, OS X is simply better than Windows, especially for experienced computer users, and Tiger rubs Microsoft's nose in the embarrassment of shipping a key Longhorn feature--instant desktop search--a full year ahead of the software giant. That's right folks. We already knew that Microsoft was facing smaller, nimbler competitors. But those competitors are now starting to outperform Microsoft in the feature department too. It's time for Redmond to stop pretending Linux and OS X don't exist.

Anyway, Longhorn build 5048 is pretty boring. That it's boring by design doesn't make me much happier. I do know that the company will add back major new functionality in time for Beta 1 (currently scheduled for June 30, 2005, but you know how those release dates have a way of slipping) and then again for Beta 2 (a nebulous release that Microsoft will not commit a date to). But sitting here in early May 2005, surveying the state of Longhorn, it's not pretty. Longhorn build 5048 is a disappointment. Here's what I found out about this build during a busy week of testing.

Installing Longhorn build 5048

If you're familiar with the Longhorn 4000-series setup procedure (see my Windows Longhorn for details), Longhorn build 5048 holds no surprises, and still offers none of the amazing corporate deployment tools I first wrote about two long years ago.

First, build 5048 is available on DVD only, and that might be true of the final product as well. When you boot from the DVD, you're presented with a new Longhorn boot logo (Figure), and then a Welcome to Windows Setup screen (Figure). After that, you enter your Product Key, agree to the Software License Terms, and are presented with an oddly non-customizable Settings screen (Figure). Here, you can change the installation location and the computer name, but none of the other options. Presumably, setting up user accounts, regional settings, and the time zone will come in a later build.

When I originally tried to install build 5048, I ran into a lot of problems. My first attempt was in a Virtual PC 2004-based virtual machine, but Setup couldn't see the unformatted virtual drive (Figure). This same problem cropped up in VMWare Workstation 4.5 and 5.0, so I gave up and partitioned my laptop and then installed the system on its new partition. That install went fine--albeit slowly--and I later discovered that there is a bug in the build 5048 setup application that prevents it from seeing unformatted virtual disks. If you want to install Longhorn build 5048 in either Virtual PC or VMWare, you'll need to copy over a formatted virtual disk from another virtual machine first. Then, Setup can see, format, and use that disk.

In any event, once you present Setup with a disk it knows how to use, sit back and wait, because Longhorn build 5048 takes well over an hour to install. Microsoft still insists it will get clean installs of Longhorn below 15 minutes, but it's hard to imagine at this stage.

Once Longhorn build 5048 is done installing, you boot directly in the desktop of the Administrator account (Figure), which is a little disconcerting. And if you try to do the right thing, security-wise, and add a password to the Administrator account and then create your own user account, build 5048 actually complains that it can't log you on: The auto-logon is hard-coded in some way. Nice work, guys.

First looks at the Longhorn build 5048 desktop

Not surprisingly, Longhorn build 5048 is visually a mix of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, tossed together with a new Aero theme that is rendered, in this build, using XP-era technology and not the advanced Avalon-based UI we'll see in later builds (Figure).

Some small visual niceties are available, however. Some icons have been updated to approximate the vector-based icons that Longhorn will eventually use (Figure), and the Start Menu is barely translucent. You can also enable a pseudo-Aero Glass mode using a Registry hack (Figure), but the results are buggy and performance challenged, so I soon lost interest.

The 4000-series Sidebar is gone in build 5048 and Microsoft corporate vice president Joe Peterson said it's probably gone for good. That's a shame, as the Sidebar was one of the best Longhorn features, in my opinion, and something that I use today, roughly, with the MSN Premium Dashboard.

There is a new Search Administrator icon in the tray area. It brings up the Indexing Options dialog (Figure) for Longhorn's instant search functionality.

Desktop Properties is unchanged from XP.

Start Menu

Microsoft has changed the Start Menu fairly radically in this build, though the results are visually challenging. Instead of a pop-up All Programs sub-menu the All Program entry now triggers a visual change where the All Programs menu items replace the left side of the Start Menu (Figure). If you open a folder from there, the menu expands, causing a (gasp) scroll bar to appear (Figure). Ugly.

There is also an unmarked search box in the Start Menu, below All Programs. Here, you can actually type in the name of an application (yes, seriously), and the left half of the Start Menu will change to display any applications that match what you're typing, as you type (Figure). I seriously doubt the utility of this feature, but whatever: Anyone who uses the mouse to select a search box, then types in an application name, and then once again uses the mouse to select the correct application from the search results list has long ago given up any semblance of trying to be efficient.

Microsoft says that it is moving away from the "My" naming convention in Explorer, and that is partially implemented in build 5048. My Computer is now Computer, and My Network Places is now simply Network, followed by the name of your workgroup or domain in parenthesis. Mine is identified as Network (THURROTT), for example.

The Taskbar and Start Menu Properties are virtually identical to those in XP or 2003. However, a new System Tray tab (Figure), while largely useless today, will someday let you configure various System controls, which appear to be somewhat separated from the old tray icon way of doing things. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Explorer

Fire up an Explorer window like My Computer (Figure) and you'll see that Microsoft is edging ever closer to the "visualize and organize" scheme that they've been planning for Longhorn. The file preview area has been moved to the bottom of the window, creating a more streamlined look than that of the 4000-series builds. And task-oriented options now appear under the menu.

The view style options are similar to that of the 4000-series builds. A slider lets you switch between Details, Tiles, Large Icons, Medium Icons, and Small Icons (Figure). Large Icons are actually pretty decent looking and, dare I say it, almost OS X-like (Figure). Picture icons, naturally, are thumbnails, regardless of the view style. And the Address Bar has been replaced by a breadcrumb bar that makes it easier to jump to locations that are higher in the shell hierarchy than the current view.

In the My Documents folder--which, remember, will eventually be replaced by a virtual folder called Documents--we can see the beginnings of visualize and organize. In addition to standard shell folders like My Pictures, the My Documents folder also contains special smart folders, called Auto Lists, that aggregate certain kinds of data. There are five Auto Lists for documents in build 5048: All Documents, Authors, Keywords, Recent Documents, and Types (Figure). However, there are others in other folders. For example, the My Music folder has Auto Lists for Album Artists, Albums, Favorite Albums, Favorite Music, Genre, Music, and Ratings. My Pictures has Events, Locations, and People.

You can construct search queries in a fairly simple way using a visual query builder that looks like it was lifted straight out of Windows Media Player (Figure). Here's how it works: You specify a search term in the Search For field and then select a location to search, and the types of files you'd like to include in the search. Then, you hone the search by using any number of filters (both AND and OR based). For example, you might filter where the Author is Paul (Figure). The list of items by which you can filter a query is quite long. However, until you can save these kinds of searches, it's a pretty laborious way to find stuff. Curiously, you create your own Lists. To do so, right-click on any folder or the desktop and choose New and then List. Then, give the List a name. However, there's no way to determine what constitutes the List. At least not that I can determine. The preview pane is empty, and offers no clear configuration operations.

Control Panel has been overhauled with a new style of Category view (Figure), though the Classic view is still available and visually resembles Classic view in XP. Most of the individual Control Panel applets appear to be lifted straight out of XP as well, and there are no longer any of the new-and-improved applets like the Contacts utility from build 4074. However, there are some more hints of things to come here, including empty or non-functional OS and Application Updates and Sync Manager applets. The Portable Media Devices applet triggers a wizard when launched (Figure) that tries to find a compatible portable media player or related device (like a USB key). I haven't gotten it to work yet, on a real PC or from within a virtual machine.

There's also an interesting Add/Remove Networked Device applet that is launched from an icon called Networked Device Installation (Figure). This applet discovered network-attached devices and then information about their capabilities. Clearly, it's the first look at what will be some sort of UPnP/Windows Connect front-end.

Bundled applications

Longhorn build 5048 comes with the complete suite of bundled applications you're used to from XP, so no big news there. Internet Explorer looks like a standard shell window but uses a normal Address bar (Figure) and identifies itself as version 6.0. Windows Media Player 10 and Outlook Express are all familiar, as are all of the other applications.

I've only installed a few external applications and have nothing brilliant to report. Microsoft Office 2003 and Windows AntiSpyware install just fine, while applications like Zone Alarm Security Suite, Microsoft Photo Story 3, and Tweak UI refuse to install at all.

Now what?

Frankly, there's not a lot to report about build 5048. The new Print, Imaging, Fax, and Color features are not included. Nor is Windows File Protection (WFP), an EFS-like security feature that will debut in Beta 1. The Limited User security features, too, are missing in action. From an end user perspective, most of the new and interesting stuff we saw in the 4000-series builds has been removed, leaving us with a painfully familiar XP-like experience.

I understand that this build is for developers, however, and sure enough, the DVDs that Microsoft handed out at WinHEC 2005 do include a Software Development Kit (SDK) and Windows Driver Kit (WDK), both of which require the Visual Studio 2005 beta. I'll install these tools and delve further into build 5048. However, my guess is that I won't have much more to report until I see Beta 1 or another pre-Beta 1 interim. Time will tell.

Conclusions

Longhorn build 5048 is hugely disappointing from an end user perspective because it shows how far behind Microsoft is in delivering the next client version of Windows. Also, expectations were high that Microsoft would hit a home run with this build, because it was the first public Longhorn release in a year. With my enthusiasm firmly in check now, I can look forward to some June briefings and the expected July release of Longhorn Beta 1. I do expect that things will indeed improve over time. However, that's not saying much, as things can only improve.

Windows Vista Beta 1 Review

2006-10-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

A little work on Microsoft's behalf could have prevented this problem. For example, a pre-WinHEC briefing in which the expectations of me and other Windows enthusiasts were suitably moderated would have been a great start. As it was, I went into WinHEC with high hopes, especially given the news that we would receive our first Longhorn build in a full year.

As I noted in my review of Longhorn build 5048 (Windows Longhorn), however, my hopes were ill-placed. Build 5048 was a major step back from the previous build we had received (4074), from functional and features standpoints.

OK, that was three months ago. A few weeks ago, Microsoft briefed me about Windows Vista Beta 1, suitably setting my expectations. And Beta 1--and the pre-Beta 1 builds I've used over the past weeks--are much, much more impressive than Build 5048. Microsoft may have made some boneheaded mistakes in the past, but they're clearly learning.

On a much grander scale, Longhorn is finally improving again. Beta 1 doesn't feature the end-user functionality that will make this release compelling to actual human beings, but it does include enough new technology to stir my technology-loving heart. I still have my fears for Longhorn--er ah, Windows Vista--but before we get to that, let's take a little tour through the Beta 1 experience.

Installation

Compared to the installation routine for Windows XP, Windows Vista Beta 1's Setup has been drastically simplified. I installed the beta in two ways on a number of different machines: As a clean install on a new partition, starting from Windows XP (see windows vista install screenshot 01 ) and as a clean install as the only OS on the machine, booting from the Setup DVD (see windows vista install screenshot 02 ). And yes, you read that right: Windows Vista 1 Beta 1, in either x86 or x64 form, comes only on DVD. In both cases, Setup only prompts you for a few simple items and then does its thing. An upgrade install (where you upgrade from XP to Vista) does not appear to be available in Beta 1.

In both types of installations, Setup prompts you for your product key, presents the End User License Agreement (EULA), and then lets you choose the installation type (Custom, in this case). Then, you can choose the install partition and the computer name. In the install partition phase (Figure), you can perform tasks such as creating, deleting, and formatting partitions as well. Then, Vista installs, rebooting the system once during the install and once after it's completed.

If you boot the system with the Windows Vista Beta 1 CD, you'll notice a slight change in the language used to prompt you to hit any key to start Setup: It says you can boot "from CD or DVD" and not just from CD like

Windows Vista Beta 1 user experience

The Windows Vista Beta 1 desktop is visually similar to build 5048, and if you have a dedicated graphics adapter you'll notice that Aero is enabled by default. Windows feature a polished, glass-like translucent look, and window buttons light up as you mouse over them (Figure). One nice touch: the Recycle Bin visually appears to fill up with little crumpled balls of paper as you throw items out (Figure).

The taskbar hasn't changed much, but on notebook computers, you'll notice a new power management icon, which launches a nice dialog (Figure), and a new Presentation Settings icon that lets you configure how the screen behaves when you're giving a presentation (Figure) (I have no idea why that's visible by default).

A third tray icon is more auspicious and will be instantly familiar to users of MSN Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search: It's the Windows Search Engine, and clicking it provides you with quick access to the engine's configuration dialog. The search window, too, should look familiar, since it debuted earlier this year in Mac OS X Tiger (Figure). Windows Search behaves as you'd expect, but I'm going to delve deeper into that feature in a future technology showcase.

The Start menu, too, has changed little since 5048 and features the same odd mix of Windows Vista and XP icons (Figure); Windows Client Group Director Neil Charney told me recently not to fear, that all of the icons throughout Vista would be upgraded to be big, high-resolution, and beautiful. What's interesting is that some of the legacy icons--notably that for Set Program Access and Defaults--look the same as in XP but have been re-rendered in more high resolution versions (Figure).

Start menu behavior is identical to that in 5048, but it bears another look. Instead of a cascading sub-menu for the All Programs link, as with XP, Vista features a curious in-place sub-menu that replaces the left half of the Start menu. Here's how it works. When you click the All Programs link, the left half of the Start menu changes to display the Programs menu, in-place (Figure). If you click on a folder, the list expands to show the contents of that folder (Figure). This, of course, can trigger the appearance of an in-place scroll bar if the programs list gets too long, which is odd looking (Figure). When you click the Back link (which appears in the same location as All Programs), the Start menu returns to its normal state.

Because Microsoft built a search box into the Start menu, you can no longer use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around. To launch the Control Panel in XP, for example, you simply hit the Windows key and then the "C" key and, voila, the Control Panel opens. In Windows Vista, however, when you hit the "C" key, the system assumes you're searching for an application (Figure). Sigh.

Shell namespace changes

Before we delve into the various shell locations, like Computer, Documents, and Control Panel, I'd like to explain how the shell namespace has changed in Windows Vista. While the goal was to make the shell easier to navigate, my fear is that the changes will simply confuse people. I'm not a complete idiot, rumors aside, and I still find it a bit confusing. Here's what's happening.

In Windows XP and 2000, Microsoft introduced the concept of the Documents and Settings folder structure (previously, there was a Users folder in the C:\winnt folder in Windows NT 4.0). Under this folder are folders for each user account, so in my Windows XP system, I see a folder for Paul as well as a folder for All Users, which contains information that applies to, well, all users.

In XP, you also see various folders such as Desktop, Favorites, My Documents, and Start Menu under the Paul folder. And inside of My Documents, you see three special shell folders: My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos.

In Windows Vista Beta 1, Microsoft has blown most of that away. Instead of a Documents and Settings folder in the root of the system drive, you'll see a Users folder. And inside of that folder, you'll see folders for individual users (Paul and Administrator, for example) and a UNIX-like folder called Public (Figure). OK, let's navigate in a little further. Inside of the Paul folder are several folders: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Virtual Folders (Figure). Note that Music, Pictures, and Video are no longer subfolders under Documents.

As with XP, all of these folders are "real" folders. That is, they exist at a discrete place in the shell hierarchy and can contain real files and folders. They are literally identical to folders in XP. However, Windows Vista, as you may know, also introduces the concept of Virtual Folders. These are not "real" folders but are instead XML-based containers for links to other files and folders. Virtual Folders do not "contain" anything. Instead, Virtual Folders point to lists of other files and aggregate data in meaningful ways.

Think back to when Windows 95 first shipped. Windows 95 let you create shortcuts to documents and folders in more easily accessible places (typically the desktop). In the same vein, Virtual Folders let you round up related files and folders in more easily accessible places as well. But Virtual Folders are far more powerful than simple shortcuts. That's because Virtual Folders are smart--that is, they update dynamically--and because they make it easier for you to organize your data in ways that make sense to you.

Windows Vista Beta 1 ships with a number of canned Virtual Folders that address obvious needs, and some of them are available right from the Start Menu. Stupidly, some of them are named the same as "real" folders, which is where some of the confusion sets in. So when you click on the Documents link in the Start menu, for example, that opens C:\Users\Paul\Virtual Folders\All Documents and not C:\Users\Paul\Documents as you might expect (Figure). The former (All Documents) is a Virtual Folder that automatically aggregates all of the documents on your hard drive, regardless of their location, while the latter (Documents) is the modern day equivalent of My Documents: It's just a regular folder, and when you save document files from an application like Microsoft Word, that's where they'll go by default.

This distinction is important. As I said before, Virtual Folders don't actually contain anything per se. They're not "real" folders. You can't save a document to the All Documents Virtual Folder, but you can save a document to the Documents folder. Once you've saved that file, however, it will appear in both locations (Figure). Yep, it's confusing.

Microsoft continues this naming nightmare with other Start Menu links. The Pictures link (Figure) actually opens a Virtual Folder called "All Pictures and Videos" (and not C:\Users\Paul\Pictures). The Music link (Figure) opens a Virtual Folder called "Albums" (and not C:\Users\Paul\Music).

Regardless of the naming confusing, the new namespace is a good thing and the best solution we'll have until Microsoft takes the bold (and, if I may say so, long overdue) step of ridding Windows of the limiting drive letter-based file system we still use. That's because the average Windows user will never have to worry about drive letters with Windows Vista. Virtual Folders make Windows Vista friendlier to use. In most cases.

One exception is a clean install where you intend to copy over data from a network share or external hard drive. Let's say you just did a clean install of Windows Vista and you'd like to copy over all your photos, music files, and other documents. You can't copy photos, for example, into the "All Pictures and Videos" Virtual Folder, which is what you get when you click Pictures on the Start Menu. Instead, you need to open up the "real" Pictures folder. Fortunately, a link to the Pictures folder is found in the Navigation Pane (on the left) in the All Pictures and Videos window. Similar links can be found in Albums and All Documents, naturally.

Virtual Folders are a neat concept, and like I noted earlier, Windows Vista Beta 1 ships with a number of them (like All Videos, Favorite Music, Artists, and so on). But the real power of Virtual Folders is that you can create your own. At its heart, a Virtual Folder is really just the visual results of a query against a database that contains a list of the content that is stored on your hard drive. As with any database query, you can filter down the results list to match certain criteria. And of course you can create your own queries and, thus, your own Virtual Folders. I'll look at this process in an upcoming Technology Showcase.

Navigating around the computer

The Computer link on the Start menu, as you might expect, is Vista's equivalent to My Computer (Figure). This window gives you a drive-high view of your PC, and will list any hard drives, CD/DVD drives, and removable storage devices that might be connected to your system. As with other shell windows, Computer features a preview pane on the bottom (which can be moved to the right side or hidden) and a breadcrumb bar in place of XP's address bar, which makes it handy to jump around in the shell namespace as needed. Inexplicably, some windows display the preview pane on the top and have different options available to them (Figure). There's nothing like consistency.

Control Panel has been significantly updated with a new look and feel, though it retains the category-based organizational scheme (Figure) that Microsoft pioneered in XP (and Apple borrowed in Mac OS X 10.3, see my review). In Classic View, Control Panel betrays a few new features, including an Auxiliary Display applet, which will work with the next generation of notebook computers and Tablet PCs (Figure). A new Programs applet replaces the old Add or Remove Programs and provides front-ends for adding programs, viewing and removing installed programs and updates, and other options (Figure). A new Solutions to Problems applet will apparently one day out-help Help, but right now it's pretty useless (Figure). And the Windows Parental Controls applet hints at future features, while in Beta 1 it offers just limited functionality (Figure).

Some of the functionality in Vista Beta 1 is in transition. For example, while the Add Printer Wizard is new, it can currently only find Bluetooth-basedin Beta 1, and not network-attached printers (Figure). In other places, like Mouse settings, the dialogs are identical to those in XP.

Explorer view styles

One thing that's changed pretty dramatically is the way Explorer displays information. In XP, we got an evolved version of the Windows Explorer shell, featuring the same address bar and icon set we've come to know and sort of love. XP also added a somewhat controversial task pane, which I felt was a pretty successful attempt at adding task-oriented functionality to the OS.

Yes, the Windows Vista version of Explorer still displays icons that represent files and folders. But just about everything else has changed. The address bar has been replaced with a breadcrumb bar that makes it extremely simple to navigate around the shell namespace, and this is one feature I think users are going to wonder how they previously lived without (Figure). The breadcrumb bar works a lot like the address bar, but it gives you the ability to arbitrarily navigate back up into the shell namespace from any point.

Here's how it works. Say you navigate into a specific shell location, such as C:\Users\Paul\Documents. In order to navigate from there to C:\Users\Administrator, you'd have to hit the Back button twice, and then double-click on the Administrator folder. Or, you could edit the text in the address bar manually, your choice. In Vista, all you need to do is select the little down arrow next to Users in the breadcrumb bar (Figure) and then select Administrator from the list. Bang: You're there.

The new Explorer isn't just about a better address bar however. Microsoft has also removed the standard menu we're used to (though it's available as a "Classic Menu" choice) and has replaced it with a new bar that's sort of a combination menu and toolbar. In a typical Explorer window (i.e. one displaying files), you'll see an Organize button; which drops down a menu including choices like Rename, Move, Copy, E-mail, and Delete (Figure); a Views buttons, which lets you set the icon size and style (Figure) (quick tip: Hold down the CTRL button and use your mouse's scroll wheel to scroll between the choices automatically); a Show/Hide button that reveals and hides various UI elements, and a Share button.

A typical Explorer window now displays a Navigation pane on the left side, which is sort of like the old Explorer tree view, but is instead dynamic, showing you commonly used shell locations and shell locations that are related in some way to the folder you're currently viewing. For example, if you navigate to C:\Users\Paul\Documents, you'll see All Documents, Authors, Public, and other related folders in the Navigation pane (Figure).

On the bottom of most Explorer windows is a Preview pane (Figure). This pane dynamically changes depending on which icons are selected. If you select a text file, for example, you'll see keyword, rating, author, and size information (Figure). A music file displays album title, year, rating, duration, genre, and track number, along with an album art representation (Figure). You can resize the Preview pane, which reveals even more meta data information (Figure), or you can place it on the right side of the window (Figure) by selecting the Show/Hide button and selecting Show Preview Pane on Right. You can also hide the Preview pane if you're a purist.

There's a lot more going on with Explorer windows, but I'll save that for a future tech showcase. As a teaser, I'll just note that the Explorer in Windows Vista supports lists, auto lists, and virtual folders, and those are all things I think most Windows users will be very interested in.

End user stuff

While Beta 1 isn't a tremendous release for end users--that is, most of the end user goodness like Movie Maker and future digital media enhancements are missing in Beta 1--there are still all kinds of new things going on here. Some are already nicely implemented, while others are just wisps and hints of things to come. Here are some of them.

Fax

Windows Vista Beta 1 features a new Fax Console that includes a Fax Configuration Wizard (Figure) and a fax cover page editor. The console itself is set up like an email client, which makes me wonder why this functionality wasn't simply built into Outlook Express (or better yet, Outlook).

Games

Windows Vista includes an activity center of sorts called Games (or Games Explorer) that aggregates all of the games installed on your system into a single location. By default, you only see the silly little games Microsoft provides with Vista--FreeCell, Hearts, Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Spider Solitarie--but presumably others will appear as they're installed (Figure). Games Explorer appears as the Games link in the Start menu.

Internet Explorer 7

After completely abandoning Internet Explorer (IE) development in the years after XP was released, and planning to subsume IE's functionality into the Windows shell in Longhorn, Microsoft finally relented after witnessing Mozilla's success with Firefox and has now reconstituted the IE team. The first product from this team was the version of IE that ships with Windows XP SP2 (The Version Of IE That Hath No Name). The second is IE 7, and you can see the first beta version of this product in Windows Vista Beta 1.

IE 7 isn't horrible, but it isn't going to set the world on fire either. Arguably, it doesn't need to: If IE 7 is simply Good Enough to stem the flow of users from Firefox, it will be very successful indeed. On that note, IE 7 includes a number of interesting features. The most obvious, of course, is its long-overdue support for tabs (Figure). How Microsoft got away without having a tabbed browsing interface for this long is beyond me, but in IE 7 the company does an admirable job of getting it right. There's a New Tab button to the right of the rightmost tab, and you open and close tabs with the correct CTRL+T and CTRL+W key commands, respectively, which is appreciated. (Most Microsoft apps insist on using CTRL+F4 for closing tabs, which is almost impossible to do with one hand.)

IE 7 also supports RSS feeds, though the support is so subtle you could easily miss it. When you navigate to a Web site that includes an RSS-based subscription, the new RSS Feeds toolbar button lights up red (Figure). You can click that button to see the site's RSS feed presented in a friendly way, oh so similar to the way that Apple's Safari Web browser does it (Figure). That page also lets you subscribe to the feed, using friendly IE terminology (Add to Favorites). When you add an RSS feed to Favorites, of course, you're getting the feed version (i.e. the friendly IE front-end to the feed) and not the originating site.

Microsoft is also working to mitigate so-called phishing attacks, where a malicious hacker conceals his Web site to make it look like an eCommerce or online banking site in the hopes that unsuspecting users will cough up their user names and passwords and, thus, other critical private data. The Phishing Filter, as it's called, is an opt-in feature. From what I can tell, it doesn't do squat, as I loaded two obvious phishing addresses into the application with nary a warning.

I haven't seen this publicized anywhere else, but IE 7 also includes an incredible new printing feature that will, finally, clear up all of IE's printing issues. The most obvious change is Shrink to Fit, which is the default: This morphs a Web page horizontally so that it fits, fully, on a printed page (Figure). You can also print pages horizontally (in Landscape mode) (Figure). Yep, it's about time.

There is also a special version of IE 7 hidden away in the System Tools folder that loads IE without any plug-ins. Logically named Internet Explorer (No Add-ons), this version of IE might be useful to use if your system is compromised in some way and spyware is preventing you from using the browser normally. In other words, to be safe, Microsoft has to ship a version of IE that doesn't work like IE. Cute.

Finally, yes, Microsoft does plan to upgrade Outlook Express in Windows Vista ... eventually. Windows Vista Beta 1 still includes good ol' Outlook Express 6, which first debut four years ago in Windows XP.

I'll be reviewing Internet Explorer 7 separately soon, and will highlight any differences between the version in Windows Vista and the public version that will ship for Windows XP.

Network Presentation

Windows Vista Beta 1 includes technology designed for giving presentations over a wireless network using any standard network projector. It's unclear why this esoteric functionality is provided right there in the system tray and Start menu by default, but there it is. I don't have a network projector to test this on, but I'll look into it.

Remote Desktop Connection

While RDP doesn't appear to have changed in Windows Vista (at least not yet), it does fire up a security warning dialog when you connect to a remote server, which I'm sure is in keeping with the company's current security requirements (Figure).

Product Activation

As you might expect, Product Activation is still present in Windows Vista Beta 1, but its behavior is different than it is under Windows XP. I've been told that Activation actually waits for several days now after installation before popping up its first annoying reminder dialog, but that hasn't been my experience. In fact, on most installs, I haven't even seen it yet. On one in which I was able to get networking working a few days after the initial install, the Activation dialog did finally pop-up. But Activation isn't listed anywhere in the UI by default, which is interesting.

Speech Recognition

In addition to the accessibility tools Microsoft included with Windows XP, Windows Vista Beta 1 has a new Speech Recognition application that lets you control your computer with your voice. The first time you run this application, a wizard steps you through the process of adjusting the system microphone (using a new Microphone Wizard, Figure), training the computer to recognize your voice, and then optionally prints out a cheat sheet of the 10 most often used Speech Recognition commands.

Sync Manager

As with build 5048, the eventual greatness that will be Sync Manager is only tantalizingly hinted at by the inclusion of a bare bones version of this program (Figure). Sometime by Beta 1, we'll have a better look at Sync Manager, but right now even less useful than the Items to Synchronize applet in XP, which is really saying something.

Windows Backup

Remember how the Backup application in Windows XP was this bizarre byproduct of Windows NT that had somehow survived into the new millennium like a vestigial reminder of our floppy-based past? Well, wipe that awful memory from your mind. Windows Vista Beta 1 includes an early, half-finished version of a new data backup and restore application, appropriately called Windows Backup, and it looks like it's going to be a winner. Some day.

Clearly marked as Windows Backup (BETA) in Beta 1 and codenamed SafeDocs, this application will do away with the horrible directory tree structures that mar other backup solutions and work in a far more simple way. In Beta 1, you can automatically backup files, recover specific files and folders, or recover all files. Eventually, you will be able to backup according to file type and utilize removable hard drives, not just CD and DVD media, as is the case in Beta 1.

Windows Media Player 10

Though Windows Vista will eventually include Windows Media Player 11, the current builds include WMP 10, although it features some odd looking controls (Figure). Don't be confused, however: It's not new.

Other odds and ends

I spent a bunch of time comparing the Start menu entries in Beta 1 to those in Windows XP. As you might expect, in addition to the new features, there are some things missing. In Beta 1, the following applications are missing in action from the Start menu: HyperTerminal, Backup (which has been replaced), Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragmenter, Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, Scheduled Tasks, Security Center (it's in Control Panel, however), System Information, System Restore, Scanner and Camera Wizard, and Tour Windows XP. I'm sure there's more.

Running as least privileged user

In the final shipping version of Windows Vista, Microsoft is overhauling the way in which user security works, and in my opinion it's a long time coming. In Windows XP, you typically set up user accounts to be Administrator or Limited User types. More specifically, what everyone really does is give all the accounts Administrator privileges because Limited User is badly broken and doesn't work. Admin-level accounts are nice because you can install, run, and remove applications without having to worry about any restrictions. But these accounts are dangerous because everything on the system runs at the most elevated security level. And if you get hacked, malicious code usually gets to run under your Admin-level privileges as well. It's like a little hidden benefit that Windows gives you, for free.

Ahem.

In other modern operating systems like UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X, this isn't an issue. Even when users on those systems logon with Administrator-type accounts, most actions take place using vastly reduced privileges. And when you have to do something that could harm or change the system configuration, the system will prompt you to supply an Admin-level password. Again, this happens even when you're already logged on as an Administrator.

In Windows Vista, finally, Microsoft is adopting the same approach. But there are two issues with doing so in Windows. First, Windows wasn't architected to accommodate this type of security, so Windows Vista needed to be extensively overhauled to make this possible. Second, the vast library of Windows applications out there was written to assume that the user will have Administrator privileges. Thus, part of the Windows Vista overhaul will need to fake out those applications to ensure that they work normally under the new system.

Microsoft calls this change User Account Protection (UAP; it was formerly called Least Privileged User, or LUA). In Beta 1 it is off by default, but you can enable it with a shortcut in the Start menu (Figure). I'm told it will be on for good in future builds. If my experience with Beta 1 is any indication, many Windows users are going to find this change very difficult, and much more aggravating than any of the security changes Microsoft added to Windows XP SP2. Maybe it will get simpler over time.

Here's how it works now. When you enable UAP (and logoff and logon again), you'll be presented with a Windows Security dialog (Figure) any time you try to do something dangerous. The sheer number of actions that trigger this dialog, however, is alarming. Virtually every single Control Panel applet makes it come up, for example, as does installing an application. And so on. It gets kind of tiring after a while.

Behind the scenes, Windows Vista is running under a vastly reduced privilege level automatically. When the system requires an elevated privilege level, the dialog appears and you provide a password. This password is good only for the action you initiated. Everything else you do--even while the elevated action runs--happens with reduced privileges. There are other changes, too. With UAP enabled, the Windows Firewall seems to pop up more often. For example, I used Firefox for days before turning on UAP. After I enabled UAP, however, Windows Firewall warned me before letting Firefox connect again to the Internet.

Look and feel

Overall the look and feel of Windows Vista Beta 1 is pleasant and well-designed, with a vague Mac OS X-like look. The use of transparencies and translucencies, however, shows that Microsoft is still years behind Apple, experience-wise. While Apple has long ago scaled back the amount of translucency you see in Mac OS X because of illegibility complaints, Windows Vista Beta 1 is full of rookie mistakes. For example, when you pull an Aero window frame over another window, the text below, as seen through the top window, is muddy and ugly (Figure). Get enough windows over each other and the effect is chaotic (Figure). Hopefully, the right kind of feedback during the beta program will cause them to tone this stuff down.

Also, this isn't the final user interface, so it's probably not worth getting too excited over, regardless of how you feel about the current UI. As far as I'm concerned, it's good but not great.

Performance

Surprisingly, Windows Vista Beta 1 is a speedy performer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see statistics showing that it's already faster than XP on the same hardware. This is somewhat confusing to me, since early betas are generally not tuned for performance. Plus, Vista has an incredibly dense UI compared to XP. I'll be interested to see whether this changes over time.

Compatibility

One of the big issues with any early beta is compatibility--both hardware and software--and so far, Windows Vista Beta 1 has been problematic in this area. While much mainstream software appears to work fine, anything that checks the Windows version number--like many of Microsoft's utilities, notably--won't work. But hardware is a much bigger issue. Over four different test machines, I only got wired (Ethernet) networking working on two of them, and I was unable to get wireless working across five different wireless networking cards. I will continue testing these issues and try more machines and different hardware types. The long and the short of it, however, is that most things work fine, but some crucial hardware simply doesn't work at all. That's to be expected at this early stage, I suppose.

What the heck am I looking at here?

A long time ago--I mean, like two and a half years ago--I was secreted into a room on the Microsoft campus for my first Longhorn demo. At that time, Longhorn was still the Kitchen Sink (tm) of computing, promising to deliver every single bit of technology you could imagine, all wrapped around a Flash-like UI that was based on Anark technology. It all looked really impressive.

I have yet to see anything like that materialize in an actual Longhorn/Vista build.

Since then, Windows Vista has been defanged somewhat, and while the early Aero Glass demos I saw seemed to raise the OS at least to Mac OS X levels visually, they didn't really go much beyond that. I was told to wait and see, wait and see, and promised that things would get better. Instead, things got much worse. In mid-2004, Microsoft halted Longhorn development, restarted the project using the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) code base, and componentized the core of the system before adding back much of the work other teams at the software giant had already completed.

The bad news is that a lot of the super futuristic stuff appears to be gone, and may be gone forever. The sort of bad news is that Windows Vista more closely resembles Windows XP than was the original plan. That is, there's a Start menu that looks a lot like the XP Start menu. The windows are prettier but still Explorer windows. All the right-click, power user stuff we all learned for XP still works. And so on.

At the risk of sounding like a cheerleader, let's make some lemonade out of them lemons. The good news in all this is that Windows Vista will work the way you expect. That is, it will be pretty and powerful, but it's still Windows. Everything works in basically the same way.

I'm still trying to convince myself that that's OK. And certainly, I haven't seen enough of the content that's expected for Beta 2 to make any judgments yet. But so far, so bland: Beta 1 is a big improvement over build 5048, but it's only an evolution over Windows XP. We were promised a revolution, dammit, and I want a revolution.

Conclusions

Windows Vista Beta 1 is about what I expected to see in April, when Microsoft released build 5048 at WinHEC 2005. On that note, it's not a horrible disappointment like build 5048. However, because it lacks the end user niceties we'll see in the PDC 2005 build, in Beta 2, and in the final product, it's not something that will excite average users. From what I can tell, Beta 1 is primarily designed so that IT administrators and developers can check out custom application compatibility issues. And that's just fine. For the rest of us, seeing how the virtual folders will sort out is somewhat interesting, and I'm eager to use this organizational system full time, as I'm anal retentive about creating specific document folder structures right now anyway. Beta 1 is all about possibility and promises, and that's OK. My only real disappointment is that it took so long to get to this point: I first saw many of these features almost two years ago and now I want more.

On that note, as long as Microsoft can continue to meet and, God forbid, exceed expectations in future builds, then Windows Vista is on the right path. It might be worth comparing this build to Whistler Beta 1 (see my review), which at the time only barely hinted at the goodness to come. But Windows Vista Beta 1 is much further along than was Whistler Beta 1. Maybe this thing isn't a train wreck after all.

One bit of good news: There's so much going on in Beta 1 that even this massive review can't cover it all. I've promised you a number of technology showcases that will delve deeper into specific Windows Vista features. I'll begin delivering those articles over the next couple of days and into next week. Finally, I have something interesting to write about again on the Windows side.

WinHEC 2004 Show Report and Picture

2006-10-14T20:17:00.002-07:00

the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2004.

WinHEC 2004: Allchin Touts Windows Roadmap, Experience Computing

During his keynote address at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2004 in Seattle Tuesday, Microsoft Group Vice President Jim Allchin updated attendees on the company's client and server product plans for the next two years. Allchin also declared the coming product waves to be part of what Microsoft calls "the experience economy," where only those products that think through end-to-end experiences will be wildly successful. Allchin called out non-tech industry companies such as Starbucks as innovators of the experience economy.

"Experience thinking is the way to the next segment of growth for us," he said, "and innovation leads the way." Allchin noted that people now expect seamless experiences in non-traditional computing environments, including while on vacations, while being entertained, and while exercising. And for computing to move into these new environments, the entire ecosystem will need to focus on fundamentals such as silence, cooling, size, weight, and self-healing. "Experience computing is solution-centered, person-minded, and focused on experiences," Allchin noted. "It's about sites and sounds, feel, and emotion. Today, the devices that are evoking the most emotion in people are the most popular ones."

Experiences, Allchin said, will focus on the "doing," or the entire flow of events that a user will need to perform in order to succeed at a task. In Microsoft's current operating systems, these experiences include the Windows XP photo acquisition and management system and the roles-based management tools in Windows Server 2003. "But we need to do much more," Allchin said. And in the upcoming waves of products Microsoft will issue through 2005, he noted, the company will do just that.

On the client side, 2004 will be a big year. First, Microsoft plans a Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) release in late summer that will focus on what Allchin calls "safety" features, primarily security updates that will make the underlying system more resilient and reliable. XP SP2 will beget three major new client releases, XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (codenamed Lonestar), XP Media Center Edition 2005 (codenamed Symphony), and XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-bit Extended Systems, the latter of which targets AMD-64 and upcoming Intel-based x86-64 systems. Microsoft will also ship Windows CE 5.0 and new versions of the Smartphone and Pocket PC operating systems in 2004, Allchin said. Additionally, the company is planning a "media experiences wave" this year that will include a major new version of Windows Media Player that supports "Janus" subscription-content synchronization with portable devices, a major revamp of MSN Music, Portable Media Centers from a variety of third party hardware makers, and Windows Media Center support for Media Center Extenders, set-top boxes that will remotely access Media Center Content.

Allchin reiterated that Longhorn Beta 1 will ship in 2005, and demonstrated some exciting Longhorn capabilities using recent builds (4067 and 4069) of the alpha version operating system, highlighting capabilities such as the Avalon 3D subsystem and the Indigo communications subsystem. Longhorn, Allchin said will integrate the "three magic ingredients" of fundamentals, scenarios, and people. "That's what Longhorn is all about," he added. During a demo, he showed Longhorn playing 6 high-resolution videos simultaneously while playing Quake III Arena in the background; a comparable XP system was unable to play four of the videos simultaneously. Allchin also demonstrated an interesting migration tool that can optionally use an upcoming smart USB cable to transfer personal data from an existing PC to a new Longhorn-based PC.

On the server side, Microsoft will ship Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) in late 2004, which he said would include all of the safety technologies from XP SP2 and some unique server-specific features. Windows 2003 SP1 will be followed by Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP1 and Windows Server 2003 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems, and Virtual Server 2005. In 2005, Microsoft will deliver Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2, which he referred to as "Windows Server 2003 Update"), Windows Small Business Server 2003 Update, a new version of Windows Storage Server (codenamed "Storm"), and Longhorn Server Beta 1. "Longhorn Server is now generally aligned with the Longhorn client," Allchin said, referring to recent scheduling changes; originally, Longhorn Server was going to ship sometime after the Longhorn client.

Longhorn didn't discuss the schedule past Longhorn Beta 1, but in previous roadmap talks he placed Beta 2 at a year after Beta 1, which means we can expect Longhorn Beta 2 in early 2006 and, potentially, the final release in mid- to late-2006.

Day 2: May 5, 2004

WinHEC 2004: Microsoft Revises Longhorn Graphics Requirements

While Microsoft didn't announce general hardware requirements for Longhorn at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2004 this week as expected, representatives from the company did reveal that the graphics card requirements for the upcoming system have changed since they were first revealed at WinHEC 2003 last year. Furthermore, Microsoft revealed details of Longhorn's so-called tiered user experience, dubbed Aero.

"The Aero user experience is a generational leap over what's available today in Windows XP," Kerry Hammil, a Program Manager on the Avalon team said during a graphics session at the show Monday afternoon. "There will be two discrete levels of user experience in Longhorn. As the graphics hardware becomes more powerful, the user experience becomes richer in discrete steps."

These levels, or tiers, are currently called Aero and Aero Glass; last year they were simply referred to as the Tier 1 and Tier 2 user experiences. The default Aero user experience is built on the low-level Longhorn graphics application programming interface (API) dubbed Avalon, and will require a DirectX 9-compliant 3D graphics processor with at least 32 MB of RAM and an AGP 4x bus; Aero will require a resolution of at least 1024 x 768 (XGA), compared to 640 x 480 (VGA) for today's Windows versions. Last year, Microsoft announced DirectX 7 compliance as a baseline for Longhorn, but Hammil defended the change. "By 2006, DirectX 9 will be baseline functionality," she noted, adding that it will be impossible to find DirectX 7 cards in two years anyway. "Machines with graphics hardware that doesn't meet this Aero bar won't qualify for the [Designed for] Longhorn logo."

Aero Glass, the higher-end user experience, will be a true superset of Aero and come with higher hardware requirements. "Aero Glass will provide a beautiful user interface experience, with transition animations. Window frames will be a bit blurry and translucent, making text easier to read. Transparencies and animations will be hallmarks of the Aero Glass user experience, with more modern, high quality visualizations than with [standard] Aero." Aero Glass will require a DirectX 9-compliant 3D graphics processor with at least 64 MB of RAM, though 128-256 MB of RAM will be recommended.

In addition to the two tiered Avalon-based user experiences described above, Longhorn will also support a legacy Classic display mode that will resemble the Windows 2000 user interface. This mode will support all of the non-UI-related Longhorn technologies, so Longhorn applications will still run fine in Classic mode. Microsoft is providing this mode for upgrades that don't meet the minimum requirements for Aero, and for corporations that would prefer not to retrain users as they migrate to Longhorn.

Day 3: May 6, 2004

WinHEC 2004: Microsoft Merges Tablet PC Future into Wider Mobile Computing Vision

Say what you will about the Tablet PC, but Microsoft isn't giving up, and upcoming versions of this often-misunderstood technology will meld with other mobile computing devices and, ultimately, become a mainstream product. That's the new plan at Microsoft, anyway: Once seen as a laptop alternative, Tablet PCs will soon give way to a range of mobile PCs that meet all customers needs, a sharp departure from the niche products PC makers released until recently.

"The Mobile Platforms Division [at Microsoft] was formerly the Tablet PC Division," said Darin Fish, the Business Development Manager for the Mobile Platforms Division. "We reorganized so we could have a greater focus on the mobile PC, not just the Tablet PC. What we found working on the Tablet PC is that much of the platform work we were doing was benefiting all mobile PCs. The challenge was getting [that technology] to all mobile PCs. We're still the same group, and we have one team focused on mobile PC fundamentals, and one that's very focused on pen and ink."

Fish laid out Microsoft's mobile PC schedule for the next three years. Tablet PCs, he said, had evolved from premium ultra-portable notebooks PCs in 2003 to being more of a feature of notebook PCs, a trend that will continue through 2005. "We're going to see Tablet PC functionality begin to be incorporated as a mobile feature in mainstream notebook PCs," he said. Starting in 2006 with the Longhorn product wave, mobile PCs will adapt to meet every customer need and will slowly overtake the desktop PC form factor. PC makers shipped 38 million mobile PCs in 2003, but Microsoft expects that figure to grow to 63 million units by 2006.

As a software company, Microsoft creates the underlying platform that runs Tablet PCs and other mobile PCs, and the company is predictably planning a series of updates that will dramatically improve that platform for users. Late this summer, Microsoft will ship Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (code-named Lonestar), a free update for all Tablet PC users that adds a dramatically enhanced Text Input Panel (TIP), with context-sensitive handwriting recognition and other new features.

Its Longhorn-era plans, however, are far more exciting. Though Microsoft hasn't yet determined which of these features will be included in the base Longhorn product line, and which will only be available on Tablet PCs and notebook computers, the list is dizzying. The company will beef up the product's fundamental features, such as power management, multi-monitor support, and the like. But it will also be working on a slew of new functionality, including:

Auxiliary Displays. Next-generation mobile devices will include small external displays on their covers that will let users view personal information management (PIM) data at a glance, without having to open or turn on the device.

Device and File Synchronization. Using Longhorn's integrated Synchronization control panel, users will be able to synchronize data between their PC and Tablet PC, notebook computer, PDA, portable audio devices, and other portable devices.

Communication and Collaboration. Longhorn will make it easy for users to quickly set-up ad-hoc wireless networks for file sharing, and discover people who are connected near you. It will also provide a way to connect with wireless projectors, with one-to-one and one-to-many support for wireless connections between PCs whose users wish to collaborate in real time.

Mobility Center. Microsoft is planning an Activity Center called Mobility Center for Longhorn that will include all of the mobility tuning features in the OS, all in a central location.

Location Awareness. Though the details of how the system will accomplish this are currently in flux, Microsoft plans to add location awareness to PCs with Longhorn, so that your system will behave and look differently when you're at home, at work, at school, or at other locations.

Pen/Shell integration. Longhorn will natively support ink files names: Click on an icon's name with the stylus, and just write the file name normally in your own handwriting. A simple wizard will let you supply examples of your handwriting so that the handwriting recognition engine only compares created file names against your writing, and not the millions of samples the engine currently uses.

Snipper and Flick utilities. A a new pen gestures feature (codenamed Flick) will allow you to perform certain actions with a Tablet PC stylus that aren't writing or control selection activities. For example, you could set up gestures for copy, paste, back, forward, undo, and delete activities. Another pen utility, codenamed Snipper, will bring the Microsoft Snipping Utility Powertoy into the base OS.\

Pen Optimized Skin. For a new generation of small, 5-inch to 8-inch, Tablet PC devices that will begin shipping this year, Microsoft is developing a dashboard page that will provide access to PIM information that users need, all in a single, handy page. The Pen Optimized Skin presents time and calendar information, links to recently accessed documents and applications, the 7 most recent unread email messages, the most recent uncompleted tasks, and the links to your most often used applications. This skin is designed to sit on top of, and generally replace, the basic Windows user interface on devices whose screens are too small for a desktop UI.

Day 4: May 7, 2004

WinInfo Short Takes, WinHEC 2004 Special Edition

An often irreverent look at some of the week's other WinHEC 2004 news...

Microsoft releases Longhorn Build 4074 to WinHEC attendees, MSDN
Microsoft finally released an updated pre-alpha build of Longhorn to testers this week, build 4074, which went out to Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2004 attendees and MSDN Universal customers (via download) this week. I've got the first two of what will likely be many Longhorn build 4074 screenshot galleries available now on the SuperSite for Windows, and of course I'll have a full review as soon as possible.

Microsoft Verifies, Updates XP Reloaded Plans
Various Microsoft representatives verified this week that "XP Reloaded" will be a marketing campaign aimed at rejuvenating consumer excitement in Windows XP, a product that has evolved dramatically since its initial release in October 2001. Set to run from October to December 2004, XP Reloaded will focus on new XP versions such as Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, as well as various product updates that will ship in late summer/early fall, including XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and the next major version of Windows Media Center, and add-on products like Portable Media Centers and Media Center Extenders. What's changed is that Microsoft originally planned to have separate marketing campaigns for XP SP2 and XP Reloaded; now SP2 will be marketed as part of the XP Reloaded campaign.

Microsoft Pumps 64-Bit Computing, Asks Partners for Drivers
Dubbing 64-bit computing the "future of mainstream," Microsoft representatives, including chairman Bill Gates, used this week's WinHEC 2004 show as a platform to get developers excited about the 64-bit Windows versions that will ship late this year, including Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems, and Windows Server 2003 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems. Both OSes will target AMD-64 and Intel x86-64-based hardware, and will for the first time offer all of the features of their 32-bit brethren (previous 64-Bit Windows versions didn't, dropping features like Windows Media Player). However, these new 64-bit OSes versions will have one major limitations that will, for the time being at least, limit their appeal: Hardware driver support will be minimal until third party manufacturers step up to the plate and get going with 64-bit drivers (Today's 32-bit drivers won't work). And that means 64-bit systems will be pretty useless for mainstream users, again, at least for the short term.

Microsoft Refutes Palladium Rumors
Microsoft this week refuted a bizarre report in CRN that stated that the company was dropping support for its Palladium technology (also known as Next Generation Secure Computing Base, or NGSCB). "NGSCB is alive and kicking," a Microsoft representative said. The technology will still be an optional piece of Longhorn, and will require specially-made PCs, which include security-oriented chipsets. Sorry, rumormongers.

At WinHEC, Microsoft Focuses on the Future, Not the Worm-riddled Present
As many pundits have accurately noted, this week's WinHEC trade show was long on sweeping long-term changes that Microsoft executives would like to see happen to the PC platform, but it was short on information about the problems facing today's PC, including the seemingly unrelenting series of electronic attacks we suffer from on a regular basis. Part of the problem, I suspect is the constant delays Microsoft faces with XP SP2, which was original due in the first half of 2004, but was recently set back to late summer 2004 (though I'm hearing "July" might be the new date). XP SP2 will solve a lot of security problems--and bring a host of compatibility problems as well--but like Longhorn, it's still mired in "future technology" territory as I write this. How 'bout shipping it sometime this century, eh?

HP's Updated Athens PC Concept Continues to Impress
At last year's WinHEC, Microsoft and HP introduced the Athens PC, which a prototype design that combined hardware and software in ways that weren't previously tried. Then, in November, the companies showed off a second-generation Athens PC design that actually utilized real-world HP hardware, showing that the prototype was quickly on the way to becoming a reality. This year, at WinHEC 2004, the companies showed off Athens PC generation three, dubbed "Troy," which now features a Longhorn user interface, but still retains the prototypical elements of past designs, like a breakout box for currently unassigned functionality, like a docking bay for a PDA. There was also a "Hermes" mobile PC prototype, basically a notebook version of the Athens design. Cool stuff, and a nice future for business computing if it ever comes together.

Wanna Know Why Microsoft Doesn't Improve IE? It's Your Fault
I've been stressing for months over Microsoft's refusal to improve Internet Explorer (IE) by embracing modern Web standards and adding user-requested features like tabbed browsing, but I think I've finally figured out the problem: Microsoft isn't going to fix IE when it is still the most-often-used Web browser by far, with its next nearest competitor bringing in Mac-like market share numbers. And that, folks, is the problem: By continuing to use IE, every one of you are allowing Microsoft to continue its policy of ignoring a product that, frankly, needs a lot of work. So if you're serious about seeing Microsoft improve this aging clunker, maybe the best solution is to start using something else. I recommend Mozilla Firefox.

Gates Fined $800,000
Microsoft icon Bill Gates has agreed to pay an $800,000 fine for failing to disclose an investment in Icos, a Seattle pharmaceutical company, according to an announcement by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). Because Gates is on the board of directors for the company, he's required to comply with federal antitrust premerger notification requirements. In case it's not clear, this fine has nothing to do with Microsoft's antitrust woes, though people often seem to have trouble separating Gates from the company. Here's how you tell the difference: Gates is the Bond villain, and Microsoft is the death ray he uses to threaten humanity.

Windows Vista Beta 1 Clean Install from Boot Screenshot

2006-10-14T20:17:00.001-07:00

Note: These shots are from a pre-Beta 1 build and may include branding that has changed in Beta 1. I will update the shots as necessary to address any changes.

Windows Vista Beta 1 Install Screenshot

2006-10-14T20:17:00.000-07:00

Note: These shots are from a pre-Beta 1 build and may include branding that has changed in Beta 1. I will update the shots as necessary to address any changes.

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Preview

2006-10-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

When it was released in April 2003, Windows Server 2003 was the most secure server operating system Microsoft had ever developed, thanks to a massive security code review that had halted development mid-stream for three months. Since that time, Windows Server 2003 has proven its mettle in the real world, and lived up to its security billing.

But since the release of Windows Server 2003, Microsoft has developed a number of security technologies originally planned for Longhorn, codenamed Springboard, which further harden the Windows operating system, making it more resilient against entire classes of electronic attack. The first generation Springboard technologies were moved into Windows XP Service Pack 2 after a spate of malicious hacker attacks in 2003, delaying the release of that product until August 2004 (it had originally been scheduled to ship in late 2003). The long development time of XP SP2 also ended up delaying the release of many other projects at the software giant, including the x64 versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Like XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1 has changed dramatically since its inception, though it was always going to be more than a normal service pack. That is, Windows Server 2003 SP1 had been conceived originally as a stepping point of sorts to future Windows Server versions, including R2 ("Release 2," due in late 2005) and "Longhorn" Server (2007). As such, it was to have included new features like the Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) and some of the so-called Feature Packs that Microsoft had been releasing since the initial version of Windows Server 2003. However, with the addition of the Springboard security technologies--including Windows Firewall and other features from XP SP2--Windows Server 2003 SP1 is now poised to take the "most secure" mantle from Windows Server 2003 and XP SP2. It is combines the features from a standard service pack, aggregating previously-released bug and security fixes--with a slew of new features that one might normally associated only with major Windows Server updates.

In this preview, I'll focus on the new features you can expect to see in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). This preview is based on numerous discussions with various Microsoft representatives and months of experience with pre-release versions of the product, including the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) and Release Candidate 2 (RC2) versions of the product. In the future, I'll be providing more analysis of these features in a full review of Windows Server 2003 SP1 and the Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions, which are essentially x64-based versions of Windows Server 2003 with SP1.

What's new? Well, nothing, sort of

To understand some of the interesting decisions Microsoft made with Windows Server 2003 SP1, you must first understand how the company views the Windows Server product timeline. Every four years, Microsoft plans to ship a major new version of Windows Server. These major new versions could include low-level kernel changes, so Microsoft will not ensure compatibility with previous versions, though of course this type of compatibility is always a key concern. The first of these major versions was Windows Server 2003, and the next will be Longhorn Server, due in 2007.

In between each major release--or, put another way, two years after each major release--Microsoft will ship an interim Windows Server release. These releases will share the kernel with the previous major Windows Server release, ensuring compatibility, so it will be straightforward to roll out these product versions in environments based on the previous Windows Server version. They will also include many of the Feature Packs, or "out of band" updates that Microsoft had previously shipped for the previous Windows Server version. The first of these interim releases is codenamed R2 (for "Release 2"), and its due in late 2005.

Between each of these releases, Microsoft will continue to ship Feature Packs and service packs. Service packs, for the most part, will continue to play their classic role of aggregating previously-released bug and security fixes. Windows Server 2003 SP1, as previously noted, does however include a number of new features, including some that were originally scheduled for Longhorn but were released sooner as part of the Springboard initiative. To make the transition from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2003 with SP1 less intrusive, however, Microsoft has decided to hide or disable many of these new features, especially on upgrades. For this reason, the "out of box" experience--especially on upgrades--will result in a system that is not demonstrably different from the previous version.

However, the new features are there. You just need to know where to look for them. If you look through the Administrative Tools folder on a newly upgraded Windows Server 2003 SP1 machine, you'll see no new management consoles. Instead, you need to look at the Windows Components Wizard (Figure)--initiated by selecting Add/Remove Windows Components from within Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel--to find a first obvious new feature, the Security Configuration Wizard (which is discussed below). That's right, folks: It's not installed by default. You need to manually add it yourself.

"Though I was one of the people that made the decision to not install the [SCW] by default, I've sort of looked back on it now and wished we'd done it differently," Iain McDonald, a Microsoft director of Windows Server program management, told me during a recent meeting.

Most of the new features in Windows Server 2003 are quite stealthy. This isn't a release that's designed to rock the boat. In the next several sections, I'll highlight some of the new features that I think are important.

Security Configuration Wizard

Long heralded as the major new feature change in Windows Server 2003 SP1, the Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) has been in the planning stages for years. With the release candidate builds of Windows Server 2003 SP1, however, the SCW arrives as a functional entity for the first time (Figure). And it appears that SCW was worth the wait. Essentially a wizard-based tool for configuring the security features and policies of your servers, the SCW uses the roles-based administration features first introduced in Windows Server 2003 to good effect. The SCW lets determine what kind of server you want to have--say a file, print and Web server--and then shut down unnecessary services, block unneeded ports and restrict open ports where possible, secure protocols like SMB (secure message block) and LDAP, and perform other similar tasks (Figure).

In Microsoft parlance, the SCW "reduces the attack surface" of a Windows Server 2003 SP1-based server by letting you easily make such machines as secure as possible given their required role(s) in your infrastructure. It is also extensible, meaning that Microsoft and third parties can create secure roles that take into account other server products. And you can easily export server settings as XML scripts and then apply them to other servers where appropriate, a nice feature for server farms or other redundant set-ups. Additionally, you can roll-back to previously-applied policy settings, or use Group Policy to roll out SCW-created policies.

The SCW is a complicated and powerful tool, worthy of further discussion. I'll have more to say about this feature in my eventual review of Windows Server 2003 SP1 and in a separate Technology Showcase dedicated to SCW.

Remote Access Quarantine

One of the fundamental problems with allowing users to remotely access a server through a VPN connection is that there is no easy way, currently, to ensure that those connecting systems are up-to-date with the latest security fixes, especially if your organization has a strictly mandated security policy. Remote access is convenient and even desirable, but most organizations have no way to determine the cleanliness, if you will, of the connecting systems.

Microsoft has a long-term goal for fixing this problem, and it's being implemented in steps across many Windows Server releases, including Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 SP1, R2, and Longhorn Server. Sadly, we're still at the nascent stages of this implementation, so the technologies available today are not particularly viable. In the future, Microsoft will add true network quarantine capabilities directly to Windows Server. The idea is that non-conforming remote access machines are pushed off to a segregated portion of the network, given the updates they need to meet your security policy, and then finally allowed in. Originally scheduled for R2, that feature won't be fully implemented until Longhorn Server now because of a technology cross-licensing agreement between Microsoft and Cisco.

So what do we have today? With Windows Server 2003, Microsoft provided users with a tool called Quarantine Policy Check in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit (RK). The tool lets you scan remote users as they connect and then initiate a post-authentication network policy script that verifies that the connecting system meets your security policies. If it does not, the remote user is denied network access. Typically, you might redirect the user to a Web page that describes the policy and how they can update their system. It's better than nothing.

In SP1, Microsoft is basically providing the capabilities of Quarantine Policy Check in the base OS, so it's not a huge improvement over the previous situation. Dubbed Remote Access Quarantine, this feature helps administrators quarantine remote access clients that don't meet the minimum security settings they've created. However, like the previous RK-based solution, Remote Access Quarantine is not yet an easily-implemented or full-featured solution.

Post-Setup Security Updates

To protect servers from electronic attacks during clean installs, Microsoft enables the new Windows Firewall (see below) during Setup and first boot. (Note that this functionality is only available on a Windows Server 2003 clean installation that has been slipstreamed with Service Pack 1.) When the administrator logs on at first boot after Setup completes, Windows Server 2003 SP1 launches a new feature called Post-Setup Security Updates (Figure), which blocks incoming network traffic until you download pending updates from Windows Update or cancel out the window. After you've dismissed this window--hopefully by successfully downloading any remaining updates--you cannot re-trigger it, and it's not available from the Start Menu or, typically, from within Windows Server 2003 SP1.

Post-Setup Security Updates does not appear on an upgrade install to Windows Server 2003 SP1 from either Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 (though it will appear if you upgrade Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 SP1, Microsoft says).

Windows Media Player 10

Windows Server 2003 SP1 includes Windows Media Player 10 (WMP 10), which is the most recent version of WMP at this time (the initial release of Windows Server 2003 shipped with Windows Media Player 9 Series). Compared to previous versions of WMP, WMP 10 is more secure and has been updated to work with the many other security enhancements in Windows Server 2003.

Changes that first appeared in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Many of the new features in Windows Server 2003 SP1 are new to Windows Server, but first made their debut in Windows XP SP2, which shipped in August 2004. Many of these technologies are part of the Springboard project, and many of them are configured differently in Windows Server 2003 SP1 than they are in XP SP2, because of the different needs of a server environment. For example, the Windows Firewall is enabled in XP SP2, because a client machine should typically block all network traffic except that which it trusts and needs. A server, meanwhile, is designed to accept network traffic, so the Windows Firewall is typically disabled in Windows Server 2003 SP1.

Here are some of the new Windows Server 2003 SP1 features that first debuted in XP SP2.

Add or Remove Programs

As with XP SP2, the Add or Remove Programs applet in Windows Server 2003 SP1 now includes a "Show updates" filter that lets you show or hide updates to the operating system in the list of installed programs (Figure). By default, all updates are hidden, but by checking the box titled "Show updates" at the top of the window, you can display all OS updates as well (Windows Server 2003 SP1 is displayed when Show updates is off, however). Note that including all updates in the Add or Remove Programs list makes for long and slow-loading list. Also, third party application developers can take advantage of this feature to optionally hide updates, though I've yet to see a third party update that does so.

I evaluated the Add or Remove Programs list on a stock Windows Server 2003 machine earlier this month. It included 37 "currently installed applications," though all of them were hot-fixes and other similar updates. After upgrading to SP1, that same machine shows just one currently install program--Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1--though you can check the "Show updates" check-box to show all of the individual updates if you'd like. Doing so, however, doesn't display the full list of 37 additional items, because many of those fixes were rolled into SP1.

Data Execution Prevention (DEP)

In Windows Server 2003 SP1, Microsoft added support for Data Execution Prevention (DEP), which can work in two different ways. The more powerful version of DEP interacts with the No eXecute (NX) feature found in AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron microprocessors, or the eXecute Disable (XD) feature Intel uses in its EM64T-compatible Pentium 4 6XXX and Xeon chips. However, on other microprocessors (i.e. most existing 32-bit processors) DEP works in software-only mode and is therefore less powerful.

In either case, DEP attempts to prevent code from executing in system memory that is reserved for data. This functionality helps alleviate memory-based attacks, such as buffer overflows, which are a common tactic of today's malware. However, the software-based DEP feature will only protect a limited range of system binaries, according to Microsoft. That means that many existing servers (and PCs, in the case of XP SP2) will be less well protected.

So what happens when you are running a system with DEP enabled? If an application--good or otherwise--illegally stomps on memory that is reserved for data, the operating system will raise an exception and terminate the application. Because this type of activity is likely to cause problems with application compatibility, however, DEP is actually disabled for non-operating system processes (i.e. all third party applications) by default on my Windows Server 2003 SP1 systems. However, you can enable it for maximum protection (and minimum compatibility) by accessing a new tab on the Performance Options dialog, which is available from System Properties (Figure). Here, you can also configure an exceptions list for applications you trust.

In a semi-related bit of functionality, x64-based systems receive a bit of extra protection from a new technology that prevents non-official Microsoft hot fixes from patching the OS kernel. For example, kernel-mode drivers, which often use undocumented programming features, are programmatically prevented on x64-based Windows Server 2003 SP1 systems. Developers are only discouraged from doing that sort of thing on x86 systems.

Windows Firewall

Windows Firewall is the new version of the Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) that Microsoft included with the original version of Windows Server 2003. It is a software-based, stateful filtering firewall with a much wider array of configuration interfaces than its predecessor. However, like ICF, Windows Firewall only monitors inbound traffic. And unlike the version of Windows Firewall Microsoft first included in Windows XP SP2, the Windows Firewall in Windows Server 2003 is generally not enabled, although it is turned on by default during clean installs and boot-up to protect otherwise vulnerable servers against electronic attacks.

"Putting Windows Firewall on by default for clean installs ... it's kind a nuanced story," McDonald told me. "Windows Firewall is not on all the time because the worst thing that we could possibly do is kill all of the traffic to a domain controller or whatever on an upgrade to SP1. It's kind of a blunt instrument to just turn the firewall on. We don't know what third party applications are on there. We don't know what methods they use for remote administration. It could be Terminal Services, it could be WMI, or it could be something else. Going and doing that would've been the wrong thing to do."

Internet Explorer features

Though Windows Server 2003 shipped with a more-secure-by-default version of IE 6 called IE Enhanced Security Configuration (code-named "IE Hard"), Microsoft has made many security improvements to IE 6 since that release, primarily in XP SP2. Some of these features are now being added to Windows Server 2003 in SP1.

First, IE gains the Manage Add-ons feature Microsoft added to IE in XP SP2. This feature lets administrators view all of the add-ons that are installed in IE and then disable the ones they don't trust or need. In pre-IE 6 days, these add-ins were commonly called plug-ins, but they can be any number of items, including Browser Helper Objects (BHOs, the source of much spyware), ActiveX controls, toolbar extensions, and other browser extensions. As with IE in XP SP2, you can view the Manage Add-ons UI by selecting Tools and then Manage Add-ons (Figure). Unlike with IE in XP SP2, it's unlikely that you'll see a lot of add-ons on a Windows Server 2003 system.

IE also gets the pop-up blocker and Information Bar features from IE 6 in XP SP2, though it's likely that the IE Hard content blocking feature (Figure) from the initial release of Windows Server 2003 will kick in before the pop-up blocker is called on. However, if you visit a pop-up launching site that is in an IE zone that allows scripting, or turn off the IE Hard functionality all together, the IE pop-up blocker will display as it does in XP SP2 (Figure).

The Local Machine Zone (LMZ) in IE has been locked down in Windows Server 2003 SP1, as it was previously in XP SP2, in order to prevent downloaded code from running under elevated privileges on the system. Previously, Web content that was loaded locally--that is, loaded from the local file system of the server--was treated as safe, and allowed to run scripts, ActiveX controls, and other potentially unsafe code. Unlike some other IE features, this change could have enormous ramifications for Windows Server 2003 users. However, third party applications that host Web content locally, even if they're using the IE rendering engine, are not affected. Developers can adopt the LMZ lock-down settings optionally, which might be a good idea.

As with the version of IE in XP SP2, IE in Windows Server 2003 SP1 prevents errant Web coders from creating hidden IE windows, moving IE windows off-screen, or resizing IE windows. Also, pop-up windows can no longer be created with an address bar, title bar, status bar, and toolbar. These techniques have been used by hackers to spoof dialogs and other user interfaces in the past.

The IE (and Outlook Express) file downloading prompt has been made to be more consistent with the safer version in XP SP2. Some of this change is just cosmetic, but it also prevents you from downloading content from blocked publishers, as configured by the Manage Add-ons feature in IE.

Finally, for administrators who are looking to fully control IE deployment through Group Policy, SP1 lets you do so (as it does for XP SP2 machines). For the first time, it's possible to create a centralized security settings policy and then apply it to all of the server systems you manage.

Low-level changes

In an effort to reduce the attack surface of Windows Server-based servers, Microsoft has implemented some key low-level changes from XP SP2 in Windows Server 2003 SP1. Specifically, the company has changed the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and Distributed COM (DCOM) interfaces to be more secure by default. These and other low-level changes could lead to some application incompatibilities, especially for those companies that have created custom-made in-house solutions.

"There are actually two places where we know applications are going to have compatibility issues," McDonald said. "The first one is DCOM pruning, which is what we did in XP SP2 earlier. And the second one is the most common application compatibility issue, which is where the application is [hard-coded] to work only with a specific version of the OS. We've been trying to educate developers not to do that with every release."

Timing and availability

Microsoft is currently making the Release Candidate 2 (RC2) version of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 available as a free download (343 MB). I've been told by representatives of the company that Microsoft will finalize the code for Windows Server 2003 SP1 in March and make the product widely available shortly thereafter. Slipstreamed versions of Windows Server 2003 with SP1 will replace current Windows Server 2003 products in April 2005.

Conclusions

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is a hugely important security update for Windows Server 2003, and an excellent upgrade for all Windows Server 2003 systems. Despite the massive number of security-oriented changes it includes, SP1 will likely prove to be a non-invasive upgrade for most businesses. However, because many of the security changes can cause application incompatibilities and other problems, businesses should test this release as soon as possible in order to ensure that their upgrades will go smoothly. As Windows Server 2003 SP1 nears release, I'll have more information on which to base this opinion, but at this point in time, based largely on months of pre-release experience, I highly recommended that all Windows Server 2003 users begin evaluating and planning the eventual upgrade to Windows Server 2003 SP1. It looks like a solid, much-needed update.

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition RC2 Preview

2006-10-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

As I noted in my Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Preview, Microsoft has been working on a version of XP for x64 hardware for almost two years now. Much has changed since Microsoft tentatively announced support for the fledgling computer platform in April 2003. First, the x64 platform has shown enormous street creds, with Intel essentially copying AMD's original design, thus assuring that x64, and not Itanium, would be the mainstream 64-bit computing platform of the future. Second, Microsoft has elevated XP x64, its desktop-oriented x64 operating system, from being a niche player to being the basis for its next mainstream OS platform.

Early versions of XP x64 weren't pretty and lacked significant functionality. But more recent releases, like the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) build the company issued last fall and the RC2 version that shipped earlier this month, show a maturity and attention to detail that was previously missing. XP x64 is still a subset, of sorts, of XP 32-bit, but the missing features in XP x64 were dropped with good reason.

For example, XP x64 includes no 16-bit subsystem, so legacy MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows applications will not run on this system. Compatibility purists may look at that omission as a problem, but I agree with Microsoft's assessment that dropping 16-bit support is a chance to rid the system of messy legacy deadwood.

Also missing are legacy networking protocols such as NetBEUI and AppleTalk. Again, the chance to clean house, so to speak, should be applauded not condemned, even if it temporarily limits the size of the potential audience for this release. These are unnecessary technologies today, and Microsoft, understandably, doesn't want to support them forever.

In short, XP x64 looks and acts like the 32-bit version of XP Pro with Service Pack 2 (SP2). Virtually everything you see in a default XP Pro system is present in XP x64, including the Security Center, with just a few exceptions. There are also occasional features in XP x64 that aren't present in XP SP2, such as a 64-bit version of Internet Explorer. On the other hand, XP x64 also includes a 32-bit version of IE 6 for compatibility reasons: All the browser add-ons IE users take for granted will not work in IE x64. And as I'll discuss momentarily, compatibility issues are, in fact, almost the only major differentiator between XP x64 and XP Pro 32-bit.

In this preview of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, I'll focus on the Release Candidate 2 (RC2) build of this product and highlight what I feel will be the most important adoption blockers for this OS release. In my eventual review of the product, I'll provide a more traditional step-by-step overview of its many features and compare it more closely with 32-bit XP versions.

My test system

In September 2004, I purchased a Hewlett-Packard (HP) Pavilion a640n desktop computer. This system shipped with an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, an NVIDIA-based Lancer FX5200XT video card (128 MB), integrated LAN and sound, two CD-type drives (DVD+RW and CD-ROM), and a nice 9-in-1 media reader.

I upgraded two components before making the a640n my main desktop over time. First, I replaced the lackluster Lancer video card with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128 MB), which is more suitable for gaming. Then, I added another 512 MB of RAM to bump the system up to a full gigabyte of memory. I also upgraded the installed version of XP Home to XP Pro (32-bit). Through the end of 2004, I essentially multiple-booted the system between several versions of Windows, including XP Pro, two pre-release builds of Windows Server 2003 x64, and two pre-release builds of XP x64.

When Microsoft released Windows XP x64 RC1, I wiped out the system and dual-booted between XP Pro and XP x64. Then, in February 2005, I wiped it out again, and I'm now running only XP x64 RC2 on the system, though I expect to eventually add an XP Pro partition for various compatibility reasons. My goal, however, is to live in a pure x64 environment for as long as possible to see if it's doable.

Compatibility

The site you're now visiting, Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows, began life in August 1998 as the Windows NT 5.0 SuperSite. I started the site because I was I was excited about Microsoft's plans to move the NT kernel into mainstream Windows versions. NT 5.0, of course, became Windows 2000 a few months after that (and then Microsoft began talking up a final Windows 9x version, then code-named Millennium, so I changed the site name to the more general Windows SuperSite. At Microsoft's request, I later changed the name again to SuperSite for Windows.)

Back then, compatibility was a key issue for any Windows user considering NT. Specifically, you had two choices: The compatibility that came with Windows 9x, or the stability of Windows NT 4.0. Conversely, Windows 9x wasn't very stable at all. And Windows NT 4.0 wasn't very compatible with hardware or software. I recall printing out a portion of the NT 4.0 Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) every time I visited Best Buy, Fry's, or whatever, looking for a new network interface card (NIC) or other hardware component. Otherwise, you could find yourself out of luck. I wrote about the compatibility of Windows NT 5.0 Beta 2 in a showcase article way back in September 1998, and it's interesting to see how that experience is being mirrored today again with XP x64.

Anyway, with Windows 2000, of course, the compatibility gap closed, and Windows XP finally gave Windows users the best of both worlds: A single OS that was as compatible as possible with Windows 9x and as stable as Windows NT 4.0. For the past few years, we haven't really seen the Windows market bifurcated as it was during the 9x/NT 4.0 days.

And now we have the x64 platform. Essentially an inelegant solution to a classic problem, x64 provides Windows users with a 64-bit environment that is backwards-compatible, for the most part, with the 32-bit software we run today. It also provides the full processing power of the underlying hardware, whether you're running 32-bit or 64-bit code, a feature the 64-bit Itanium sorely lacks. The problem, however, is that x64 is again splitting the Windows world, this time into 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit camps. On the 32-bit side, we have the full compatibility with all the hardware and software we've been using for years. On the 64-bit side, well ...

Not so good. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is largely compatible with the 32-bit software we run today, though I've found glaring exceptions in the several months I've been testing pre-release versions of the system, including entire categories of hugely important software applications, like antivirus solutions. But XP x64 is not compatible with the multitudes of 32-bit hardware drivers that are currently available for every single device under the sun. So if XP x64 doesn't ship with a device driver for a particular piece of hardware you own, you have to pray that the manufacturer has created its own driver. As of this writing, very few have.

So. Once again, we have a split Windows market. On the left, we present the 32-bit versions of Windows XP, which offer the best hardware and software compatibility of any modern Windows Operating System And on the left, we have XP x64. This operating system is more stable and more secure than its 32-bit brothers, and can take advantage of significantly more hardware and software resources. However, it is not compatible with many of the software applications and applets, and hardware devices that you probably already own. This issue, more than anything, will determine whether XP x64 is a success or failure. Let's take a look at hardware and software compatibility separately.

Hardware compatibility

Hardware compatibility can be a killer, especially if you can't find a driver for a critical device, like a video card. Early builds of XP x64 didn't support the NVIDIA graphics card or the RelTek-based embedded sound card in my system, but I was able to locate beta versions of both. When I swapped in the ATI video card, however, XP x64 supported it automatically.

With the RC2 release, the audio card still wasn't supported, but RelTek was nice enough to post a brand new x64-compatible driver earlier this month, and that installed without a hitch. And as someone who still recalls the uneasiness of device support during the NT 4.0 days, I can state firmly that, with x64, there's just nothing like a clean Device Manager. So far so good.

However, when I begin adding other hardware devices, things don't go so well. My HP ScanJet 3970 scanner, for example, is not supported. My Canopus ADVC-50 analog-to-digital video converter is hopeless. And my Dell 1700n printer, which is network-attached, will not install using Dell's software, even though, oddly enough, it runs and completes Setup.

These are some of the types of devices people will need to work with using XP x64. Since both HP and Dell are major Microsoft partners, and those devices are reasonably new, I expect them to eventually be supported. But I wonder about the Canopus device. As of right now, I am trying to work around these issues. Since the Dell printer is really just a rebranded Lexmark printer, I installed drivers for the closest Lexmark model XP x64 supports natively, and they appear to work. And I can attach the scanner to one of my many other PCs. But most people don't have the home office set up I have. Those people would be left in the lurch by XP x64, or at least be forced to dual boot with XP 32-bit.

Other devices, like my iPods, work fine, which I guess makes sense since they're probably just seen as generic mass storage devices by the underlying system. The a640n's 9-in-1 media reader was automatically recognized exactly as it is in XP 32-bit, which is nice. I'll have more to say about hardware devices in my final review of this product.

Software compatibility

Software compatibility in XP x64, currently, is a disaster. Don't get me wrong: Most 32-bit applications do indeed install and run on XP x64 just fine. But I suspect that most people who try out this system over the next several months will be irritated to find that one of more crucial applications will not install at all, and that alone will give many a bad experience. Most of them, I suspect, will run right back to XP 32-bit.

I don't blame them. In my own admittedly unscientific testing, XP x64 simply wouldn't install some of the important applications that I rely on regularly. Inexplicably, most of them are Microsoft applications (Go figure). This should be profoundly embarrassing to the software giant, and hopefully someone at the company will ensure that all of its currently supported applications are patched to be x64 savvy by the time XP x64 is finalized. How can it expect third parties to work on x64 compatibility if Microsoft ignores it?

There are three main reasons for software incompatibility on x64, according to Microsoft. First, some applications are still using old-fashioned 16-bit installers, even though the applications themselves are 32-bit; since XP x64 doesn't support 16-bit applications, you can't install them on that system. Second, many applications are poorly written to test for specific versions of the operating system, and since they see XP x64 as being newer, or different in some other way, to XP 32-bit, they simply refuse to install. I've tried XP x64's compatibility fix feature to try and get around this issue, but I've never been successful. Third, some applications actually let you install them, but then later check the OS version, so they don't run. These applications, presumably, could be "fixed" using the aforementioned application compatibility fix feature, but I haven't run into one yet to test.

When I install a new system, I run through a list of "always install" applications, which are highlighted in the table below. These are all of the applications I install first on every one of my system, because I use them regularly. As you can see from the list, XP x64's success rate was mixed. Most applications worked fine. But some of the ones that didn't are critical to me.

Application	Installs?	Runs?	Notes
Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1	Yes	Yes	Works normally. (I don't like or use the 6.x and 7.x versions of Adobe Reader because they're too slow.)
Adobe PhotoShop Elements 3.0	Yes *	Yes	Installs but displays failure dialog (Figure) while attempting to install Windows Media 9 Series codecs. Application then runs normally. A software update to version 3.01 also installed and ran fine.
Adobe Premiere Elements 1.0	Yes *	Yes	Installs but displays failure dialog while attempting to install Windows Media 9 Series codecs. Application then runs normally.
Apple iPod installer	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Apple iTunes 4.7.1	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Executive Software Diskeeper 9 Pro	Yes *	No	This application appeared to install normally, but when you run the application, it loads the stock XP x64 disk defragger. An update to a newer version failed to install (Figure).
Microsoft Digital Image Suite 10 CD	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft MSN 9 Premium	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft MSN Messenger 6.2	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft Virtual PC 2004	No	n/a	Setup fails, citing "Fatal Error." (Figure).
Microsoft Cmd Here Powertoy	No	n/a	Setup incorrectly identifies OS version and fails (Figure).
Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware Beta 1 (February 2005 version)	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft MSN Messenger 7.0 Beta	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft PhotoStory 3	No	n/a	Setup incorrectly identifies OS version and fails (Figure).
Microsoft TweakUI PowerToy	No	n/a	Setup fails and recommends running the 64-bit version, which doesn't (yet) exist. (Figure).
Microsoft WMP 10 Energy Bliss Viz	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft Office 2003 Professional (includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, InfoPath)	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft FrontPage 2003	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft OneNote 2003	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1)	Yes *	Yes	Confusingly displays two error messages during Setup (Figure) but then runs normally.
Microsoft OneNote 2003 SP1	Yes *	Yes	Confusingly displays an error message during Setup (Figure) but then runs normally.
Mozilla Firefox 1.0	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Macromedia FlashPlayer 7 (for Firefox)	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Nero Burning ROM 6.6.0.3	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
PKWare SecureZIP 8.00.0018	Yes	Partially *	Installs normally, but doesn't create the contextual menu links I rely on, so it provides reduced functionality when compared to running on XP 32-bit.
Webroot Spy Sweeper 3.5.0.194	Yes	Yes	Works normally.
Zone Alarm Suite 55.062.011	No	n/a	Will not install (Figure).

In addition to presenting this small subset of available x86 applications, I should note that XP x64 is incompatible with entire classes of applications, including antivirus applications and security suites (but not, curiously, antispyware solutions). Microsoft tells that these antivirus applications won't work in XP x64 because they access the system's kernel, which is 32-bit code in XP 32-bit but 64-bits in x64. However, all major AV vendors, including Symantec and McAfee, are allegedly working on x64-compatible upgrades. (Let's hope they don't charge existing customers for them.) In the meantime, it's hugely stupid to run any Windows version without antivirus protection. I've only found one AV application--avast! antivirus 4.6 that comes in an x64 version. So I've installed the free Home Edition of this product in order to get some protection, but I'm not certain it's all that great yet. It's no Zone Alarm Suite, to be sure, but I presume it's better than nothing.

I also installed a large number of recently released video games, most of which worked just fine. Specifically, I installed Half-Life 2 (and the Steam application), Star Wars: Battlefront, Unreal Tournament 2004, Far Cry, DOOM 3, Painkiller, and Painkiller: Battle Out of Hell. All of these titles installed without a hitch, and most appear to run just fine. (I'm actually playing through the Painkiller expansion pack, Battle Out of Hell, for the first time now on the x64 system. It's been rock-solid.) DOOM 3 and Far Cry, however, wouldn't run initially. After I finally caved and installed ATI's beta video drivers, DOOM 3 started up without a hitch. But Far Cry refused to run. A day later, I mistakenly clicked on the Far Cry icon in the Start Menu while reaching for FrontPage. It ran, and ran fine. I have no idea why.

Aside from these peculiarities, the fear with games is that XP x64 won't perform as well as its 32-bit brethren. This hasn't been the case in my experience. After replacing a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 Dell machine with the a640n running XP 32-bit, I noticed that the x64 hardware performed better in games (and was quieter to boot), despite the lower clock speed of the AMD chip in the a640n. Interestingly I used the same ATI video card in both setups, so the comparison is even more relevant. And when I moved the x64 system to XP x64, I didn't notice any drop in performance at all. The key here, naturally, is properly written video drivers. Today's hardware accelerated 3D games task the video card as much as they do the CPU, if not more.

I noted previously that the a640n originally shipped with an NVIDIA video card. Though NVIDIA should be lauded for regularly releasing beta versions of its x64-compatible video card drivers, I had problems with several revisions of them, resulting in slow screen refreshes and other graphical glitches. It's been a while since I've tested an NVIDIA card in this system, and I'm certainly not going to do so now, given the excellent results I've gotten with the ATI card. But NVIDIA gamers are advised to keep up on that company's x64 drivers. Some versions are better than others.

Some final thoughts on compatibility

For now, Microsoft can talk up the technical superiority of XP x64 all it wants, but compatibility issues are going to sink this operating system faster than you can say Microsoft Bob. There is little doubt that x64 is the future of desktop computing, but attempting to move to XP x64 will prove to be a fruitless trip for many people. To its credit, the software giant is being very clear about the near niche nature of its first x64-based desktop operating system, and the company has repeatedly told me that XP x64 is really just aimed at technical workstations, business desktop users, and enthusiasts.

Based on this information, and my own experience, I must issue a cautionary note to readers: If you're thinking about migrating to XP x64 immediately, don't. Instead, evaluate the RC2 version in a dual-boot scenario with XP 32-bit first. Test all of your important hardware and software and make sure they work, or at least work well enough. And do so knowing that, even if everything appears to work fine, it's possible that a desirable hardware device or software application will appear this year that simply won't work in XP x64.

These issues will diminish over time, of course. Hardware makers, hopefully, will surprise me and show up with vast reams of x64-compatible drivers and support the new system immediately. Sure, that's never happened before but you never know. Antivirus makers will suddenly vault into the x64 era with new XP x64 conversions of their popular and much-needed solutions. And all those 16-bit installers will slide silently into the sunset, never to bother us again. You never know.

Timing and availability

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is currently available as a free download on the Microsoft Web site. In case it's not obvious, this version of XP will only run on x64-compatible hardware, that is, PCs with an AMD64 (Athlon 64 or Opteron) or Intel EM64T (Pentium 4 6XXX or Xeon) microprocessor. Microsoft expects to finalize XP x64 in March and then make the product widely available in April. The company will also offer a technology trade-up program for users with x64 hardware. I'll discuss details of this program in my eventual review of XP x64.

Conclusions

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is a rousing technological achievement, a near-perfect migration of Windows XP Professional to a 64-bit code base that doesn't sacrifice performance for 64-bit capabilities. But while XP x64 is far more compatible with hardware and software than its Itanium-based predecessor, it is also not compatible enough to meet the needs of average users. Therefore, most XP users should stick with XP 32-bit through at least the end of 2005.

If you're a technology enthusiast with the right hardware, however, XP x64 offers a chance to live on the edge in a way that hasn't been possible for Windows users since the HCL-wielding days of NT 4. With XP x64, Microsoft has provided a superb technological base for the next several years, one that will likely become the mainstream computing platform during the Longhorn time frame. Like a faraway land full of treasure real or imagined in an age of explorers, XP x64 is there for the brave and foolhardy. Are you up to the challenge?