Chris Jones - Beta 1 of Windows Vista revealed
- Posted: Jul 27, 2005 at 11:58 AM
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Today Microsoft is signing off on beta 1 of
Windows Vista. There's a big party on campus and all that. Betas will soon be available for MSDN Universal, Enterprise, Professional, and Operating System Subscribers.
As usual, we (Robert Scoble and Jeff Sandquist did the interview) wanted to get the straight scoop so we went to Chris Jones, who is a corporate vice president tasked with building and shipping a high quality Windows Vista product. He tells us what's in beta 1 and what to expect at the PDC.
We had a little fun with Chris and made him put a quarter on the table everytime he said the word "Longhorn."
He explains the build process for Windows Vista and gives us a demo at about 11 minutes into the interview.
As usual, we (Robert Scoble and Jeff Sandquist did the interview) wanted to get the straight scoop so we went to Chris Jones, who is a corporate vice president tasked with building and shipping a high quality Windows Vista product. He tells us what's in beta 1 and what to expect at the PDC.
We had a little fun with Chris and made him put a quarter on the table everytime he said the word "Longhorn."
He explains the build process for Windows Vista and gives us a demo at about 11 minutes into the interview.
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But Congratz with the beta1!
Two things, no.1 I got from what he said that it will no longer do "dumb searching" which is a *must have* as a developer. I want to search a *.dat; a *.bmp file for strings when I do a search. It requires a frigging registry hack in XP to get it working.
Secondly did anyone else notice how long it took his files to appear after the window did?
Where, as a user, can I disable this automatic error reporting? Can I?
oh this video is very very good, i just can't wait for testing it on my own!
I didn't notice it at first, but did Chris say PDC '93 instead of 2003 a few times near the end of the video?
I keep thinking, "1993 wasn't that long ago".
I've asked that before. They don't know for sure because there's so much code all over the place being compiled into it.
We're going to get a tour of the build labs and we'll ask that question again and see if we get a better answer.
WinFX is not installed in Windows Vista by default?
Oh its "On the disk, so you can install it if you want", .Net 1.1 was "on the disk" for XP SP2, but it didn't really help the roll out of the framework to the general population.
So you want to deploy one of those nice "(Avalon) Express applications", a single click on a web link and it is supposed to download and launch within the browser frame, but wait, "Additional componants required, Please locate your Windows Vista install media"
Hardly a great user experiance.
So .Net is IN Vista, but Avalon and Indigo are only optional installs?
WHY?
Is there a place where I could buy *only* Vista beta 1? Or even better, will beta 1 be released for free to the general public at some point?
Where did you hear that? WinFX and .NET, Chris said, were included in Windows Vista. Where did you get that?
Nope, sorry. Only MSDN for now.
If Vista Tablet is restricted the same way it means you will NOT be able to buy an upgrade to Vista for an existing TabletPC. Not very supportive of the existing user base.
It definitely sounds like the Tablet features, TIP, Recognisers etc are not going to be included in every Vista version, and are still restricted to Tablets only. I didn't really expect them to be included considering the OEM price of Tablet is well above that of standard XP.
What I do hope is that there is at least support for inputting and editing INK on non-tablets, maybe the equivelent of having the Tablet SDK installed by default. Or will that come through WinFX as well?
I want to get into the beta
At 21 minutes and 10-30 seconds into the video.
Cos there was a lot of confusion on the blog..
The the Whidbey version of the .Net framework is in Windows Vista, it's out there. And WinFX comes along with Windows Vista, its on the disk, people can install it if they want to install it and use it, so it will be around with every copy. And, the nice thing about both Whidbey and WinFX is they are available downlevel for Windows XP. So...
Nice Video. Although the fact that Chris has a hammer and some Scotchtape directly behind him for most of the video, doesn't do much for my confidence in the build. LOL!
i think beta 1 should be on a mass distribution scale so they can get a lot of feedback for a great OS. But i bet Beta 2 will be distributed in mass quantities as many MS products are.
Ok, trying to download and we have a problem. What was the bandwidth calculation for this release? Why not torrent the thing and be done with it.
Still need a key.
Still need to register your copy. Here is a link to what I am seeing. Still trying.....
Coolios, the amount of code that must go down in Redmond just boggles my mind.
Heres another question that i've been wondering.
If with longhorn we are on build 5xxx and each increment = a day, why is XP only about half that? Was XP done super fast?
is there any GuestID for Windows Vista?
Thanks
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Releases
So NT4 was 1381
2000 was 2195 (814 builds in 4 years)
XP was 2600 (405 builds in 18 months)
Vista is at 5112 (2512 builds in 4 years)
Though of course it doesn't work like that, the numbers are fairly approximate.. They rounded XP up to the next 100 and Vista skipped from 4xxx to 5xxx with the Longhorn "reset"
-- Yay I'm now "Active"/
Should have this thing downloaded in time to try it after work tomorrow.
1. I read a while ago that the whole searching thing behind Vista was going to be available for download to XP, but I think that someone got confused between WinFS and WinFX (which is the whole top level API thing Chris was talking about). Is this true? Did someone mis-read and decided to tell the world before sourcing it properly?
2. What is Whidbey? I've not heard of it, personally and was just wondering if someone could clear it up for me.
Thanks
Shafiq.
And I think most of the search technology is what was developed for the MSN desktop search but was just "integrated" better.
This is very important for us, the IT Pro get it now for test and send a feedback too.
I want the Scobleizer´s opinion. No, Robert?
That said, there's a thread over in the coffeehouse and I'm watching that. Hint hint. No promises.
Was just looking around at the MSDN Windows Vista website and saw the following:
via: http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/mobile/#tpc
After that? Who knows? Too far out. Let's get Windows Vista out the door before we start speculating on Blackcomb or whatever else will come after that.
and also could you tell me is the start menu and all menus related to task var and windows in start menu and right clik menus run throught he graphics card as well or are they the only things still CPU run
--
William Stacey [MVP]
i hope so, windows vista only is an OS (someone like me use it just for work), not a stupid game that needs lots of RAMs of video card to perform.
its basedof 2k3 sp1 code after the latest rewrite...
c9... can u guys get a interview with the team in charge of the new winsock... in the groups (thehive and on other sites i talk to techs) theres alot of confusion over the new tcp stack and winsock....
there was discussion previously of rewrites of the new tcp stack so that it wouldnt do the cutting packets in half every failure and stuff like that to take better advantage of broadband connections but after a slight mention of it atleast a year ago no real communication has been done with the winsock team... i'd really like to see a light meeting with whoevers incharge of the winsock development.... i mean you did kernel and now vista general why not winsock?
Most of the work was done to natively support IPv6.
What questions do you have for the team?
Each increment isn't a day (to be honest, I'm not sure what the increment period is). And the builds reset - the Vista Beta1 builds were the 5000 series, Beta2 has a different number, etc.
Steve.
Wow! that reply must have taken some thought!
(seeing how I might waste my reply as he did ... here's something useful)
Robert, now that beta1 is out - can you try to (I know its a big task) run a series of interviews again with the Avalon/Indigo team, kernel and memory management teams? Go over some of the changes they did in
LonghornWindows Vista?Also, just to ask the question again (asked few replies earlier) - is Avalon/WinFX and .NET integrated in the build or available as a separate installer? (beta 1 build I mean)
(my installation is still going on... it will be a big night, I'd have to install Whidbey afterwards)
- Keeron
Why do you find that strange ?
Why should the people that pay get it later than the people that don't ?
I find that perfecty reasonable and adequate
But i must say it's gonna be an exciting year for all, it brings me back to the days of Whistler, it's so intense!
This can be done in XP. Right Click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Error Reporting [Button] > Disabled Error Reporting [Radio Button].
HTH.
Downloading WinV now @ 21%...... thinking I need a dedicated PC to run...?
I ask because I will not be able to test the OS itself.
Samuel, UK
Was this dropped when they switched to the new code base, or is this meant to be put back in a future beta?
Scobleizer can you lead a project to create a Betaplace community on Channel9 Site???.
Thaks.
Yup
Curious - what percentage of intra-Microsoft communication is via phone, email, IM?
This standard user thing is not going to work. Most users today simply don't understand the importance of PC security. People are not going to know about the difference between an administrator account and standard account. If all Vista user accounts are admin by default, most people will never know to change that.
Furthermore, the average user will just blindly input their password anytime they're prompted and end up installing who knows what on their systems. I hope this isn't Vista's only defense against spyware—Microsoft needs to make a lot of under the hood changes to prevent spyware from overtaking a system in the first place.
What exactly is a VBL ? (Vista Build Library ?)
Interesting white-board discussion of the build aspect. Just wondering what exactly was "reverse integrated" - lots of DLLs & so forth ??
vbl stands for virtual build lab. we have central build lab && a set of second level labs (usually org based) that do a put all the changes that have happened for a period of time in at one go. it allows us to keep the core build super solid, && have teams work off by themselves without the rest of the world hosing them. originally we would only have 1 level of vbls below core. now we have multiple levels of vbls. reverse integrating is the term we use for putting stuff from the vbl into the main lab.
we didn't know about the vista name back in 1999 when this was created. we still had neptune & odessey as separate projects - some idiot went off to create whistler && blackcomb as project names. longhorn came out of that...
/i
PLUS: Even with all the best HELP documents in the world, a free instructional DVD would go a long way towards teaching the general public how to use the full power of their OS and have them realize that computers aren't "magic" but just another dumb machine that need to be taken care of.
The problem with being the most popular OS in the world is that you end up having the largest number of totally clueless users in the world and they're the people who mess up everything. I know companies don't want to ever tell their customers "it's your own fault you mess up your computer" but by having a DVD to teach people who to use their shiny new OS responsible/creatively/efficiently it would help out people like me who have to always run to their rescue when something goes wrong.
Very good and useful equipment on the shelf!
Looks like hammer or axe...
Is this for Vista developers or for end users? Or for beta testers?
It works on the Macs here. Are you using the latest player? Also, Macs work better with the download file (click the "save" link underneath each video).
I dont think you need a very fast computer at all to run this. Vista is running better for me than XP ever did.
I can actually have adobe photoshop cs 2 open, and it will not lag down all my other applications or my desktop.
I have penitum 4 2.6ghz with 384ddr ram. So my pC isnt the fastest and Vista runs nice and smooth on it.
I think alot of people will find this OS incredible. Especially how much better its going to be in its final release.
Microsoft Released Windows Vista Beta 1 (Screenshots)
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Windows Vista Beta 1 Installation Screenshots
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IE 7 beta 1 download
They obviously knew about the vista name before many of the main vista development team because they had to come up with the vista motion videos and graphics in advance.
Im not being critical of your work, infact, i cant get enough of it! but you have to admit, most of the videos we see are from the 'development' side of microsoft. Its always good to see what else goes on at microsoft. i loved the video you did of the recruitment process for instance. I cant think of a better video than one of the Graphic design team.
How about it??!
For anyone else who's interested, you can find out a little bit more about the microsoft designers here http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/people.html
Same here. The PC I installed Vista on doesn't even meet the minimum requirements, and it still runs way better than I expected. It seems to even access the HDD less than XP does, and most of the applications run smoothly.
For those of you who don't have access to Vista, I posted 19 screenshots at http://www.geekpedia.com/software38_Windows-Vista-Beta-1-Screenshots.html.
Though, it's a pity you can't see the animations.
Vista behaves very strangely on my machine. It's really slow/jerky/unusable, except when it's running the CPU flat out.
I had to install Seti@Home and run that in the background, to keep the CPU at 100%, so I could use the system at all. With Seti running its really smooth and snappy, it seems faster than XP and downloads go much faster.
As soon as the processor drops below 100% its back to being all jerky again. When its jerky the system clock also runs too slowly. When watching the control panel clock applet, it ticks about once every 7 seconds.
Must be a problem with the chipset driver I think. Something low level anyway.
I have Windows Vista Beta 1 now for a while,
But i can't make it work with my Raid Controller
I think that name is terrible! I agree that is important that MS shift away from numbers and letters (98,2000,ME,XP) and towards a friendly marketable name (ala Tiger). I just don't know that "Vista" will resonate well with consumers.
Anyone else think they would have been better off shipping "Longhorn" as Longhorn?
Thanks for the screenshots...but I am struggling with one main design question...why are the title bars transparent? Other than to make the window take on a more "glassy" look? It seems like it is now more difficult to read the information in that part of the window. I'm also struggling with the fact when I look at numerous screen shots it takes me several seconds to figure out what every little link/breadcrumb/button is for...it seems like a step backward in terms of intuitiveness. I know, it's only "developer beta" but this trend seems strange. Maybe it is something a user gets use to, who knows.
Dialog boxes, maximized windows and certain other windows don't have the titlebar transparent. I believe that with a transparent titlebar you can focus more on the what's in the window, disregarding the titlebar (which you rarely look at).
Also, they added an interesting blur effect so that the text in the titlebar can be readable.
First I was a bit confused with Virtual Folders, then I got used to them. It shouldn't take long for the typical Windows XP user to accommodate to Vista. The basic operations like simply browsing for a file and other routine tasks are still similar to the previous Windows operating systems.
One of the graphic effects I like most on Vista is when you hover over the minimize, maximize/restore and close buttons in the titlebar. I updated the page and added screenshots with this effect.
CNET User Reviews for Microsoft Vista, average ratings by 4.9/10:
http://reviews.cnet.com/Microsoft_Windows_Vista/4505-3672_7-31456587.html?tag=lst
It has nothing to do with Linux zealots or MS haters, Its a review by CNet and users who like/dislike MS/Apple/Linux comment on this.
These reviews are an eye opener taking user inputs and making the OS better is a good thing, see things in a broader view and not as criticizing then things will better. Probably you didn't have anything to do other than reading the review and commenting like this.
"The interface and features are not as good as Mac OS"
"Bow down Microsoft give in to anyone with a little cash(IMHO). Really; I am glad that there are GOOD alternatives out there, IE Linux, BSD, and even the Mac. Take back your computer and enjoy feeling the freedom and empowerment that comes from using an alternative OS. Try Linux, it is always free, free of cost and free of viruses, spyware, tcpa, and drm. Also most every program you could want, good programs can be downloaded and used for free. Try www.PCLinuxOS.com, or www.ubuntu.org, or www.mepis.com"
"Microsoft is going to catch up to Apples current technology and features... in over 1 year. By then Mac OS X and Linux will be years & years ahead. Again. "
Yes, that was really enlightening. I am quite curious to find out how you find these and 70% other similar reviews, "eye opener".
Also, no one sane enough rates an operating system lower than 4. I don't think there's any operating system deserving less than 4 out of 10. Most of the reviewers on CNET rated Vista 1, 2 or 3. Not to mention reviews such as "I can create Windows Vista at home using skins", reviews which clearly come from someone who only judges by seeing a couple of screenshots.
And when Apple launched Tiger, why weren't there any Microsoft zealots posting reviews such as the ones I see now on CNET: "Who needs it? I wonder, who needs it. It is not going to make my customers pay their bills faster, it will not make them accept higher prices...". With this kind of perspectives you'll not be going far my friend.
I'm convinced now. No matter what Microsoft is going to do, biased reviews will always exist. And there will always be someone to hijack forums and blogs with their unconstructive, obsesively repeating comments. Microsoft enthusiasts don't join Linux or Mac forums talking about how great Windows is. If Linux or Mac was that great, it would have the OS market by now. The same way Ford lost in front of Toyota on the US market recently.
When is the Public Beta 2 version going to be available?
Also, what torrent site has the Beta 1 version available for download?
thanks...
Oh, and thanks a lot for the nice webpage you put together, I'm definitely going to show it to my colleagues tomorrow!
Windows Vista is going to be fantastic. I can already begin to feel the excitement, and I'm sure I'm going to fall in love with it, just like I did with XP all those years ago...
Good idea!
Then Robert should interview this guy!!!
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/people_tjeerd.html
Oh, and he's from The Netherlands, very cool
Although I could understand if he prefers to have a chat with Nadja
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/people_nadja.html
Can anyone tell me where I can get a good copy of Microsoft windows vista I have look all over the place for it. But cannot find a copy for love or money.
If anyone can think of where I can get a copy of it
Please e-mail me at johnhbrien@hotmail.com
Did you ever find out where we could download Win Vista.
I am itching to try it.
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