An early peek at Longhorn | The Coffeehouse

Bogusrabin

Story

Thoughts?

"Longhorn will come in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, Allchin said."

Just wonder does it work on my Duron 1GHz ... It would be great if MS would tell some more detailed info about required hardware specs Expressionless

Manip

Story wrote:
A "quick search pane," for example, allows users to type queries and instantly see matching files.

wtf?

Story wrote:
Search results can be saved as virtual folders that are automatically updated to include all items that fit a particular query,

Cool.

Story wrote:
For example, document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself.

Making it almost impossible to find anything... Fun...

Story wrote:
Allchin said the company is recommending that systems have 512MB of memory, as well as "today's level" of processor.

wow .. I would have guessed 256Mb

Story wrote:
Longhorn will come in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, Allchin said.

If I'm going to buy Longhorn at all, it will be the 64bit edition.

I'm going to download the release candidates for Longhorn (when released) and make my final decision based on those. I can't decide by looking at the marketing material.

Bogusrabin

Manip wrote:

Story wrote:For example, document icons are no longer a hint of the type of file, but rather a small picture of the file itself.
Making it almost impossible to find anything... Fun...

Thumbnails has been in GNOME a quite long time now (optional) and I think it works great. Especially it's very nice for videos and pics.

Manip wrote:
I can't decide by looking at the marketing material.

Yep, it's only way to figure out is it good or not.

Steve411

longhorn is gonna come out poking linux and the rest of the os's in the a**... <-- well said? Tongue Out

MisterDonut
The Disco Godfather

I hope I"m wrong... But if microsoft os gearing this for the Home user, I hope they come up with a flashier UI. A developer, like myself, can look at a lot of the cool features, new Namespaces in .NET (yes!), etc.

But, if the Longhorn OS doesn't provide a lot of features that Grandma can use now, we won't see a lot of excitement in the general community.

Sadly, most people will only look at the desktop and say, "gee, doesn't look all that different to be, besides a sidebar.."

Let's hope I'm wrong.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

MisterDonut: I think you'll like the UI. I was blown away by it. By the way, there's no sidebar. Forget everything you know about Longhorn until you see it.

MisterDonut
The Disco Godfather

Thanks for giving me some faith, Scoble.. Smiley

I really need some.

I have been really reviewing whether or not to stay on the MS platform. Work dictates it, of course, but for home and project contributions, I'm open (no pun intended..)

Do you happen to know (or can share) whether or not the new UI would be available in the betas? Or will it be officially added after release?

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

I'm hearing it'll be in beta 1. I'd expect to see more features added in beta 2 and I'd also expect beta 1 to be more demanding on hardware than beta 2 will be. I'm hearing that for beta 1 you'll need a 128MB video card to see all the coolest stuff at a decent performance level.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Check out the eWeek article: why Longhorn Matters.

Manip

But the first beta is already out? ... Is was that an alpha? I'm so confused Sad

Steve411

You raised his hopes and lowered mine. What do you mean there is no "Sidebar"? That's what im waiting for here! Tongue Out

edit : if there wont be a side bar, how about a menu on top?

Arran

There has not been a longhorn beta yet. They released a few builds last year (2 i think).

AndyC

Manip wrote:
But the first beta is already out? ... Is was that an alpha? I'm so confused

There hasn't ever been a Beta of Longhorn. The first version "released" was the PDC build, the second the WinHEC one. Both were very clearly identified as pre-beta.

It's all getting very exciting again, though it sounds like I'm going to have to upgrade my humble GeForce4 to try it out...

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

What has shipped so far has been a developer preview. That's Microsoft language for an alpha.

Beta1 of Longhorn hasn't shipped yet.

As to the lack of the sidebar: personally I don't mind that. It was the first thing most of us turned off cause it used so much screen realestate.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

AndyC: wait to do any hardware upgrades. They are still working on the performance so until beta 1 gets here we really don't know what kind of hardware you need.

And, anyway, the longer you wait on hardware purchases, the cheaper things get. Don't you love this industry?

MisterDonut
The Disco Godfather

scobleizer wrote:
What has shipped so far has been a developer preview. That's Microsoft language for an alpha.

Beta1 of Longhorn hasn't shipped yet.

As to the lack of the sidebar: personally I don't mind that. It was the first thing most of us turned off cause it used so much screen realestate.

Usability! I'm glad someone at Microsoft has been thinking usability over "cool".

I wish Apple would have thought about that with that Dock at the bottom. Those icons jumping up and down like a Jack Russel frigging terrier.. But I digress.

It sounds like people are using their heads.. I look forward to beta 1.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

We do a TON of usability testing here.

What's really cool is that the entire company can watch live as real users try to use our new stuff (they video it and stream it live).

Stitch 2.0
I can feel my brain cells commiting hara-kiri.

scobleizer wrote:
We do a TON of usability testing here.

What's really cool is that the entire company can watch live as real users try to use our new stuff (they video it and stream it live).

I got to admit, sometimes I doesn't seem that way. Wink

But I am glad this is done, because maybe, just maybe, Longhorn will be more intuitive to use thanks to that...

AndyC

scobleizer wrote:
AndyC: wait to do any hardware upgrades. They are still working on the performance so until beta 1 gets here we really don't know what kind of hardware you need.

And, anyway, the longer you wait on hardware purchases, the cheaper things get. Don't you love this industry?

he he, yes indeed.

That said, it didn't want to run the Lego Star Wars demo the other day, so an upgrade might be on the cards anyway.

Cost isn't too much of an issue as I'm only a video card away from having a complete spare machine. I can try out Looking Glass and become the new Beer28 Smiley

Tom Servo
W-hat?

scobleizer wrote:
I'm hearing it'll be in beta 1.

Maybe also already in the WinHEC build?

MisterDonut
The Disco Godfather

scobleizer wrote:
Check out the eWeek article: why Longhorn Matters.

eWeek wrote:

you have a laptop and you lose it or leave it in a taxicab, no one will be able to boot something else and sneak around and try to find out what was on your machine. So it's basically whole-volume encryption and the ability to lock the hardware to the software,"

Oh man, I can hear the complaints on Slashdot now.. Smiley

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Looks like I will have to continue using Desktop Sidebar when Longhorn comes around. I just hope that the people who make DS will allow you to make panels using .Net & XAML like the real Longhorn sidebar could do.

nukeation
Programmer AND Designer

scobleizer wrote:

And, anyway, the longer you wait on hardware purchases, the cheaper things get. Don't you love this industry?

But what happens when you want the LATEST thing only? Yes, yes, I know, I need therapy.

Everything works best with parallel-released technology, doesn't it? So, the longer you wait, you get cheap, old, obsolete stuff. Okay, so that's a bit extreme, but you know what I mean.

I can't wait to see my dual PCI-Express (128x2) nVidia's handle Longhorn Beta 1. I'm guessing 3 gigs of RAM will be enough for good performance? Tongue Out

nukeation
Programmer AND Designer

I also read on the internet somewhere about a "Crystal task/sidebar" easter egg, Microsoft left in the 4074 (WinHEC) build.

Essentially, the site said you have to go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>MICROSOFT>WINDOWS>CURRENTVERSION>EXPLORER
and create a DWORD named "MILExplorer" and value 1.

It would enable partial glass effects. Then you have to execute a commandline for runddl.

The screenshots looked great on the site. I had Longhorn installed on VPC, and tried it and ended up in a reboot cycle that resembled perpetual motion. Perplexed

Haven't tried anything after that. Longhorn is unstable as it is without a geek pulling wires and whacking it with a hammer. My new resolution is to patiently wait for a beta (or until I get better instructions to enable the effects) Smiley

geekling
I am an artist

Man, I was kinda hoping the sidebar would stay in in some form or another. I have like a billion applications emulating the MSN-style notification pop-ups, each doing it differently, and each causing an irrational clusterfawk in the lower right corner of my desktop.

The problem is not that they do it; its very useful for quick information gathering, but I hate the different ways they do it, so I was hoping that applications could use the sidebar as a general purpose notification area. Wink