Windows 7 Coming As Vista Bulks Up Bandwidth Costs

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Windows 7 Coming As Vista Bulks Up Bandwidth Costs By David Richards | Monday | 17/03/2008

Court documents in the US have revealed what Microsoft says is not happening; a close to completed version of Microsoft’s next operating system Windows 7 has been coded and exposed to government officials in the USA. It has also been revealed that constant upgrades to the existing Vista OS is costing consumers and business hundreds of dollars in addition bandwidth costs. Internally Microsoft executives have admitted to SmartHouse that the Company rushed the current Vista version of their OS into the market and during the past 18 months the Company has been forced to re write code on the fly in an effort to not only fix bugs but improve the speed and security of their current current OS offering.
There is also talk that Windows 7 could be rolled out earlier than planned in an effort to overcome problems with the current Viast OS which has seen over 1GB of updates since being launched.

18 months ago and prior to the launch of Vista SmartHouse revealed that Microsoft was starring down the barrel of having to re write vast amounts of the Vista code. Several Microsoft evangelists at the time said that this was not the case.
We now find out that Microsoft instead chose to launch Vista and then rewrite code for specific areas of the operating system on the fly in an effort to improve functionality and address security issues.
Some of this code writing was for functions that had been identified by engineers prior to the role out Vista as being in need of additional code and upgrading. Microsoft managemen concerned about revenue shortfalls apparently chose to go with what has been described by insiders as "defective code".
During the past 18 months the Company has rolled out over 1 GB of Vista updates with the latest fix being over 700Mb. This consumers and business claim is costing them money due to Microsoft demanding that consumers switch on automatic updates which results in vast amounts of data being pushed to a consumers PC overnight.
One North Sydney business executive said " We recently queried
In many cases it is pushing consumers past their broadband allocation resulting in additional costs per 100Mb of data downloaded. Now the Company is planning a role out of their new Windows 7 OS by late 2009 and late last week Microsoft confirmed the authenticity of a court filing with US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly whose job is to ensure the company's compliance with its US antitrust settlement. The filing revealed that Microsoft is well down the track in developing the new OS however very few details of what is in the operating system have been revealed.
US officials have said "The technical committee has begun to review Windows 7. Microsoft recently supplied the committee with a build of Windows 7, and is discussing testing going forward," said the report.
"The technical committee will conduct middleware-related tests on future builds of Windows 7."
The committee dates back to the 2002 decree, which also required Microsoft to help rival parties integrate any new feature added to Windows that meets the definition of a "Microsoft middleware product".



http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home_Office/Software/P6B2K2U8
 
Looks like hyperbolic FUD to me.

700Mb of that "1GB of updates" is the Service Pack 1. And that is for the x64 edition. The x32 SP1 is about 300MB... And it's not like enterprises have to download it individually for each PC. Most enterprises that have more than a few hundred PC's simply use Microsoft's Server Management Center which provides a middleman type staging area for hot fix and service pack deployment. So they are only downloaded *once*.

There's nothing wrong with Vista. It's a fantastic OS. Microsoft is always rewriting parts of the OS. Pretty much any time they do a substantial overhaul of an area of the OS it involves rewriting it because the original team of employees that wrote it are long gone and the new team don't want to spend months auditing the old code that they aren't familiar with...

SP1 contains a few revamped areas but only because Microsoft has synchronized the source bases of Windows Server 2008 and Vista together. So effectively Vista is running the same kernel as Windows Server 2008 once SP1 is applied. Not that the user would ever notice... because of a little thing that all programmers do called "encapsulation"... ;)

Windows 7 is in development, yes. It's no where near finished though. And the current builds look almost identical to Vista because none of the new shell is anywhere near finished. W7 won't be a major release like Vista was. It will basically just be Vista but with a new shell... Kind of like Windows 98 vs Windows ME. Vista is the 98 in this respect and W7 will be the ME. Ignoring all the stereotypes and stability issues that those OSes had though ;)

Yes Microsoft is having a few commercial issues with Vista - somewhat thanks to the record breaking bad press it has got. But there is an underlying problem here. The problem is that traditionally people would upgrade their OS to get their PC to behave more stably/reliably. Ever since Windows 2000/XP the OS has been rock solid stable so Microsoft has, inadvertedly, removed one of the key reasons that people used to buy the new OSes. There are bigger market changes going on behind the scenes - i.e. more competition from Apple of late and the worry of what Google is up to... There will come a time that Windows will move to a subscription model rather than the current licensing model.
 
Sp1 is only 700MB on a virgin install of x64. The 32 bit version is 440MB on a fresh install, over windows update for a fully patched system it's than <60MB.

Utter tosh reporting like this is what is wrong with Vista
 
Looks like hyperbolic FUD to me.

And it's not like enterprises have to download it individually for each PC. Most enterprises that have more than a few hundred PC's simply use Microsoft's Server Management Center which provides a middleman type staging area for hot fix and service pack deployment. So they are only downloaded *once*.


exactly!

expect this to be 'breaking news' on slashdot soon :rolleyes:
 
I use Vista but...

In the how ever many years of creation what have they really done?

Pretty interface and, errm, em... er???

Ok so I am being a little harsh but vista is a letdown in a big way. It doesn’t bring many new things to the table, it hasn’t advanced enough from XP. XP can do everything Vista does IMO, and with half the resources! Yes you need some third party appz installed to get it there but it still runs faster than vista after.

I was hoping to see some real big improvements in usability, but I think they have gone backwards. They way folders work, the way trees expand and others I can see what they have tried to do, and it works in some places but thats the problem- Microsoft should be getting it right in all places.

User account control- which muppet thought of that?
Networking - Why oh why. I would love to have been in that board meeting deciding how they were going to control that.

I am sticking with vista because I have learnt how to deal with it, but for the masses its a big letdown. I think that’s where apple are succeeding - giving people what they really want, and easily. Non of this UAC bull!

I have used vist for 6 months now, and I am thinking of going back to XP!

// End rant...
 
While I don't doubt that Vista is better than reported in the press, it's not all fantastic either. Even Microsoft sites have had major problems rolling Vista out, and there were bugs in launch that remained unfixed right up to SP1 (network file copy performance being one of them).

If people only upgrade their OS when the old one is causing stability issues, how can you explain the rapid adoption of the latest Mac OS releases? Obviously people will pay to upgrade where they can see a benefit, and going about my daily tasks in Vista I could quite happily go back to XP and not lose anything, since they both meet my requirements. At best I'm impartial as to whether I use XP or Vista, and that's not a great way to get me to pay to upgrade.

Every reason for upgrading that I read on this forum is accompanied with Vista being explained as a "technical update", with the majority of the changes not visible to the end user. Well if the end user can't see the benefits, then they aren't going to open their wallets, especially when Microsoft insist on screwing over the non-US consumer in the process.
 
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But before you go an rant, do a bit of research about Vista and see what MS has actually changed. Search for posts from NathanE, there's plenty of decent info on here :)

Burnsy

missed my point about the changes not being that inspiring, and someof them just out right annoying...


@Caged exactly
 
missed my point about the changes not being that inspiring, and someof them just out right annoying...
What changes are you referring to? DX10 is annoying is it? The new hi-fi sound stack is not inspiring? The new IPv6 networking stack with faster throughput rates is annoying? The better file-copy dialog with speed and proper time estimation and that lets you cancel the transfer at any time instantly is annoying? WPF is not inspiring? Note that Windows 7 will be built upon WPF... Silverlight is built upon WPF... Vista's shell is already built upon WPF...

I can go on...

So yeah as Burnsy says... please understand a subject area before posting on it.
 
If people only upgrade their OS when the old one is causing stability issues, how can you explain the rapid adoption of the latest Mac OS releases?

Because Mac users are often funny things - they're much more loyal to Apple than Windows users are to MS. Doesn't really mean that Leopard brought much new to the table though; my housemate has actually been quite disappointed with it. The difference between Tiger and Leopard was hardly anything compared to just the obvious differences between XP and Vista.
 
User account control- which muppet thought of that?
Erm the Unix/Linux guys did several decades ago... UAC is the first incarnation of "LUA" (least user access) on Windows.

thought said:
Networking - Why oh why. I would love to have been in that board meeting deciding how they were going to control that.
What's wrong with the control of Vista networking?

thought said:
I am sticking with vista because I have learnt how to deal with it, but for the masses its a big letdown. I think that’s where apple are succeeding - giving people what they really want, and easily. Non of this UAC bull!
The market has been crying out for UAC for years. Almost ever since MSBlaster struck people have been demanding more secure products from Microsoft. Vista is the most secure desktop OS there is right now. If you think UAC is annoying you have no idea what the competition is like...

thought said:
I have used vist for 6 months now, and I am thinking of going back to XP!
Everyone says that but they always come back because XP looks so terribly dated now and they are fed up looking at its ugly mug.
 
Not every Mac user is like the ones that post on the internet. I used to work retail and saw our department shift hundreds of copies of the latest Mac OS releases over the period they were available for. I can count the number of retail boxed XP packages on one hand.
If you think UAC is annoying you have no idea what the competition is like...
Unobtrusive would be one of them.
 
Not every Mac user is like the ones that post on the internet. I used to work retail and saw our department shift hundreds of copies of the latest Mac OS releases over the period they were available for.

That's not a very constructive point, it could mean anything... like:

1. Mac users want the latest (cough) "service pack" because they are fed up with the previous version's annoyances
2. Mac doesn't actually have OEM copies does it? There is no choice - you have to buy a retail boxed copy...
3. Windows DOES have OEM copies so not many people these days buy retail boxed copies...
4. Windows releases are further apart than with Mac.
5. Usually owning the latest Windows release isn't a playground boasting brownie point.
6. Microsoft puts their service packs up on WU for free.
 
Vista has a nice clean GUI, is easy to use and looks after less experienced users of computers. I like the sidebar, the navigation methods, the availability of 64 bit drivers and the fact I can use all my 4 gb of Ram without issue. I know you can "Skin" XP to look like vista, but thats a bit like skinning a Vauxhall Nova with crap from Halfords. I really dont see what all the fuss is about, it's only an OS and it works very well.
 
What changes are you referring to? DX10 is annoying is it? The new hi-fi sound stack is not inspiring? The new IPv6 networking stack with faster throughput rates is annoying? The better file-copy dialog with speed and proper time estimation and that lets you cancel the transfer at any time instantly is annoying? WPF is not inspiring? Note that Windows 7 will be built upon WPF... Silverlight is built upon WPF... Vista's shell is already built upon WPF...

I can go on...

So yeah as Burnsy says... please understand a subject area before posting on it.


Whoosh... Your missing my point. Microsoft are failing at some critical points. You clearly know your technology so you can get your socks of about IPv6, but to the average Joe? Does he give a ...? No.

They need to find a happy medium between the two.

You are also totally overlooked the point at how slow the OS is as a whole. (mentioning this on overclockers will be laughed at but hey ho)
 
Vista has a nice clean GUI, is easy to use and looks after less experienced users of computers. I like the sidebar, the navigation methods, the availability of 64 bit drivers and the fact I can use all my 4 gb of Ram without issue. I know you can "Skin" XP to look like vista, but thats a bit like skinning a Vauxhall Nova with crap from Halfords. I really dont see what all the fuss is about, it's only an OS and it works very well.

I quite agree the 'eye candy' is nice, and the main reason I am sticking with it!
 
Whoosh... Your missing my point. Microsoft are failing at some critical points. You clearly know your technology so you can get your socks of about IPv6, but to the average Joe? Does he give a ...? No.

They need to find a happy medium between the two.

You are also totally overlooked the point at how slow the OS is as a whole. (mentioning this on overclockers will be laughed at but hey ho)

Slow compared to what? We could try running vista and XP on hardware from the equivilent stage in their lifecycles and see which is faster?

Or is it slow in your eyes because a 7 year old OS on current hardware is slightly faster in some situations?

It's also worth noting that most of the general consumers (of which OcUK are not a good representative sample) don't like change, hence why MS tend to keep things simpler and not change them too much in one go. The fact that nearly everything is rewritten under the hood in vista tends to be ignored by most people, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
 
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Unobtrusive would be one of them.

Just remember, UAC is a counter to the stupidity of most home windows users (including the majority of users on this forum) who think that running as admin is a good idea all the time because they can police things themselves. It's somewhat akin to not putting a trapdoor over an access shaft in the middle of the path because 'you know it's there'.

If people (and lazy programmers) had practiced good security policy in XP, UAC would be unnecessary.
 
"There's nothing wrong with Vista. It's a fantastic OS" - come to my workplace, where we have the largest AD in Europe, and say that to my boss!

there's no 'need' to move to Vista... oh unless you want a slightly prettier gui.. something which 90% of businesses have zero interest in.
 
I use Vista but...

In the how ever many years of creation what have they really done?

Pretty interface and, errm, em... er???

Hello thought, may I suggest having a look at this thread here and reading through the article before saying that all that Windows Vista is, is a pretty interface. :)
 
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