Latest Windows Vista builds get praise
This post by Rob La Gesse isn’t the first time I’ve heard that build 5536 rocks, but it’s the most convincing that I might be wrong about Vista not being ready by November (which is when it needs to be finished by).
I wish I had time to play more with new stuff. I’ve been using IE7 exclusively ever since RC1 shipped last week, though, and it has only crashed once in more than 40 hours of use so far and it’s dramatically nicer than IE6. It feels good and it’s a good baseline browser, I’ve only found a couple of sites that didn’t look right in it too. One thing I’ve been doing is visiting dozens of “at risk” sites (er, let’s just call them porn and gambling sites) to test its security — these sites usually load TONS of malware, toolbars, and other nasty stuff onto your computer (due to IE6’s extensibility model, er, lack of security). In IE 7? So far no nasties!
Has anyone been testing out IE 7 looking to see how much better its security is? Can you link me to your experiences? So far it’s dramatically better.
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August 30th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Robert, I have been using IE7 a lot as well - and I even have a draft of a post in Windows Live Writer about IE7. I should finish it. Alas, it’s on my XP partition though, so I’ll have to reboot back into XP to finish it… and I really don’t want to boot back into XP!
I agree with you on the phishing though - I have a friend that comes over and always wants to “borrow a laptop” and play online poker. I don’t know where he plays, but he used to download a ton of spyware crap when he installed the poker clients - he was over this weekend and after he left the machine was still “clean” - it has his poker stuff on it, but none of the other trash like toolbars that I always had to clean up after he left.
I guess those 10,000 new employees at MS are making a difference, because I am really starting to feel their momentum building.
Rob
August 30th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
It’s good that Vista appears to be shaping up. But I don’t think it will be *really* solid until SP1. And that’s regardless of when it’s released. Microsoft could wait for 5 years trying to perfect it, and it still wouldn’t be *really* solid until SP1.
I just think that a new OS requires a general release, one that general public uses and uncovers the bugs/problems that weren’t caught in beta, followed by “SP1″ addressing those issues, before it’s really ready.
Win3.1 was the “real release” of Win3.0.
Mac OS 7.1 was the “real release” of Mac OS 7.0.
Mac OSX 10.1 was the “real release” of Mac OSX 10.0.
NT 3.51 was the “real release” of NT (note that the first NT was 3.1, then 3.51).
and so on.
I’m still looking forward to Vista. I won’t wait for SP1. ;-)
August 30th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
What you guys fail to realize is no matter how amazing IE7 is, people are still going to find it’s flaws, and trust me there will be flaws, and exploit the crap out of it.
Many of us will be using firefox for that sheer fact alone.
I’ll be honest with you, I’ll use IE7 until I get one virus or one pop up that I don’t get on firefox, all it takes is one, then I’ll go straight back.
Hell even firefox is starting to prove vulnerable, I’ve been itching to try out Opera lately now that it’s free and all. Scoble your post just encouraged me to give it a shot!
August 30th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Robert,
Your killing me!
I have been using Firefox for awhile now and been testing out IE7, with it latest release, I find IE7 to be very friendly and usable.
In your last post you write about Flock, (I must be one of the two) and given what I read about it I want to try it.
It’s great to have all of these options, but your killing me with all of these options.
Guy
August 30th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Yes of course I’ve been using IE7 since Beta 1, both on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. In fact, I’m not a real security specialist, but I tried to buffer overrun a few places in IE7, but I think IE7 is compiled using the new C++ compiler switch that makes buffer overruns virtually impossible! I also tried to produce some common security issues, but none of them was successful. I really appreciate the great job done by IE team! The RC1 build is much more stable than Beta 3. But I had a strange problem with ClearType which I’ve written about it a little in my blog (http://mehrdadlive.spaces.live.com)
Unfortunately, I haven’t got the pre-RC1 build of Vista yet. In fact I believe Beta 2 was less than ideal but I’m sure RC1 will be a very good build (I don’t know why I think this way, but I believe in Vista guys!)
August 30th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
I would *really* like the refresh button back on the left side of the URL box where it belongs.
August 30th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
David - ie, the refresh button - ME TOO! I wrote the team about it, begging at least for an option to move it… seemingly to no avail.
Rob
August 30th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
I have been running Vista 5536 for a week now (the benefits of being on the inside ;-) and it has been great on my system. I am also running a similar new build of office and together they are running very smoothly. You can see my Vista screenshots and links to 3 video screen captures with quick demos of Office 2007 running on Vista 5536 on my blog at http://www.mikeysgblog.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=238
and at http://www.mikeysgblog.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=237
August 30th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
I have bad feeling about the whole vista mess.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Windows Vista Troubles an Opportunity for Linux to Ascend
Ok, I just read the newly restored blog posting of Mr. Phillip Su http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/archive/2006/06/14/631438.aspx
To my mind, the Firestorm over this issue is a harbinger of the death rattle of heavyweight OS’s, and a herald of coming g…
August 30th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
IE 7 simply isn’t better enough for me to care. Firefox does what I need it to do. What is IE going to do for me that’s better enough for me to switch?
August 30th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
NO NO NO NO NO!!! It doesn’t matter! IE was a total piece of crap anyways! It doesn’t matter if it gets better! It’s a piece of crap!!
Besides, Windows is ripping off Apple with Vista
August 30th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
ditto on the refresh button. luckily firefox has it in the right place :-)
August 30th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is with the Refresh and Stop buttons being on the right side of the address bar rather than the left. People have complained about it for months on the IEBlog (albeit, not that forcefully, since it’s not a big deal, really), but the IE team insists on the current configuration.
I guess they have some usability studies showing that it’s better to have those buttons on the right, or something. LOL
August 30th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Robert, Maryam might be interested in tomorrow night’s (8/31) reading from “Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora.” More info at http://www.litart.org/#Karim . I’d post it to her blog but I don’t have the wackety-wack Windows membership necessary to comment there. –Lynn “SmartQuotes” B. Johnson
August 30th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
“I’ve been using IE7 exclusively ever since RC1 shipped last week, though, and it has only crashed once in more than 40 hours of use so far…”
What’s a crash?
August 30th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
It’s funny how those of us who point out the more than obvious shortcomings of various builds of Vista never seem to get any press. Nothing new mind you. This is a clique based business. It’s interesting though because I real thought you would get why Vista has shortcomings for the average user. Although from my reading here some days it seems like you get it. Then you forget what you learned from the average user the next day. Vista is far from ready for prime time. Especially since Microsoft has yet to even get the basics right. Better security? Not really if you actually take the blinders off. If it’s not something users will keep in place without being forced. Then the security design is useless. It’s that basic and that simple. No matter how others wish to argue it. If all you do is rave about the good and ignore the bad. Your not doing the testing process any good. This also isn’t going to lead to a good end product going out the general public.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Iggy should read his own comments better. Real should be really. And I forgot the “to” the general public.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Arick,
What parts of Apple OS X is Microsoft ripping off in Vista? All of the “new features” and (included programs) which are coming out in Mac OS 10.5 are features that have been in Windows Vista since the early Beta/CTP. It seems that as has always been the case Apple, Microsoft, and the Open Source community are all “borrowing” the best, and most popular user features and applications from each platform and incorporating them into their own platform in some way.
I can see some of the itens in the Vista GUI which remind me of some of the feature in the Linux KDE interface that Novell uses for SuSe 10, but don’t see much similarity in Mac OS X and Vista. The Mac user interface is still more user friendly for the common person (non-geek) than the new Vista interface. If anything, changing the “Start” button to a round Windows logo icon (just like KDE) is going to cause more initial confusion for the average PC user. Then throw in the fact that the new “File” menu in Office 2007 is a round Office logo icon (without a text label) and watch the end user confusion increase even more.
I just don’t see Vista as a “rip off” of the Mac.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Iggy - (comment 17) -
First, you ignored the fact that both Robert and I posted that we didn’t think Vista was ready. Now I post that I am amazed with the progress, and I am. You come back with a broad brush talking about security issues and such and you don’t cite even a single example to back up whatever point you are trying to make.
Please, if you are going to argue that we are just “blowing on the bagpipes”, at least offer an alternative argument. You say, “If all you do is rave about the good and ignore the bad” - but you haven’t discussed either - except you seemingly pre-conceived notion that Vista is inherantly “bad”. Are you running the latest build? Which build? Specifically, what security issues are you concerned with? Specifically, how does Vista have “shortcomings for the average user?”
And I won’t argue that it has no shortcomings - but I will argue that EVERY OS has shortcomings - sor the average user, the geek user, and everyone in between.
Rob
August 30th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Question: If Vista is the big ‘bet the company’ move that Ballmer said it was…
….how come there’s an upgrade from XP version for sale …?
This was supposed to be an all-new code base (yknow..like OS X?) Instead its an upgraded XP?
So much for the Security stuff…
After seeing Leopard in action… the next five years looks bright for Windows…
Looking forward to the catch-up around 2010
August 30th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
What? Build 5536 rocks? Has there ever been anything Microsoft that rocks?
August 30th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
[...] BTW, all of these “comments”, and more, are at this Scoble post [...]
August 30th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
“It’s funny how those of us who point out the more than obvious shortcomings of various builds of Vista never seem to get any press. Nothing new mind you. This is a clique based business.”
I would have thought it was equally a “cliche-based business”, Iggy.
Microsoft and Innovation(TM). Microsoft and Grass Roots(TM) aka Pushing Up Daisies(TM).
It sounds like Vista is finally nearing its first Beta release - oops, that should be RC1. How many Alphas must a Microsoft product go through before it finally leaves RC-status and becomes Beta-quality? This is known - but not to mortal man … far away, in another space and time, where the crawling chaos Azathoth ummm, crawls and dead Cthulhu dreams … is whispered the answer to such questions … but not to mortal man …
August 30th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
I heard a slightly different story (today) about the latest version from the guy trying to install the latest NVidia driver (for Vista). Black screen, crash. After 30 minutes he fixed the driver problem, then he realized that Vista didn’t bring anything radically new over XP and he returned back to “well patched and fixed XP”.
I feel a fiasco. And update from XP to Ultimate version for $260 - it’s just a joke. Not to mentioned a new version of Ultimate edition - you can buy a freaking Mac Mini on eBay for less than this.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Jason H:
Calendar?
August 30th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
> It’s good that Vista appears to be shaping up. But I don’t think it will be
> *really* solid until SP1
Another 6 years of development?
August 30th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Nothing radically new? Well, again, networking stack has up to 40 times the performance (almost completely rewritten). Audio stack works (almost completely rewritten). Video works much better (UI stack rewritten to support audio and video together in many more ways than XP does). Desktop search that works (rewritten and integrated into Vista, much nicer than XP). New sidebar. New security features (not just dialogs, either). New Tablet PC features (many, many new ones). New speech recognition technology (it is much nicer and integrated in). New Media Center stuff rocks. And on and on.
Nah, you’re right, it’s just an update from XP.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_explorer7_pinto.php
August 30th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Jack: that’s about IE 7. And I understand that the geeks are gonna be totally uninterested in IE 7. The team itself acknowledges that. This release was about rebuilding the team (it had been mostly disbanded after the DOJ action for a variety of reasons) and getting the security problems fixed. I’ve been visiting scores of “at risk” sites with IE 7 RC1 and haven’t gotten a single nasty thing yet. That’s a HUGE change over IE 6. If someone is going to stick with IE, I’d HIGHLY recommend getting IE 7.
Personally if I were gonna choose a new browser I’d go with Flock.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
What do you mean that “video works much better”? What is an improvement of video for the majority of user with a stock video chip on motherboard? You mean that every ordinary PC user will jump to Fry’s to buy a new card with 256 MB of memory?
August 30th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
I wrote a post that might be of interest to all of you that don’t really bring anything useful to this conversation. It’s here: http://lagesse.org/?p=85.
Not trying to be an ass, but really - if you have legitimate, rational, quantified issues with Vista, I am sure MS wants to hear them. But if you just “don’t like MS” that’s fine too. Flip the Bozo Bit on yourself and go find another issue to harp on.
I’m not here to ensure MS rules the world, builds the best OS in the world, “beats” Apple, enables Linux to rule, whatever. Just posting my personal observations based on (get this!) actually USING the Software!
MS has already communicated with me about the issue I had with the Audio (even though the audio actually did work). They take this prodcut serious, and they can take serious criticism. But flaming is “so web 1.0″.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Jack: I mean playback of WMV files is much nicer and much less likely to take up all the processor and, even when it does, the machine will remain far nicer and far more responsive. The demos here are quite convincing.
But, yes, if you have a good enough video card (a very high percentage of the machines sold this year do) you’ll have an even better experience including a cool new UI that I like a lot.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Rob: well said.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
Rob, I have been with MS products since MS-DOS 3.2 - 6.0, Windows 3.0, 3.11 for Workgroups till now - so my relationship with MS is slightly different than just simple LIKE IT or NOT.
And that funny stuff about a useful conversation is not worth to comment.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
I mean playback of WMV files is much nicer and much less likely to take up all the processor and, even when it does, the machine will remain far nicer and far more responsive. The demos here are quite convincing.
That’s like directly from a release list of two 15-years old punk-developers from a dad’s garage when releasing (and learning a dynamic memory allocation in C++) a new alpha version 0.023 of their super cool freeware video player.
Robert, sorry - I couldn’t resist ;-)
August 30th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
I’m typing this comment from Firefox on 5536. I’m quite impressed with build so far. The install was a snap and all my devices are detected - which was a pleasant surprise. That includes my wireless card by the way. Even the phone activation was fine.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Jack (comment # 35) - Huh? I don’t understand your post - I *still* have floppies with Windows 1.04 on them, and I have origional Visual Basic for DOS floppies. I’ve been around a long time too. What’s that got to do with anything here?
You lost me…
Rob
August 30th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Rob,
that you are not talking to a type of the guy who simply “likes or doesn’t like MS”. I’m not some Linux/Mac/OS2/BeOS/Unix youngster comming here to provoke everybody around with a banner like MS sucks or Vista sucks. I’m the guy who is trying to ask a simple question - what I will get for $400? The VMW codec which doesn’t eat 100% of CPU? The new but obsolete IE7? Give me a hint of a radical change I can expect in my day job/home use if I install Vista (besides transparent windows, sidebar, desktop search which I could get for free for years). You have to admit that the question is perfectly legitimate and I’m still searching for the answer everywhere.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Jack: why do you need a radical change to justify spending a few bucks a month on new software (which is what $400 will come out to if you use it for, say, three years?)
There isn’t a paradigm shift.
If you don’t see $400 worth of value, stay away. Me? I’ll probably wait to buy a new computer until next year and get it that way.
There certainly is enough value to order Vista instead of XP next year.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:22 am
Above was mentioned the audio improvements in Vista. If you want details, check out this excellent avsforum.com post by Amir Majidimehr, Microsoft’s VP of Media Tech. Also read the thread for even more info.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=713073
(Here’s info on Amir, himself: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/amirm/default.mspx)
August 31st, 2006 at 2:01 am
you can get a free vista cd via http://www.microsoft.com/india/offers/vista/quiz.aspx
check it out…
August 31st, 2006 at 2:52 am
As an FYI for those who want to simply flame Vista and say its not ready for this or that (this is not addressed to those who have/are trying it and are simply pointing out areas that need improvement.Vista can use some good try it and point out its flaws workouts in order to make sure it is truly ready for primetime at launch). I have been running build 5536 for a week now on my production machine with beta 2 12.0.4407.1003 of Office 2007. I have been running Vista beta 2 with Office beta 2 in production for more than a month (I live and die in front of customers daily doing demos, building proof of concepts etc.) While beta 2 could be a little rough at times build 5536 has not been (my plder 2.0 version of Camtasia but tat issue was solved last night. ) I have need needed to go out and buy a new graphics card. I am running full glass on my tablet pc (Toshiba Tecra M4) and my system runs better than it did on Windows XP. 128mb video ram is needed for full glass and even then I hae it running on an older laptop with (P3 with a 64mb graphics card) with no issues. Do I have glass on it, no. Does it still provide the benefits Robert has pointed out? Yes. So while it’s easy to dive in to a religious war about OS’s to make unqualified statements about it being Alpha, etc. serves know one. Will there be issues. I am sure there will just as there are with all OS’s. With Windows being by far the largest install base those issues will certainly come to light much earlier and much more publicly. Then the flames I am sure will start. Until then if you want to flame it at least have the intellectual honesty to try it out and then point out the flaws/issues you find not simply sit back and say “it’s crap”.
Now I need to get back to work on my “alpha” machine (yes I will be working live in front of a roomful of people at a customer site all day today with my Vista 5536 box doing web dev)
August 31st, 2006 at 2:54 am
.. and for those who want to flame my spelling mistakes above…. it’s not even 6am ere and I haven’t had my first cup of coffee so… oh go ahead flame away ;-)
August 31st, 2006 at 8:55 am
” I have been running build 5536 for a week now on my production machine with beta 2 12.0.4407.1003 of Office 2007.”
Dude, that’s not cutting edge - that is bleeding edge. No professional does that. No professional gets any respect from me for doing such an irresponsible thing.
I’m serious… spelling mistakes get no lack of respect from me. But anybody who starts out a comment with this? I can’t consider what follows to be worthwhile.
For the record - I’m forced to use Windows at my job. I switched to Mac 3 years ago. And yes, I ran Tiger (and Tiger server) while they were in Beta for about 6 months. But NOT on production machines. That is simply not a badge of courage or confidence - it’s a badge of stupidity.
August 31st, 2006 at 9:24 am
I loved the UI of Vista although I didn’t particularly care for that of IE7. I had some issues running media center in Vista — it failed to recognize my set top box in spite of all the hours I spen troubleshooting it. I’ve connected my box to work in XP and Windows Media Center before, so there’s nothing wrong with my box or the Hauppauge Card that I have. I couldn’t identify a solution, so that was the one glitch that I encountered thus far. Not the end of the world, I’ll live.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:07 pm
I’ve been using IE7 on XP for some time now. Beta3 was buggy and I had to switch back to Firefox. RC1 is more stable and hardly ever crashes (no more than Firefox, I would say). The new Yahoo Mail (beta) and the Wells Fargo now open on IE7 too. I hate the phishing filter, though. It labels even Microsoft sites as suspicious some times.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:27 pm
“No professional does that. No professional gets any respect from me for doing such an irresponsible thing.”
-Dave
Typical Mac elitism. If he has found that the Vista and Office Betas have proved themselves in terms of stability and productivity then, by all means, use them. I know I would. As the IT guy the company I work for, I sure as hell better test out and make sure any coming updates are usable for production before rolling them out to dozens of users. And that includes actually using the software in production.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Well then call me stupid because as Robert can tell you at Microsoft we try and “eat our own dog food” here in order to uncover as many bugs as possible before we launch. Does that mean I don’t keep a backup box running standard release software ready to go? No. It means that my primary machine for production use is running the versions mentioned (as are many customers now involved in Vista and Office TAP programs) and that I have not needed to use my backup machine. However, when I am doing LiveMeeting webcasts, presenting, or building I do have my backup ready to hum if needed. The other day during a webcast I was logged in as Michael on my Vista box and Mike on my XP box with both in presenter role in the event something should happen. It has been my experience that customers expect to see the latest and greatest running when I am with them and are interested in the new features which I am happy to show them. Additionally, I went to these two newer builds on the advice of professionals within our organization working with the products and whom I trust implicitly as they advised me that they were in fact the best performing, and most stable builds to date.
I am sorry you feel the need to label me as stupid without ever knowing me and based on a brief blog entry. My test scores and personal achievements over the years, not to mention my mother ;-) would disagree but you are certainly entitled to your opinion. I run the latest to help make our products better for the people who will ultimately buy them. There are times when I would prefer not to as it can make my job more difficult but it is something we are asked to do internally and I am happy to do if it will help create a better product, albeit at some occasional pain to myself. Having said all that I am hammering this out in Word 2007 on Vista to paste in to the blog reply and yes, on these builds, my machine has never run better.
Real quick for Someone Who Loves Dogs, try Firefox on Vista if you don’t like IE. Since I do a lot of web work and I also demo SharePoint I have it loaded on my Vista box as well for demo purposes and it works great. I would love to see you use and love IE but like my dearly departed Papa from the old country used to say “everybody gotta floata their owna boat.” ;-) Seriously, I have seen no hiccups in Firefox on Vista to date.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:54 pm
“Typical Mac elitism.”
Exactly. :-)
August 31st, 2006 at 2:19 pm
I hate the layout of IE7. I cannot move anything to where I want it. XP version of IE7 I find is slow, bloated and cumbersome.
However, onto the good news… I installed Vista yesterday and the IE7 in Vista is far superior to the XP version. For example my wordpress dashboard loads slowly in every browser (IE6/7, firefox and Opera on vista and XP) yet loading it up in Vista IE7 and it is very fast.
It also has a nicer look - even though it cannot be customised.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:54 pm
[...] Neville’s not happy with IE7 RC1 — me? I love it and have returned to it as my default browser (Scoble does too, plus more here). If only CoComment had a plug-in like Firefox has, rather than a button on the IE toolbar you have to remember to click… [...]
August 31st, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Typical Mac elitism. If he has found that the Vista and Office Betas have proved themselves in terms of stability and productivity then, by all means, use them. I know I would. As the IT guy the company I work for, I sure as hell better test out and make sure any coming updates are usable for production before rolling them out to dozens of users. And that includes actually using the software in production.
No, you test in a test environment. You don’t roll betas out into a production environment, unless you’re maso and a little stupid in the side. I test all kinds of stuff, but my production environment only changes when required, and beta software is never required
August 31st, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Consider this from a former IE fan… IE sucks big time! Although they release a new version of IE which they called it “web standard compliant”… heck! I’m not still convince. My officemate uses IE 7 in WinXP and still bugs (ok..it’s still in beta right?)
I switch using FireFox and Opera..they’re a lot better than the ol’ crappy IE.
September 1st, 2006 at 3:28 am
“No, you test in a test environment. You don’t roll betas out into a production environment, unless you’re maso and a little stupid in the side. I test all kinds of stuff, but my production environment only changes when required, and beta software is never required”
Okay after visiting Johns site I was going to reply yet again but then decided not to waste my typing. Page graphic at top speaks for itself.
September 1st, 2006 at 4:38 am
O NOES! I’m not always a nice person, so now Michael won’t reply to the obvious point. You left off where I kick puppies, step on kittens, and eat a baby for breakfast too. I could point out that your blog has it’s own issues as well, but that seems to be your little immature specialty, so I’ll not tread there. Or is it because…i’m a MAC USER. Michael, if that’s the case, anytime you want to get in a “who’s worked on what” dick-waving contest, you let me know. I may not have adjective - ridden descriptions of myself and my life in a bio, but I do okay there.
HOWever…after twenty or so years in the IT biz, I’m pretty comfortable with my track record on “don’t implement betas in production”, ESPECIALLY Windows betas, where moving pretty much forces you to nuke and pave.
Of course, while you’re on about your test scores, (WTF, this counts?) and dogfooding, you kind of didn’t notice the difference between dogfooding and replacing stable production systems with betas. When you work for a company with 60K people, you may have the luxury of enough parallel systems that if a beta hoses your accounting system, you can have your duplicate system up and running in minutes, but, and I know this is shocking to you, there are companies out there *without* billions to spend on such things.
So we have a test environment and a production environment. New stuff lives in test until it’s a) Not beta, and time bombed. You DO know that Microsoft time bombs their betas right? Of COURSE you do, which is why you’d never seriously recommend them in a production system, because that would be irresponsible. I hope you don’t do this in customer meetings unless you’re willing to live on that customer’s site and deal with the production issues.
Production systems are not leading edge, nor are they bleeding edge. They are *stable*. That is the ultimate concern of a production system. Not dog fooding, not feeding your ego with regard to Sharepoint, but *stable*. They must work 24×7, day after day. They do so, because we take production seriously, as adults should.
The test environment? Insanity rules, because that’s where we play mad scientist, and evaluate new stuff and new approaches to see if they’re appropriate in production.
Is the difference clear now? I’m just asking, because you don’t seem to really understand the difference.
September 1st, 2006 at 6:06 am
What I don’t understand is why everone wants to slag off the products they don’t like. OK, so XXX doesn’t like IE7 and thinks Firepox is better, fine I like anything that works reasonably well and don’t slag off things I don’t like. Best way really, as slagging off things just makes you look like a prat.
September 1st, 2006 at 10:59 am
Actually John it’s not the Mac monitor that bothered me, they make some great products and I actually love their monitors, it was the text that was a part of overall graphic coupled the post “Stop with the out of office messages” that caused me to take pause and not launch in to a lengthy reply. If you enjoy playing attack dog then have a ball. Yes my blog has issues…. this must really tick you off, it’s running on beta as well! ;-) and yes it has bugs! As for my maturity your right, I am immature, probably stupid, and am lucky I can make it to work each day in one piece. There I am done with senseless arguing as it doesn’t lead anywhere. If you would to further point out my failings as an adult, etc. then have at it. Since I’ll not reply you can blast away to your hearts content and have the last word.
On the Vista beta issue I use the two betas and yes I am in an exceptional environment that is not the norm. I don’t recall advocating that everyone else run out and go bleeding edge, stupid edge, or whatever you would like to term it, or me. Beta is not for everyone, and should definitely not be for production use in most corporate environments (I actually spent a few years at a very large financial firm as a corporate systems architect and have friends in operations so believe it or not I get that). With regards to SharePoint beta I have had quite a few customers ask me about moving forward on beta for production and I have to caution them against that and instead offer to assist the in setting up a test environment where they can learn the product and become familiar but not look to begin production work until after release. I am simply relating that my own personal experience with my beta builds of Vista and Office has been very positive.
Well I need to get back to work and am going to enjoy the rest of today. I had my year end review today and since my management and fellow employees seem to feel kindly disposed towards me, despite all of the shortcoming I apparently, I am in a great mood. Well I am finished so feel free to blast away.
September 1st, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Michael, you’ve obviously not been on 10 different sysadmin, (NOT normal users, but people like me who run networks) lists and had the floods of email i’ve had all saying:
“I’m not in the office, but i’ll be sure to handle your request when I get back in”. Even better are the ones that reply to EVERY MESSAGE, including their OWN OOF MESSAGES. I get tons of email as it is, I don’t need that crap from people who should know better. If simple honest irritation and other non-barney emotions upset you that much, then i recommend not actually going outside much.
Secondly, your blog is hardly a production system. What happens if it crashes? an inconvenience at most. what happens if my accounting system dies screaming because I decided to move it over to betaware? almost a thousand people don’t get paid. There’s this thing called “perspective”, you really should try it some time.
I’m not sure why you insist that every time someone says something that doesn’t shore up your self-esteem or “affirm and validate you” that you consider it blasting, but it strikes me as a rather limited, perhaps even stunted view of human emotional response. If the only kind of communications you’re able to maturely and rationaly handle are ones that have the “i”s dotted with hearts, and smilies ever inch, then that sounds like some serious inability to function in the real world.
The passive - agressive cloaked in syrupy nice and ended with you running off to hold hands with the teletubbies? Nice tactic. If you’re twelve. Oh yeah, when you feel the need to point out that people like you, ” I had my year end review today and since my management and fellow employees seem to feel kindly disposed towards me, despite all of the shortcoming”. Classic passive-aggressive. Not even particularly well done mind you, reminiscent of a teenage girl.
Why not just say “I didn’t mean to imply that people should use betaware in a production environment, and if that was the impression I gave, then I was unclear”? That’s not hard, avoids the passive-agressive silliness, and gets right to the point. It’s really rather handy, instead of all the nicey-nice games.
By the way, that text that you can’t mention? “The reason god invented the middle finger”. See. No profanity. Nothing to hide from. Really. It’s okay.
September 3rd, 2006 at 2:31 am
[...] Robert Scoble recently posted about his (and other’s) prasie for release candidate 1 (RC1) of Vista. On the other hand Chris Pirillo thinks it’s more of an alpha release, not even close to being a release candidate. [...]
September 4th, 2006 at 12:29 am
It amazes me how upset and angry some of you get when you hear people praising microsoft’s products. If you don’t like or aprove of the software MS puts out then just don’t use it. why does it bother you so much?
October 24th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I’ve been running Vista RC1 with Beta 2 of Office 2007. So far so good. The new interface is clean and uncluttered very similar to the theme in IE7 and WMP11 Beta. My only complaint is the ability to revert to the classic view. I wish Microsoft would take it out. I currently do HelpDesk support and don’t ever set XP to the classic view, setting up as few icons on the desktop as possible. I believe it’s much more efficient. I looked, and unfortunately this view is still available in the Vista RC1. As I have tried to explain to users who usually have several programs open, it’s much more efficient to access these through the Quick Launch besides the fact that most new programs seem to install to the desktop, Quick Launch and Taskbar. I also select to show the desktop toolbar on the taskbar which shows all the icons that are normally shown on the desktop of the classic view. Overall though, I think Microsoft is headed in the right direction.
December 18th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
[...] About a month later I downloaded build 5536. I blogged about that release here, and linked back to Scoble’s original post (see above Scoble post, comment # 131). That caused a lot of links, and a lot of positive coverage of the progress Microsoft was making with Vista. It was Digg’d even. My own little blog got a lot of hits over that post. Personally, I was very happy - I had a version of Vista that ran extremely well. Scoble followed up with a link to my post with this new post on his blog [...]
November 17th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Alan Wilenski said “I have bad feeling about the whole vista mess.”
How right he was!