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September 04, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Vista RC1 release notes

TAGS: Operating Systems

When Christopher Flores, Microsoft's Group Product Manager, Windows Marketing Communications, came by the office last Tuesday, bearing Windows Vista RC1 installation DVDs, he was full of good news. He announced that performance and stability had been vastly improved over Beta 2, with Vista now offering a user experience as fast as Windows XP. And he said that Microsoft was on track to deliver Vista to volume license customers in November and to the retail channel in January, though his Windows Vista Timeline slide noted "enterprise availablity EOY 2006."

During an hour-long briefing, Flores also shared a list of specific improvements ranging from improved responsiveness and consistent performance that won't degrade over time to widespread elimination of annoying prompts and driver support for thousands more devices. On the downside, anti-virus software support is still forthcoming, but Flores said Vista's APIs are now frozen so third-party ISVs are finally able to build on them.

Here's the list:

* Elimination of crashes caused by incompatible Internet Explorer toolbars. IE 6 toolbars caused some trouble; Vista can now detect incompatible ones.

* Improved usability of BitLocker. It seems a complicated UI was leading to users locking themselves out of their own systems. An easier UI helps users activate BitLocker safely.

* Media Center now leverages tags for browsing photos and videos. Beta 2 ignored the tags.

* High Definition DVD and Blue Ray DVD are now supported (in both 32 and 64 bit modes).

* Presentation settings now suppress all pop-up messages. Beta 2 prezo settings quashed only IM popups.

* Vastly improved device coverage. Thousands more in the box, including wireless devices, printers, SATA controllers, MCE tuners.

* WinFX now named .NET 3.0 and installed by default.

* A host of peformance improvements: Windows Defender, disk defrag, and other functions have been given lower I/O priority to reduce their impact on system performance. Also, Windows SuperFetch and Windows ReadyBoost reduce the need to read and write from disk, reducing performance impact of Windows BitLocker drive Encryption.

* Lots of changes to User Access Controls to eliminate annoyances. Microsoft acknowledges that Beta 2 prompted users too often. Administrators can now delete shortcuts from public desktops without a prompt. Users can copy files to newly formatted external drives without prompt. Non-admins can manually install high priority updates without nagging. Prompts for viewing firewall settings, for "Ask Me Later" device install, and for connecting to a network (Beta 2 prompted twice for connecting) have been removed. Windows Defender no longer prompts to update signatures. No prompt to open Scanners and Cameras control panel. And no prompt during Media Player "Express" setup; Beta 2 incorrectly prompted users for permission. Finally, prompting at startup is no longer allowed.

When asked why users often were confronted with prompts for the same approvals again and again, Flores' reply was that no "forever" permissions were allowed because other programs could piggyback on that with harmful results.

And a few things Microsoft calls Additional Experience Improvements:

* ActiveX installer service enables standard users to install approved ActiveX controls. This feature is aimed at supporting home-brewed ActiveX controls for corporate intranets; through Group Policy, admins can make permission prompts unnecessary for certain ActiveX controls.

* Programs cannot prompt during the logon process unless configured by Group Policy.

* The command prompt window is marked with "Administrator" if run with elevated permissions.

The main reasons for the stability issues in earlier betas, according to Flores, was that Microsoft was still working on driver support, and had not yet "cleaned up the code." (But you knew that.) The first priority was to make the code feature complete, and then worry about tuning. They're worrying about tuning now.

We'll have our review of Vista RC1 for you in the next day or so. Keep your eye on infoworld.com.

Posted by Doug Dineley on September 4, 2006 01:00 PM

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