I still refuse to call it Vista
Windows Longhorn, the next-gen version of Windows, has had a bit of a rocky road leading up to today. Features have been pitched and scrapped. More features have been scrapped. Some conventions were held that used a lot of buzzwords. In any case, the Longhorn of today is a far cry from the OS Holy Grail promised a few years ago. Microsoft just keeps drumming the fact that Longhorn is going to be more stable and secure into our heads, which apparently is enough for most of us to upgrade anyway. I am afraid I did not include screenshots in this review, as everyone has already seen what it looks like a million times. Now, let's take a look at what the Softies have done so far:
The first thing I noticed, after popping the DVD into my system, is the radical departure of an ncurses-like installer (textmode). Oh no, Longhorn boots into a sort of WinPE environment, complete with Notepad and a Windows 9x-esque look. If you care to open Notepad, you'll notice that even in mini-Windows mode, the Open and Save dialog boxes have been redone with the Longhorn breadcrumb navigation style. Of course, it looks like crap in Win9x graphics, and the ability to fiddle with it is sort of limited being in a WinPE environment, its still a change from the dialogs that have remained mostly the same through the last three iterations of Windows. Moving on, the installer asks you to enter your serial key, and select a partition, etc. A word to the wise: Longhorn is fat. The clean install of Beta 1 takes up 5.27GB. The second major thing I noticed is that it took a LONG time to install. I didn't time it, because I was told it would install in 15 minutes, but I can assure you it took well over an hour. While you are indeed presented with a very small progress bar through this, it is overall pretty worthless. The bar moves along to about halfway, at which point the computer reboots for Phase 2 of the installation. Ladies and gentlemen, Phase 2 is evil. You are presented with a screen that says Finishing Install, Do Not Turn Off Your Computer. There is a progress bar, but it is clearly not at all representing anything. I was tempted to restart, just to see if the Sun would explode or anything, but decided not to risk it. And after a good deal more waiting, the computer rebooted and brought up a small Configuring stuff box, similar to Windows 98's. It does hardware detection (thankfully, my Radeon 9500 worked fine), although audio is disabled in this build. And then, you need to restart once more.
RATING: 6/10
Pros: Easy. Really easy.
Cons: SLOW. And there should definitely be an option to increase verbosity, for us technical types.
The first thing I noticed, is that the conventional login screen resembled kdm (KDE Login Manager, a Linux thing) a lot more than the previous LogonUI had. Just a quick reference. Microsoft is definitely Unix-ifying Windows. In any case: The Desktop! First off, a window pops up asking you to install some drivers, which turned out to be useless for me. The stock wallpaper is a close-up shot of grass, which I think is much more appealing than XP Bliss. If you happen to be running this on a card that supports LDDM, now the fun begins. Opening and closing windows produce very pretty fade effects, the same can be said for minimizing and restoring. However, I immediately noticed that dragging Windows produced a very ugly effect. Remember the default Windows 9x effect of not dragging window contents? Exactly like that, but uglier. I really hope this gets fixed. The new Aero look is very slick, and I love it immensely. There is, though, as I believe noticed by some fellow members of the community, a good deal of blurring of what shows through behind the transparent window borders. I dont consider it that bad, as it ensures that one is not distracted from the titlebar, but its just something you notice fast. Microsoft has also apparently noticed that the computing community does not like Playskool Blue, and has therefore enhanced the color scheme greatly. Much more gloss. The icons, at least the small number of Longhorn icons, are decent. Some I like, some I don't. The Start Menu is nice, it looks a lot like the XP one, with some differences. Namely, there's a search bar at the bottom, and instead of All Programs folding out into a big menu eating up half the screen, they are shown as a sort of tree in the left pane, as when you click on a folder its contents expand out downward beneath it.
RATING: 8/10
Pros: Very pretty. I also like the Start Menu quick-search.
Cons: Dragging windows is very ugly. Also, some parts of the color scheme could use work.
Well, now it's time to take a look at the application we use most; Love it or hate it, you use Explorer whether you like it or not. The first thing I noticed was the large preview pane at the bottom. Apparently Microsoft must like purple. However, it would seem that there are still some bugs in the image resizing code, because the icons shown are quite aliased. The filesystem icons, are all right, but I do hope that Microsoft will finally take the time and purge all traces of Windows 98 icons this time around, as they conveniently forgot to do so with XP. The next big departure from tradition is breadcrumb navigation. Instead of an address bar, which shows your path in the filesystem, each "node" (for lack of better word) is a drop-down button, where you can choose any folder in that level. This is an excellent feature, and I am going to get a lot of use out of it. Another thing that Microsoft has changed, is the banishment of the menu bar. It is now hidden by default, but can be eaily called up by hitting Alt or making it sticky as an option. The XP task pane has now been relegated to a strip at the top, the likes of which can be seen in a few WindowBlinds skins supporting that. The left side is now taken up by a short list of places like Documents, Public (like All Users, sort of an ownership-free section), and Network. Standard Windows Explorer is still available, with the filesystem tree at the left, and can still be called with Winkey+E. My biggest gripe with the new Explorer is that it is very laggy...often it takes more then two seconds to load a folder. Also, it does some sort of icon filtering when opening a new folder, changing the look slightly. I have no idea what its purpose is, but its noticeable and sort of odd. Another interesting thing is that like Internet Explorer (and of course Firefox before), Explorer windows now have a search box next to the path bar.
RATING: 7/10
Pros: Breadcrumb navigation is very nice. The preview pane is also a worthy and long overdue addition.
Cons: Still laggy and slow. Also, I'd like to see a customizable left pane, where the user can customize what is displayed.
I have not yet taken the time to delve into the new security features of Longhorn, but from what I have seen so far in Properties windows and the Control Panel, Microsoft has definitely tried to implement Unix-style permissions. I consider this a good thing, although I can see it definitely confusing the people who want things to "just work". While I haven't tried out Virtual Folders either, the topic excited me from the first time I heard about it. Its like SQL, but so much easier!
Overall, I think this is without a doubt the most significant overhaul of Windows since 1995. At times during using this, it almost feels like another OS. If Microsoft can price this attractively (see LESS than XP), then I think it will be a hit. The interface is very slick now, and I can only assume it will get even better by the time Beta 2 and RTM roll around.
OVERALL RATING: 6/10
Pros: Lovely, lovely new interface. And the new security features will hopefully be useful as well.
Cons: Install and Explorer were slow. Application compatibilty could use work. So could the window manager.
If you are a Windows enthusiast or IT professional, and have a computer purchased in the last two years, I recommned installing this, if only to familiarize yourself with the new concepts that you will need to know in 12 months. Just Google for a torrent. And enjoy.