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Software Windows Vista RC2 Coming This Friday
Brandon Hill (Blog) - October 3, 2006 12:00 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 60 comment(s) - last by JazzMang.. on Oct 6 at 5:42 PM
Last interim release of Vista up on deck

According to Windows IT Pro, the final interim release of Windows Vista before release to manufacturing (RTM) will come this Friday. Microsoft released RC1 to testers in early September and the last interim build released was 5728 in late September.

Windows Vista RC2, aka build 5743, will be released to the usual suspects which consist of beta testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers. After Vista RC2 goes through its paces, the final product will be set in stone somewhere between October 18 and November 8. Windows IT Pro reports:

Internal documentation notes that each daily delay after October 25 comes at a price, however: For each day past October 25, Microsoft will start to lose languages for the January launch. However, the company is prepared to do that to ensure that Vista's quality is high. That documentation also notes that there are over 1400 open bugs in Vista at this time. Microsoft's internal processes require this bug count to drop to 500 or fewer before they will attempt to go into escrow for RTM. By comparison, there were over 2479 bugs on September 22.

Vista news has been flooding our inboxes over the past 24 hours. We've discussed Microsoft's gaming aspirations for the new operating system, seen that the company has high hopes for first year sales of Vista and noted that McAfee isn't too happy with Vista’s Kernel PatchGuard.

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1400 bugs...
By Hypernova on 10/3/2006 7:03:40 AM , Rating: 2
"there are over 1400 open bugs in Vista at this time"

My jaw dropped when I read that line. They will have to debug at one per hour 24/7 for almost 2 months to weed through all that. MSHQ code monkies must be working at a really frantic pace right now.




RE: 1400 bugs...
By BPB on 10/3/2006 8:00:23 AM , Rating: 5
That 1400 is, I'm sure, mostly bugs that are in no way critical. I imagine the vast majority are bugs the average person would never run across. Considering all the lines of new code to make this OS, that's really not so bad. It's not like this is a game with 1400 bugs. As a programmer, if they do get it down to 500, I'd be impressed. Again, this is a HUGE project to get out, and there's always going to be a certain level of bugs, always. Even 5 years from now. Just look at XP.


RE: 1400 bugs...
By DigitalFreak on 10/3/2006 8:03:33 AM , Rating: 5
I remember when XP was released. Everyone made a big deal out of the fact that it had over 2000 bugs in it. As long as they don't affect the stability or usability of the OS, who cares?

BTW, the automatic spell checking in Firefox 2.0 RC1 kicks ass!


RE: 1400 bugs...
By ajfink on 10/3/2006 10:43:54 AM , Rating: 5
Agreed on both points (Vista and Firefox 2 RC1).

Microsoft will have a good product ready for general consumer release in January. They're Microsoft, they typically don't mess around. Will it have problems? Absolutely. Am I going to buy it when it comes out? Absolutely not.


RE: 1400 bugs...
By Christopher1 on 10/4/2006 9:48:05 PM , Rating: 2
Exacly right. As long as the 'bugs' don't come up in normal use or there is a way around the bugs...... I don't really care if some aren't patched, unless they can make the system crash or open it to attack from outsiders.


RE: 1400 bugs...
By Hypernova on 10/3/2006 8:29:39 AM , Rating: 2
I realise that most of the bugs are probably trivial, but as we all know this is going to be combined with the close integration of DX10 and bugs have a nasty habit of "multiplying" on top of each other. Not to mention that this will be the first true roll out of a mainstream 64bit OS. So now we have a bug^3 potential. Either way nobody should expect the OS to be truly usable/stable until SP1 anyway.

I still remember when my dad bought the first pre SP1 XP rig, the word "crude" was an understatement but of course compared to W95 derivatives it was quantum leap.


RE: 1400 bugs...
By TomZ on 10/5/2006 1:48:17 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Not to mention that this will be the first true roll out of a mainstream 64bit OS.

Not exactly - WinXP 64-Bit has been out for quite a while already:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/default.m...

IMO, 1400 bugs in a product the size of Windows is not a big deal, assuming they are not major ones, which is likely the case at this stage.


RE: 1400 bugs...
By FITCamaro on 10/3/2006 2:04:55 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly. 1400 bugs in as much source code as Vista has is actually pretty impressive(wikipedia states around 50 million lines of code for Vista. so thats nearly 1 bug for every 36,000 lines of code. pretty impressive.) And you figure if they knocked out 800 bugs (they said on Sep 22 there was 2200) in only a few days, they can probably fix quite a number of them fairly quickly. Probably only about a hundred of those are bugs really of interest.

Now granted thats just known bugs. But still its obvious that Microsoft is doing everything it can to make Vista as bug free as possible. It's impossible for software as complex as an OS to be completely free of bugs, but you can only do so much.


RE: 1400 bugs...
By cubdukat on 10/5/2006 11:13:47 PM , Rating: 2
Didn't Win2K have something like 20,000 known bugs when it shipped?


RE: 1400 bugs...
By Two Wheeler on 10/3/2006 11:52:19 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
"there are over 1400 open bugs in Vista at this time"


Those are not BUGS! They're "undocumented features"!

Actually there are probably a lot more that don't get reported because when you try to use the feedback icon that RC1 puts on your desktop, Internet Exploder pukes! :D


RE: 1400 bugs...
By creathir on 10/3/06, Rating: 0
I don't..
By Runiteshark on 10/3/2006 7:22:10 AM , Rating: 2
I don't seem to understand how some people don't like vista now. It has run flawlessly on 4 of my machines now, and my only qualms with it are easily solved. Take one stroll through the controll panel and notice how wonderful its new logging method is, as well as every other old administrative feature. Hell, when I first saw logging alone I started to like it. Plus the whole .dll and services ability for the taskmanager also was nice.

Now it would be neat if they allowed more modules to be slapped on.


Still though, no RUN command really does irritate me, as well as the new startmenu method, but this is both easily fixed...




RE: I don't..
By Targon on 10/3/2006 8:05:16 AM , Rating: 3
Note how few drivers are available, and how many companies refuse to post drivers before Vista is launched. Then look at things like certain SATA controllers not having proper support under Vista(the Promise controller on my motherboard required that I use the WinXP drivers since nothing was available for Vista as one example) to see why so many people will be waiting a while before going to Vista.



RE: I don't..
By vanka on 10/3/2006 1:53:15 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Note how few drivers are available


Right on. Although most of my hardware was recognized and worked correctly, the one item that didn't (my keyboard) was a deal killer and I switched back to XP for now; a real shame as I really liked the RC1 release.

What really pissed me off was that the keyboard in question is from Microsoft. I have the MS Wireless Laser Desktop which has both a USB and PS2 connection coming out of the receiver; USB for mouse, PS2 for keyboard. When both connectors are plugged in (like I have always had them under XP) the keyboard is not recognized but the mouse works ok. When I unplugged the PS2 connector, both mouse and keyboard are recognized and work; but the mouse gets stuck sometimes and won't move for 5 to 10 seconds. And no Vista versions of IntelliPiont or IntelliType (there is a work around to get that functionality but it didn't solve my problem) so I went back to XP.


RE: I don't..
By FITCamaro on 10/3/2006 2:14:09 PM , Rating: 3
Do you know what goes into getting a driver certified for Windows? WHQL tests take time and large corporations test on hundreds of systems. I did driver testing and even for the small company I worked for, testing a driver on just 2-3 machines took 1-3 days. Thats actual testing not the WHQL tests. Those take a total of about 6 hours to run with constant monitoring (at least for the devices we were testing).

So yeah a lot of companies won't release a driver for certain hardware until the OS is released. But that doesn't mean its not there. And a lot of XP drivers work fine with Vista as well. I installed it on about 6 different hardware setups. The only thing I had a problem with was an HP Santa Rosa test platform. With our devices the XP driver worked pretty much perfectly under Vista. The applications had more issues than the drivers.

And I find it quite humorous that you knock Vista, a still beta product, because a few of your drivers don't work or aren't available; but Linux, which as far worse driver support, is fine to you.


RE: I don't..
By OrSin on 10/3/2006 9:54:53 AM , Rating: 2
First I love Vista too. I have it on 3 computers. One is a AMD 2500xp with on board video and works great still on this low end computer. The run cmd can be run from the search menu. If you really want a true run line get the gadget. I use the run and google gadget all day long.

Also if you every look at the bug forum about 40% are hardware driver issues. It up to companies to fix them not microsoft. I'm not blaming the Hardware companies since they only had RC1 for 1 month. Every day i get new drivers for most of the hardware. Right now I play game on my vista computer with no in game crashes (from vista, 2 of my games crash every week anyway). I have had some video scrren refreash issues in 1 game but again that hardware drivers issue.

Vista is very stable. Cry all you want but MS did a good job this time around.


RE: I don't..
By Two Wheeler on 10/3/2006 11:57:32 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Also if you every look at the bug forum about 40% are hardware driver issues


In my experience, all of my hardware works fine, but half my programs don't and there's no way to tell the OS to stop being so &^&%# paranoid and let the damn things run!

The only hardware issue I've had is with my keyboard.....made by....guess who? (Hint, they're in Redmond Washington).


RE: I don't..
By vanka on 10/3/2006 1:58:47 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
...there's no way to tell the OS to stop being so &^&%# paranoid and let the damn things run

Actually there is a way to disable the constant nagging of Vista. Google "disable uac" and you'll get step-by-step instructions on how to do so.

quote:
The only hardware issue I've had is with my keyboard.....made by....guess who? (Hint, they're in Redmond Washington).

Same here man.


RE: I don't..
By Korvon on 10/3/2006 11:51:18 AM , Rating: 2
There is a run command, its just hidden. Hit the Windows button + R.

Cheers.


RE: I don't..
By vanka on 10/3/2006 1:40:32 PM , Rating: 2
Actually you can add the RUN command if you customize the Start (Windows?) menu; you know right-click the Start button and hit Properties. In this way you can get rid of the shortcuts you don't need and add those you do. Also, the Search bar in the Start menu acts like a RUN dialog. Check it out, it works.


RE: I don't..
By johnsonx on 10/3/2006 12:06:34 PM , Rating: 2
Agreed about the logging. It's truly impressive. I'll have to see how it all works in actual practice, but it sure looks good.

I also really like the integrated photo browser & editing package. I'm sure it's nothing more advanced than what 3rd party apps can do, but I like having it built in. Yes, I'm sure this stifles competition, whatever.....

I sure wish I could run Vista on a daily basis, but on each of my computers that I'd like to run Vista there's some reason I can't. So far I only have it on my laptop, and even there it's only on a spare hard drive I swap in when I want to play with Vista for a bit. Oh well, soon enough I guess.