When I started writing this article, I thought I might be a voice in the wilderness.  Since beta 2, I have been privately telling some of my confidants that Vista's development was not on track for their release schedule. 

By profession I'm a software developer. Specifically a Project Manager.  None of my projects are remotely as large as Windows Vista but it doesn't take someone with that kind of experience to recognize that Windows Vista is not where it needs to be in order to ship in good shape at the end of the year.

My friend Robert McLaws and I have been going over this for months. My argument with beta 2 was straight forward -- Whistler (May 2001) was something you could actually run, Vista beta 2 was not.  In fact, even now, August 2006, running a very recent external build (5472 but not 5484 -or later- because Microsoft's internal ISV program is ridiculous but that's a whole different issue), it's not something I could run as my primary OS. As he writes, he had given Microsoft the benefit of the doubt but it's become clear that Vista is not likely to be solid by the time it's supposed to go gold.  Paul Thurrott is also pondering Vista's ship date he's more ambivalent.

I'm not ambivalent: Vista is not ready. I've been beta testing OSes for going on two decades. I use them as both a developer and user. We helped design the OS/2 Warp 4 desktop with IBM. Windows Vista is not ready. And this is the first OS I've tested since OS/2 2.0 back in 1991 that I felt was not ready for it's proposed release date. I don't say "It's not ready" lightly. And no one is going to accuse me of being some "inexperience kid barely old enough to drink alcohol."

I think Windows Vista not only should be delayed a little, but probably should be delayed a lot. And I say that even though a delay in Vista is going to cost our company a lot of money because we've betted so heavily on Windows Vista coming out 1st quarter 2007.  The fall distributor/retail trade shows are heating up and we have a line of Windows Vista focused products we want to show that we would have to put off if Vista gets delayed.  But even with that, I think Microsoft should push Vista back not just a quarter but possibly all the way back to August 2007. 

The problems that have been reported publicly are problems that mostly affect end-users.  But they go deeper than that. A lot of the underlying plumbing is not ready for prime time. Compatibility is not anywhere near where it should be. And just day to day usage of it is not acceptable.

The Basics

Let's start with the basics -- Windows Vista is a fundamentally sound OS concept. It is a matter of finishing it that is the issue.  Take whatever you think the greatest piece of software in history is and imagine how things might have gone differently had they shipped it two months sooner.

What will happen if they ship Windows Vista if it comes out in 1Q2007? I predict it will be a disaster. Driver compatibility, rough edges in software working, weird and unpolished UI design, etc.  The acronymn UAC will come to haunt Microsoft and they will rue the day they didn't wait just a few more months to get driver compatibility together. Let me outline more below.

Compatibility

Windows Vista is just not reliably compatible with existing software and devices.  This comes in two forms of compatibility.  The first form is where Microsoft needs to make tweaks and changes to get existing software and hardware to run seamlessly. The second involves third-parties making the necessary updates to their software.

That printer utility that you like so much, that cell phone USB connection that lets your laptop get Internet access, the handy transfer applet on your digital camera, the proprietary software that you use to do video, the program you use to get shows from your DVR to your computer, the shareware utility that manages your contacts over your LAN, that fingerprint reader for your new laptop, may all need to be updated.

Many of the changes will need to be done by the third parties. But how can third-parties update this when the underlying infrastructure is still in flux? How can they get updated when the OS itself is only now becoming reliable to use?  Some of these things take time.  We're not talking the week to fix the endless security pop-ups that beta 2 had.  We're talking time to figure out a very new system.

On the flip side, there are things that are endlessly frustrating to developers to see Microsoft screw around making Office 2007 have a fancy (and extremely custom) interface that works fine in Vista while their own skinned applications get broken.  There's a lot of programs out there with custom interfaces that behave very flakey under Vista.  Developers will need Microsoft to either fix that or make sure developers have enough time to update their apps. But things keep changing under the hood so much that just when developers think they have something working, it gets broken again -- and supposedly "release candidate" 1 is due out soon.

Usability

Because so much work has gone towards improving usability in Windows Vista -- a cleaner, more elegant environment, it is not surprising that there are also lots of bugs to work out. And those bugs are still there. 

There's so many major betas coming together that I feel like I'm being taken down by thousands of tiny pinpricks. A weird IE7 issue here, a strange start menu issue there, a bizarre error dialog there.  It's frustrating and it adds to the first issue - if we're wasting hours fighting with the OS to open a file that it thinks I no longer should have access to for some strange reason, then I'm not writing the code I need to write in order to get my stuff to run on Vista because Microsoft broke it. 

Performance

Memory usage and performance has improved greatly in recent builds. Kudos to Microsoft. But it's still no where near where it should be.  There are still tons of processes on boot up that really shouldn't be on in a default boot. One can almost envision some internal Microsoft political power struggle over who gets to have their thingy on at boot and the guys who are winning are not winning because of need but because of internal clout. At least, that how it feels at times.

Then you get to the performance of the system if you're not running Aero (or as we call it, not running the DWM). All the 2D hardware acceleration that has been slowly put into versions of Windows NT since 3.5 has been jettisoned.  In Vista, as it stands, if you're not running with the DWM then you ain't getting nothin. It's going to be slow and painful.

It's like they spent a decade getting 2D performance good and then in Vista they tossed it all out and started from scratch. Now 2D is done in software even though all existing apps use GDI -- and Avalon (WPF) -- is not fully hardware accelerated either. We'll get to that.

Development

This is where things get really ugly.  As a developer, Windows Vista is supposed to deliver.  I'm most worried about Windows Presentation Foundation. The replacement to GDI is mostly not hardware accelerated which means that things run very slowly.

Maybe the video card makers need to update their drivers. I don't know. But I do know that it's incredibly difficult to know what can and can't be done. Disecting Flip3D to what calls it's using seems silly. It's using Milcore anyway. In fact, at this point, developers are just bypassing WPF and going right to Milcore which is not how it's supposed to work.

But not all Dwm calls are hardware accelerated it seems.  Dure, DwmRegisterThumbnail and the like are hardware accelerated because Flip3D makes a good video demo but at this stage, if RC1 is only weeks ago, we should have a list of APIs that are hardware accelerated.

Let me give you an example -- last year Microsoft got rid of WinLogon as we know it. Lots of programs use that to launch themselves.  It's August 2006, there's no replacement. How's that finger print reader going to work? Dunno. How are those programs that need to launch before the shell comes up going to work? Dunno. And like I said, this is just an example.

The thing is, the sand is shifting so much when it shouldn't be at this stage. New builds come out and break new things. Teams at Microsoft are rushing their brains out to get things checked in which means mistakes are going to happen.

Time enough to win

Microsoft wants to please its enterprise customers who are "subscribing" to get Microsoft updates.  But no one is going to be pleased with a Windows Vista that isn't ready to go.  This version of Windows has so much promise. It just needs enough time.

Like Robert McLaws, I think Microsoft should do a beta 3.  I think it should plan on doing it in October.  With enough work and if things really progress well enough, they could get it out by March or April of next year (though I still think August 2007 is a better bet).

We've had Windows XP for 5 years now. Another few months won't make that much of a difference in the bigger scheme of things.  But if the OS comes out and it's a disaster, Microsoft will find OEMs offering users the choice between Vista and XP and a bad reputation could cost Microsoft far more than the few extra months would.

Updates:
Robert Mclaws has informed me of a blog that outlines the replacement to Gina (the winlogon stuff). SO okay, Microsoft has finally recently gotten around to documenting a replacement to Winlogon...on..a...blog. See here.

A Vista of the Leopard

Let me start this article by saying that I think Windows Vista is the most important version of Microsoft Windows since 1995.  If Windows 95 had been a disaster for Microsoft, we might all be running some flavor of IBM's OS/2 today.  Most people take for granted that if you run a PC, you run Microsoft Windows.  But as Windows XP nears its 5th birthday, such assumptions start to be called into question.

Apple's "BootCamp" enables users of Intel-based Macs to boot between Windows XP (or Vista) and MacOS X.  Look carefully at Apple's ads and you will find that they are promoting the hardware quality even more so than the OS.  Who they are targeting is clear -- performance minded PC users who might buy that PowerBook to put Windows XP on. Some percentage of those Windows users are likely to end up as Mac users.

The next version of MacOS X "Leopard" is scheduled to essentially come out at the same time as Windows Vista (roughly beginning of next year for general availability).  Two brand new operating systems (as far as the public is concerned) running on the same kind of hardware. It will be impossible to ignore the comparisons.

However, where Leopard will be the 5th revision of a very modern OS architecture, Windows Vista will be a brand new OS designed to look like previous versions of Windows.  Windows Vista is a major change from Windows XP.  It is not as much of a departure as MacOS X was from OS9, but it is a much bigger change than Windows XP was from say Windows 2000.

This means the level of polish in Windows Vista is going to be crucial.  The slogan for Windows Vista is "Clear, Confident, Connected".  And I must say, Windows Vista has the pieces to make that slogan true.  The question is whether Microsoft can deliver those pieces with the polish, integrity, and reliability that users expect.

When users start to get their hands on Windows Vista Beta 2, they need to remind themselves of these 3 facts:

1. Most users of "Whistler" (the beta of Windows XP) beta 2 (May 2001) were able to use it full-time as their main OS.
2. Windows Vista's RTM is probably around the end of October with a general availability in January 2007 for mortals.
3. A 32-bit PC can address up to 4 gigabytes of memory per process (really 2 gigabytes in practice).

Yes, Microsoft does "get it"

Sometime in 2003 someone with power at Microsoft got fed up with Microsoft getting tagged as making "mediocre" operating systems.  They got sick of Mac zealots and Linux advocates chanting about the ancient architecture and outdated design of Windows.  And they decided that the next version of Windows would truly be state of the art.

Microsoft lists a bunch of features to highlight for Windows Vista.  As far as I'm concerned, there are 4 features of Windows Vista that have the potential to change the world.

1. The Desktop Window Manager (DWM).  Outside techies, you won't hear about this.  But your entire Windows Vista experience runs in 3D now.  Oh, it looks 2D. Your apps and the desktop itself looks similar to Windows XP right? But it's all a 3D surface. It would be like loading up a PC game where the GUI is made to look like Windows XP but you know you're inside a game. 
   
   The reason that's a big deal is because it means all those great features on your video cards can finally be used seamlessly as part of your desktop applications.  In Windows XP, users are usually quite conscious when they're switching to a full screen DirectX application.  Now, the desktop IS a full screen DirectX application. You're always in DirectX now essentially (via Milcore).  I can't even begin to tell you all the goodies Stardock has been cooking up that make use of that. For users, it means a radically improved user experience.
    
2. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Microsoft will be touting the security of Windows Vista a lot. But a lot of the security going forward will be the result of Microsoft's totally new networking foundation. The network code in Windows XP is, essentially a heavily patched version of what's been in Windows since around the Windows for Workgroup days. 
   
   Remember the early 90s? Nice times? Kumbaya? Before we all realized that there were jerks on the Internet with nothing better to do than to write malicious viruses, malware, DDOS clients, adware, etc?  Microsoft has worked hard on Windows XP to keep patching things.  But Windows Vista represents a new direction, a networking infrastructure built from scratch with today's security issues in mind.
    
3. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This was called Avalon.  This goes a bit with item #1. But the reason why WPF is important is that it allows software developers to write new programs that make use of the fact that the Windows environment is now essentially a full-screen 3D DirectX application.  Microsoft has a bunch of tools and a whole development infrastructure that had to be built in parallel in order to pull this off.  XAML and other terms will become increasingly mainstream over the next few years as we see developers creating radically better looking, more friendly software.
    
4. Live Anywhere.  Jason Cross has a great article about Live Anywhere. Essentially, one can picture a world in which Microsoft's "points" become the digital currency of choice.  In 5 years, if Microsoft pulls it off (and I think they have a good chance of doing it) people will be able to buy games, software, music, movies, etc. with Microsoft points via Live Anywhere. 
   
   Before anyone gets "big brotherish" about this, there are some real benefits to this -- as Live on the Xbox has proven, it opens the door to independent content providers to be able to make money on the Internet. It dramatically lowers the barrier to entry.  Right now on the PC there are 3 PC game digital retailers of note (4 if you count Gametap).  Direct2Drive, Steam, and TotalGaming.net. Live Anywhere could end up replacing or complementing these services. But games would be just the beginning. Combined with things like Urge and the upcoming demand for HD video content and you have consumer demand for what Live Anywhere could do.

All of this has been put together into an OS that has a much cleaner, better organized,  more polished interface and environment.

Those 4 features have far-reaching consequences if Microsoft pulls them off well.  Each one really deserves a long article on their own to explain their potential.  Any single one of these features would have been justification for a "new" version of Windows.

And yet, Microsoft is not just putting these 4 major things together into Vista (either bundled or as part of its overall move forward), it's including dozens of minor (and not so minor) features in there as well as well as having to put together a support structure for developers and users and hardware vendors to make use of this stuff.  And on top of that they're trying to release this with 6 different SCUs that amount to "Windows Vista crap" and "Windows Vista Ultimate" and 4 versions in between.

A Vista of the precipice

So Microsoft gets it. But great ideas and great designs really hinge on execution.  And that brings us to where we are right now in May 2006.

Right now, Windows Vista has a few serious problems.  Perhaps my concerns are overstated and this article will be merely a foot note of "doom and gloomers" who were wrong.  I hope so. I want Windows Vista to succeed. So let me put forth my concerns and you be the judge of whether I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

Disclaimer: This is based on my experiences with beta 5381.  I was recently invited by Microsoft to a briefing of what's new in Windows Vista which is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about the concept of Windows Vista.  I also made sure to specifically ask on the first day if we could now publicly talk about this beta build and show screenshots since previously we were not supposed to put up screenshots.

Problem #1: Memory is cheap but we're at the end of the 32-bit line..

For the last several years, I and other people's response when a new OS or application used a lot of memory was to respond "memory is cheap, just add some more..."  Well, the good news is that thanks to Physical Address Extensions on most modern CPUs, your PC can theoretically handle up to 64 gigabytes of memory.

The bad news is that most motherboards stop at 4 gigabytes and each process can only use up to 2 gigabytes of memory (3 with tweaking) unless they use AWE (Address Windowing Extensions) which is not something most developers want to get into. 

So why should you care? Because Windows Vista uses a lot more memory than previous versions of Windows right now. 720 Megabytes are used on a fresh boot (on my test box) vs. around 250 Megabytes on Windows XP.  And that's before third parties get their hands on it and put on their stuff. 

To be fair, I could probably get this down to 500 megabytes with some power user trimming (just as power users can get XP down to under 100 megabytes).  But you're talking about a lot of memory. For most people, tossing on 8 gigabytes of memory onto their machine isn't an option.  Going to 64-bit is the next step but that may prove harder than most people think because many applications require 64-bit specific versions.

The point of this is that this all seems to point that these cool new features have a significant memory overhead in order to make use of. And that 4 gigabyte limit could really become an issue sooner rather than later.

Problem #2: Handles? What are they? The new Resource limit.

Most people don't know what handles are. Most people don't need to care about them.  But unless Windows Vista is able to do something about them, the term "user handles" will start to become something people know about, read about, buy utilities to deal with.

Right now, hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc on your computer. This brings up the task manager on Windows XP.  Go to the Performance tab.  How many handles are you using right now?  I've got a ton of programs going right now and I'm using 18,000 handles.  When my machine boots, it's using around 2,400 handles. 

What does that number mean?  Depending on your configuration, somewhere around 25,000 handles your Windows machine will start to slow down dramatically and eventually programs will fail to launch, weird errors will start to show up and eventually things will start to crash or not function.

My Windows Vista box starts out at around 12,000 handles on boot up and quickly climbs to 15,000 without really doing anything.  Loading up Internet Explorer 7 takes it up rather quickly to 800 megs of memory and a lot more handles being used.

My concern is that non-power users are going to start bumping up against the handle limit.  The 64-bit version of Vista doesn't seem to have a problem with lots of handles so there is an escape path for the long term.

What I am hoping is that if someone with clout at Microsoft will have this issue brought to their attention and have it dealt with. The handle issue is already a problem for many power users on Windows XP.  It's probably the most common cause of system instability.  With Windows Vista having built in search (which consumes a lot of handles just as Google Desktop does), handles could become a serious problem.

Problem #3: Compatibility

The radical architectural improvements to Windows may come with a price -- compatibility.  First, let me say loudly that it is not fair to judge the final product based on the beta.  But I do know what the compatibility was on Whistler at this stage versus Vista.  And if your response to that is "Yea but Vista is a much bigger change" then realize this -- it doesn't matter to users how big the change is under the covers if their programs don't run.  Windows Vista is supposed to be going to manufacturing in a few months.

Users submitting bugs (and feel free to ask anyone in the beta to verify this) can tell you tales of reporting a bug or compatibility problem to have it closed with a "working as designed".  I know our guys are getting frustrated turning in a well documented, repeatable bugs only to have it seemingly blown off and having it continue to show up month after month (Hey, Logon team, we're all waiting for a replacement API to the Winlogon notify stuff, it's been half a year!).

If you stick with the built in apps in Windows Vista along with very mainstream apps, things are fine.  But as soon as you start venturing out, things get murky.  And I don't refer to desktop enhancement programs (WindowBlinds is running fine on Windows Vista).  It's usually "little things".  My Verizon connection program or some shareware program or whatever. 

As an evil capitalistic developer, poor compatibility is good news "New version! Now works on Windows Vista! Pay up! Whohaaha (singing) I'm getting a boat..a brand..new..boat (/singing)"  But as a user, I am concerned that early adopters may find that many tools and programs they rely on have problems.

This may simply be something that Microsoft can't solve or shouldn't solve. But if that is the case, then Microsoft needs to spread the message that Windows Vista is a truly new version of Windows and some legacy software may need to be updated. I think users will understand that as long as it's communicated effectively before hand.

But for users who can't get their scanner to work or some custom gizmo, or applet that came bundled with their printer or whatever, it's going to be annoying if they had no idea that going to Vista was going to mean that a noticeable chunk of their programs don't run correctly.

Let me show you a screenshot that shows the excellent potential of Vista as well as the current problems:

What a cool utility and yet it also implies we have a long way to go.

Problem #4: Unowned Slop

What the heck is all this crap in my task list on boot up? SVChost wasn't funny in Windows XP when there were 5 of them and it's a lot less funny when there are a dozen of them -- ON A FRESH BOOT UP!  Look at this stuff.  These are all the processes running on a fresh boot up of Windows Vista beta (5381).

Microsoft talks about security but it's just not acceptable that Windows Vista should have a generic process name like svchost anymore.  Each thing that wants a piece of my memory should have to have a name so that we know what it is. A third party could certainly write an application that digs into each svchost and then refeeds it into task list but this really should be part of the OS.  I think it would also put more pressure on the various empires within Microsoft to justify their existence as part of the initial boot.

Most of all, it just looks sloppy.  Clean? Clear? Confident? Some early adopters are going to open this up, see this mess and think "Bloated, sloppy, kludged". Feel free to comment on what your thoughts are on that.  Am I just being anal? Maybe. But I suspect there's a lot of people out there who are going to take having 41 processes on bootup of which a dozen of them are called svchost.exe (as well as various duplicate process names) and not think kindly.

Problem #5: It's Annoying!

There are so  many new "security" oriented dialogs that the entire experience, when coupled with the above mentioned issues take out the "fun" of using the OS.  Want to empty your recycle bin? You need to go through multiple dialogs to do that including a security prompt! Even as a so-called administrator, you can't get into all the folders on your system.  And some of the folders you can get into, you can't write to files in them! Admins have certainly lost a lot of power it seems. See the screenshot of trying to get into "My Pictures" as an admin.

It's really hard to describe in words how annoying it is to constantly be prompted to enter a password or to boost your privileges to do seemingly trivial things.  It interrupts ones workflow, train of thought and well, it just goofs up my groove, man.  Microsoft is working on these issues and they are aware of them, but the recycling bin debacle makes me wonder how such obvious issues could make it so far into the beta process.

So what should be done?

Windows Vista is more important than Windows XP or Windows 2000.  It is an ambitious project that demonstrates Microsoft's ability to innovate.  A lot of people unfairly criticize Microsoft for not being innovative.  Sometimes the criticism is fair but Windows Vista truly is innovative. Even if some of the ideas in Windows Vista got executed elsewhere first, Microsoft had come up with many concepts and ideas first (gadgets may seem similar to Apple's widgets which were similar to Konfabulator's widgets but were all predated by DesktopX by years which was predated by Active Desktop and other concepts as well for instance and the Sidebar gadgets were in the earliest Longhorn builds long before Konfabulator showed up -- though after DesktopX).

But what we need to know is that Microsoft will not rush Windows Vista out for some arbitrary marketing date.  That, if necessary, Microsoft will move the Windows Vista date back even if that makes PC manufacturers scream bloody murder. 

I am not suggesting that Microsoft can't address the concerns I point out there by the time they hope to release to manufacturing.  But I am saying that I think it is going to be a very tense summer in Redmond in order to make the date given where the OS is right now.  When Windows Vista beta 2 comes out for the public, people will be able to judge for themselves and decide what the status of the OS is. 

What are your thoughts?

It really wouldn't surprise me if it was delayed again.

"Research firm Gartner said Tuesday that it believed Microsoft would miss its targets and release Windows Vista another three or so months after its current November-January timeframe. The firm claims Vista's features are too complex to be finished that quickly.

Here is the "official" Vista versions.

Windows Vista Home Basic: For consumers that want to simply use the PC to browse the Internet, correspond with friends and family over email or perform basic document creation and editing tasks, Windows Vista Home Basic will deliver a safer, more reliable and more productive computing environment.

Windows Vista Home Premium: Will help consumers utilize mobile or desktop PC functionality more effectively while enabling the enjoyment of new, exciting digital entertainment experiences – all with the benefit of added security and reliability. Windows Vista Home Premium includes everything in Windows Vista Home Basic, plus the Windows Vista Aero™ and Media Center and Tablet PC capabilities.

Windows Vista Ultimate: Windows Vista Ultimate is the edition of Windows Vista that has it all. It is the first operating system that brings together all of the consumer-oriented features available in Windows Vista Home Premium with all of the business-oriented features available in Windows Vista Business.

Two versions will cater to businesses:

Windows Vista Business: For small to medium size businesses, Windows Vista Business will help keep PCs running smoothly and securely so they are less reliant on dedicated IT support. For larger organizations, Windows Vista Business will provide dramatic new infrastructure improvements that will enable IT staff to spend less time focused on day to day maintenance of PCs and more time adding strategic value to the organization.

Windows Vista Enterprise: To better address the needs of large, global organizations and those with highly complex IT infrastructures, Windows Vista Enterprise is designed to significantly lower IT costs and risk. In addition to all of the features available in Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise is designed to provide higher levels of data protection using hardware-based encryption technology.

The next version of Windows really does need to take things to another level.

Let's face it, Windows XP is basically Windows 2000 with some fixes and cosmetic enhancements.

Longhorn needs to be much more than that.  Here are a few things I think it needs:

1) New display system. This is what Avalon is supposed to address. The new display system needs to let us always run our systems as the maximum resolution our monitor supports and have the DPI (dots per inch) be fluidly scaleable without impacting software compatibility.  I shouldn't have to run my laptop at 1024x768 in order to be able to read text if it supports 1600x1200.  I should be able to run at 1600x1200 and size everything on the fly to be bigger. 

2) Updated Searching.  Google Desktop search only exists because the Find Files feature of Windows is essentially useless.  I should be able to quickly find something on my system instantly.  WinFS won't be out as part of Longhorn so what will they be improving in the meantime?

3) Smoother Multitasking.  Windows still sucks at multitasking.  Even when running on an SMP box, if the OS is "busy" doing something, you still can't quickly do something else.  I eventually gave up on SMP since on Windows it's only good for CPU bound tasks and doesn't really affect multitasking efficiency very much (on MacOS X and OS/2, for instance, SMP basically made it so you could always be doing something in the UI, but on Windows, the UI is apparently not as multithreaded as it could be). In the meantime, I use Multiplicity to maximize my computing power. But I'd like the OS itself to let me always be able to do stuff -- even if the app is written badly.

4) More Componentized. Whether we'll get Microsoft to make it so that pieces of Windows can be replaced or inherited from remains to be seen. I would like to be able to easily add more views (no, Ishell stuff doesn't cut it) to foldrers. 

5) Stop bloating with needless bundling.  Every new version of Windows throws in some half-assed immitation of third party software.  While we can all appreciate having a "free" version of ZIP or uxtheme or movie maker, it damages third party software development. I'd rather think that when I BUY my copy of Windows that the work was put into features that only the OS vendor could do.  Especially since Microsoft rarely puts any effort to let third parties expand on what they bundle (like adding RAR support to the compressed folders for example). There are some features only the OS vendor can really do. I'd rather see resources put there.

6) Make Networking better. I don't know about you guys but the LAN support in Windows is still quite a pain.  As I type this, I am on a wireless LAN which has several computers on the same work group.  It often takes several seconds, if at all, to find all the machines on the network.  It would be nice if Microsoft re-thought how people use network resources and included ways of working with them in a more straight forward, ROBUST, centralized way.

7) Better use of memory. I have 2 gigabytes of memory on my main machine. I turn off the swap file.  And yet I still hear the hard drive chipmunks going away.  Why is that? And don't even get me started about the limited number of handles. Even on my 2 gigabyte machine, if programs use more than 24,000 or so handles, programs start crashing. The average person doesn't even know why their system becomes unstable because limited user handles on Windows XP has been largely ignored.

8) Fix Internet Explorer. CSS 2.0 compliance would be a nice start. How about making it much smarter about what it caches? I have lots of friends at Microsoft who admit to having switched to Firefox (or Opera).  That's sad.

9) Fix your third party licenses. One of the ugly secrets of the PC OEM market is that computer manufacturers can't install things on Windows that changes the first boot-up experience. At best, they can put a few things on the desktop.  But they can't, for example, include an alternative shell or have WindowBlinds running by default or change the boot screen or many ohter things.  In short, there's not much way for PC manufacturers to distinguish their computer from every other computer.  That means a LOT of lost innovation.

10) Fix Security.  Outlook Express is still a spyware/spammer's dream. We shouldn't have to "upgrade" to Outlook to have some basic protections. There should be more end user tools that make it very easy to monitor net traffic.  The "Network" tab in task manager is a nice start but it needs to go much furthre than that.  Worms and the like should be stopped at the OS level. SP2 was a nice start, but there's still so much more to do.

There's lost of little things that are being addressed that I'm very excited about.  Avalon is the big thing for me. XAML in particular is interesting but I fear it may lead to a ton of wacky looking "apps". I don't want my apps to be as poorly designed UI as the typical website. Let me put it this way, the people who make Office are VERY different from the people who made http://www.microsoft.com.  I want the former writings the stand alone apps I use, not the latter.

So what would you like to see? What features in Longhorn make you excited?

Very shortly Longhorn Beta 1 will be coming out.  The current expected date is August 3, 2005.  So what's in it? What can we expect?  Microsoft was kind to inform a group of us what beta 1 would be like.  Because of our NDA, I can only recap what is already known with a bit more detail.  Once beta 1 ships, we'll be free to write more. And hopefully I'll be able to show some cool screenshots.

First off, as many already have heard, Longhorn has been christened "Windows Vista".  It will probably come out in August 2006.  In my view, Windows Vista has 3 goals:

1) Security.  Microsoft wants to make sure Windows Vista is very secure. It will hopefully bring an end spy ware and malware and the like.

2) Developer Flexibility.  A great deal of work in Windows Vista appears to be setting the stage for the future.  Long ago, there was a second Microsoft OS code-named "Blackcomb" which was to be the follow-on to Longhorn.  In my opinion, Longhorn is setting the stage for what comes next.  It is doing this through the creation of several new, and more effective ways of creating content and software.  For example, Avalon is a development platform that is designed to make it much easier to create visually exciting applications.  It's a whole new presentation sub-system. Avalon applications are typically written in a new mark-up language called XAML.  There is another mode called Avalon-Express applications which I think are particularly exciting -- Avalon apps can be run as part of a web page.  Naturally,  some Macintosh users will claim that this is like "Dashboard".  And indeed there are similarities here.  But Microsoft has been working on Avalon a lot longer than Apple was working on Dashboard.  And Avalon Express applications are designed to be very secure from day 1.  Another new development platform is called Indigo.  It's .NET based and is designed to make it much easer to create network-based programs.  And then there's the integration of RSS into the OS.  Microsoft seems to believe that RSS is going to be a dominant way of making use of data in all kinds of interesting applications.  We think the same thing.  For example, when IE 7 starts coming close to release, we plan to make WinCustomize's skin galleries support RSS.

3) Polish.  Microsoft had little more than a year to take Windows 2000 and turn it into Windows XP.  This time, Microsoft has put a lot of effort into figuring out how to make Windows easier to use and have better "fit and finish" to it.   Much of this is provided by the new user experience called Aero.  And it really kicks ass.  Early on, there were screenshots of concepts for Aero. They were bulky, ugly, and over-kill.  Aero has come a long way though and Microsoft seems to be intent on making this version of Windows the most polished, cleanest, best OS they've made yet.   We're not just talking about being pretty, which it is.  But also being far more responsive to user input, booting up faster, better memory management. 

When beta 1 comes out, bear in mind that the "good" stuff won't really show up until beta 2  Beta 1, I believe, is primarily designed to knock out compatibility bugs and put what's there through the ringer to make sure they've got a solid foundation in which to take care of the rest.

When you put all the pieces together, you have a pretty significant improvement over Windows XP.  It should be a secure, fast, visually appealing OS that lends itself to new and innovative software development opportunities.

When Beta 1 is released, I can go into much more detail and with a lot more specifics.  Stay tuned.

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Stardock & Windows Vista

Windows Vista may be the most extensible version of Windows yet.  With its rich new set of APIs that allow users to create unique applications quickly and that the interface has been moved away from GDI (the old drawing method) to a whole presentation system that makes use of 3D hardware acceleration, developers will be able to make Longhorn shine very so brightly.

Stardock's goal on Windows Vista will be much the same as it was on Windows XP -- to enhance and expand the feature set of the OS.  The difference this time is that Microsoft is giving us a lot more tools to play with.

Object Desktop, Stardock's premier suite of desktop enhancement programs will be getting a host of new features in order to enhance the Windows Vista experience through customization and new abilities.  At the same time, Stardock will continue to enhance its support for Windows XP users as well. 

For example, WindowBlinds 5, which goes into beta this Fall, can support Aero-Glass type effects on Windows XP (see screenshot, that's Windows XP).  DesktopX will take widget and gadget making to the next level on Windows Vista.  DesktopX allows users to visually create mini-applications using an object-oriented interface.  But under the covers, DesktopX creates XML and Javascript/VB Script files.  In Windows Vista, our goal will be have DesktopX generate XAML code and hence, on a Avalon-enabled system to make use of everything Avalon has to offer.  And on systems in which Avalon isn't, on, DesktopX can use its own internal DirectGUI engine.

Windows Vista, so far, looks to have more potential for enhancement and extension by third-parties than any Microsoft OS before it.  It's built on a solid foundation and Microsoft really does seem to have taken the view of trying to create the OS as a platform as opposed to the OS as a application bundling opportunity (ala Apple).  We'll keep you posted.