Silicon Shecky

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Windows 7 RC Critical Patch

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Days after the Windows 7 Release Candidate becomes available, Microsoft has to send out a critical patch. Now it only affects the 32 bit version, and honestly, I think that Microsoft is stupid to make a 32 bit version. All the processors on new machines can support 64 bit, so why not use it.

Anyway, the issue comes in with how ACL lists are handled. You can read more about it here.

Also, on Windows 7 RC patches, in the next week there will be a bunch of fake patches sent out by Microsoft that do nothing. Well, nothing but test the updating system, which is somewhat important. Make sure to use these for testing the system.

Windows 7 RC1 Released

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Microsoft pulled a fast one and put up the Windows 7 RC download a day early. Now it time to get it and play with it. I understand that XPM is supposed to be testable, so lets see what it is, and don’t forget to report bugs you find so maybe we can get the worst bugs out of it before it ships.

You can download it at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

They did set it up so that if the download gets interrupted it will pick up where it left off, which should make things a little easier on that end.

Microsoft might actually do something right…

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Windows vista I have looked at, and for the most part, considering it the spawn of Windows ME. Vista has its good points, and Microsoft tried with it, but with a moving target, stripped down capabilities compared to what it was supposed to have, and massive delays on getting it to market, Microsoft really messed up.

It wasn’t just that older software would not run on it, but software and hardware companies didn’t buy into it. It took forever for applications to be written for it, let alone all the issues with hardware drivers Vista has had.

Well, it seems that Microsoft can learn from its mistakes. Windows 7 has been in beta for a little while now, and most people call it a big improvement from Vista. The first Release Candidate becomes public on May 5, and yes I’m going to get it. What I am looking forward to seeing how it works is the newest feature announced for Windows 7. XPM the feature is called, and if it works the way it is supposed to , well, there will be very little reason not to move to Windows 7.

The idea behind XPM is basically Windows XP sp3 running in a virtual machine, which allows legacy apps to be run normally. The kicker to XPM is the idea that it runs seamlessly in the background. Apps that require XP still get shortcuts installed to your normal Start menu and when you launch the app, it seamlessly launches in its own window, even though it is on a virtual machine, you don’t see the virtual machine running. You don’t have to start a virtual machine session first. Supposedly, it just works.

We shall find out how well it just works rather soon. This is the one thing that if it works right, could save Microsoft’s reputation.