The company also yesterday put a beta Windows Longhorn Server in the hands of about 5,000 OEMs, system builders, ISVs and developers. Unlike Vista, the new server OS has yet to be officially named.
Vista beta 1 is a bare-bones version of what the final OS would likely be and does not include many consumer-related features, such as an updated user interface. Beta 1, essentially, is for developers to kick the tires and report back to Microsoft bugs, incompatibilities and other issues.
About 500,000 developers and IT administrators began testing the early Vista beta yesterday. Also testing the code are about 10,000 developers who manage enterprise IT infrastructures and are part of Microsoft TechNet program, as well as developers who write software for Windows, as part of MSDN.
Beta 1 does have a lot of meaningful things for them to look at that are new and different, said Greg Sullivan, group product manager for Windows.
A more feature-laden beta 2 version is scheduled for early 2006. Final release is due before the 2006 end-of-year holiday season.
The Longhorn server OS won’t ship until 2007.
Still, the beta software came slightly ahead of Microsoft’s August 3 schedule announced Monday – a first for Vista, previously codenamed Longhorn, which has been long delayed.
To meet its scheduled shipping date, Sullivan did not rule out the possibility that Microsoft may drop features from the final version of Vista. We will balance the degree of new features added with how that might impact the schedule, Sullivan said. What we won’t sacrifice on is quality.
Aside from consumer features, there are a number of enterprise capabilities that are expected to show up in beta 2, which aren’t present in beta 1, Sullivan said. Notably, development tools that would enable enterprises to install Vista more quickly and easily than Windows XP, he said. Our expectation is that a subsequent and final release [of Vista] will take a fraction of the time [versus XP], Sullivan said.
Beta 2 also will boast beefed-up management capabilities such as scheduling tasks associated with an event rather than a set time, Sullivan said.
Now included in Beta 1 are some functionality of the Virtual Folder feature, which enables users to search for and organize information in graphical folders. But the search engine and organizational capability will be far more advanced in later versions of the code.
The new code also boasts anti-spy ware capabilities that Microsoft acquired when it bought Giant Software last year. Clean Up Upgrade is a new feature that appears in beta 1 in basic form. The upgrade cleans any malicious code from a machine prior to a Vista upgrade, Sullivan said. A more advanced version will appear in later versions, he said.
Beta 1 does include enhanced diagnostics implementation, including auto-diagnosis and auto-correction of common error conditions, fixes for known crashes and hangs and new technology to minimize reboots when installing software, according to Microsoft.
Anti-phishing capability has been built into Internet Explorer 7, but is only available on the version of beta 1 for XP SP2 only. Developers will have to wait until Vista beta 2 to try out the features that promise to help protect against phishing and spoofing attacks.
Sullivan would not shed light on exact system requirements for the OS. Microsoft previously gave requirement guidelines of 152MB or more of RAM, a dedicated graphics card with DirectX 9.0 support and either an Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon-based powered machine. However, he said the range of hardware capabilities that the OS would be able to configure – in order to give users the best experience based on their hardware – had been significantly broadened from XP. For instance, without an advanced graphics card, the shell or look of the user interface would be scaled back, he said.
Vista beta 1 also has some hardware-dependent capabilities, such as new Instant On technology that relies on hybrid hardware disk architecture, which use both a magnetic rotating medium as well as a solid-state non-volatile RAM or flash memory, Sullivan said.
Vista has been written to exploit this kind of hybrid disk technology, which expected to appear primarily in mobile computers. It would enable a much more rapid cold boot, or startup from a shutdown machine, than the existing standby mode. Also, it would better the current hibernate Windows mode by quickening the resume time for data, Sullivan said.
Beta 1 also includes Sleep mode, which promises the speed of Standby mode and the data protection and low-power consumption of Hibernate. It also means users can change or remove a battery without disruption to open applications and data, since memory is written to the hard disk, according to Microsoft.
On the whole, Vista’s user interface still looks very much like any Windows version. Beta 1 gives testers a limited look at new shiny UI features, such as translucent Windows. Sullivan said Microsoft has to balance the comfort level of what millions of Windows users have come to trust in how Windows looks – and works – with new UI features.
