Vista SP1 Beta

[Mehen]

should be released before the end of the month

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40858

[Nowhere]

Seems rather fast - do they try use "wait with new Windows untill SP1" to their advantage this time?

[ZokesPro]

Oh no. I said that I'd install Vista once they came out with a service pack.

[cjolley]

You didn't say which service pack.
I'll wait for service pack 2.

[ZokesPro]

I'm going to wait until they release the final version, and then some to see what that SP actually does and fix. Even then, I'm most likely going ot wait until I can't run most apps on XP.

[Helevitia]

They won't release SP1 FINAL until November - FYI

[Kooldino]

Still fast though.

[Gurm]

Yes it's fast, but they introduced some SERIOUS bugs with RTM that weren't in RC0/1/2. Nobody outside of Redmond is really sure what happened, because RC is supposed to mean NO changing features, it's bugfixes only. Feature complete after RC0, that's the rule. But somehow "deep sleep" alone got completely F'ed in RTM, along with drivers for various wireless cards and the TCP/IP stack. The bad part is that the fixes in toto are far too wide-reaching to be patched via Windows Update alone.

Suspicion in the industry is that someone shipped an alternate code tree, or somehow some files from an alternate tree got introduced. But for so much to be broken from RC2 to RTM is just ridiculous!

[Jammrock]

I agree with Girm on this one. RC2 was pretty solid, but RTM...not so much. Networking is the most atrocious thing, especially for thos of us that rely on home networks and VPNs. Yuck. I'll test SP1, just because that's the way I am, and stick around on Vista because some of the tools are greatly improved over XP (that and it actually has good 64-bit driver support).

Just my thought.

[High_Jumbllama]

. . . . . .
, because RC is supposed to mean NO changing features, it's bugfixes only. Feature complete after RC0, that's the rule.
. . . . .

I remember that supposing to be true about betas. Of course that means nothing when programmers either slip in some new feature, managers make them, or someone accidentally slips in an old version of code.

Alpha - Still adding features.
Beta - No More features (Gets violated constantly.). This is for bug fixes.
Release Candidates - These are supposed to be perfect after all theoretically the first one could be released.

[DGhost]

Gurm - I know what ****ing happened. the RC1 build was the first feature complete build Microsoft shipped. Yes, they didn't change any major features after that. But... it is what Beta 2 should have been. They also had not really done performance tuning up until the RC's.

So... Basically.. beta testers wasted their time with a beta program that was incomplete and broken most of the time.

Basically... for other releases of Windows... it was pretty much...

Beta 1 -> 3 was incrementally adding features into the main build tree. Testing was primarily focused on added features, early level bugs, compatability, early UI ideas, etc...

RC 1-> ? were feature complete, final branding, final UI, etc... only changes that would be made were minor or showstoppers. no new features added. Testing was for the harder to find bugs - things like, if I install application X after application Y, it deletes the registry, but if I install them in the opposite order everything works fine.

The Windows builds that broke from this tradition were: Windows ME - which was introduced major features throughout the whole beta, and the RC's were a step back from the Beta builds; Windows XP, which shipped the final UI and pretty much feature complete at Beta 2, then went into the RC's; and then Vista.. which didn't even work right for most testers until RC1.

aaannnyywaaayyss...

so you guys know, the XP SP1 beta started up right around the same time frame. SP2 started up almost immediately after SP1 finished, then got shelved for a while so they could do their security audits... Vista is no different. whenever they hit RC stage they designate more complicated bugs and fixes for inclusion in the SP's or via hotfix so that they have more time for testing, or possibly for major rewrites.

[FatBastard]

I don't see the big deal. I do most my computing with non windows OSs (mac OSX and some linux distros) they do not release "Service Packs" rather the release "Updates". sometimes daily.
with Linux, one might argue, its free and GNU software offers no warranty. but mac OSX costs 129$. about the same as vista.
If organizations would wait until they have zero bugs prior to releasing Operating systems with would all be still enjoying windows 3.11 (I feel faint just thinking about it. bad bad days.).

now about the loose release naming conventions (beta alpha ....) thats mostly true with open source projects. some projects take forever to call a version stable (MySql is a good example).
Private companies? to further exemplify what some people wrote, I used to work for a big a$$ proprietary software company a few years back. I was leading a team that developed a brand new product. or so I thought. we run a massive effort for two years before we found a first customer. I was asked to release a first production version. being a naive guy I gave it the version number 0.9 (and I was plenty generous). the Sales VP rushed to my office steaming with anger ordering me to rename the version to 3.02. I guess he thought nobody would pay money to be a guinea pig.

[DGhost]

the major reason Microsoft went to Service Packs in the first place is that their web of hotfixes and updates were getting pretty unruly, even in the NT days. the original NT service packs were just rollups of all the hotfixes they had released. It wasn't until NT4 SP6 if i recall correctly that they really used them to roll out new features to the masses.

[Gurm]

the major reason Microsoft went to Service Packs in the first place is that their web of hotfixes and updates were getting pretty unruly, even in the NT days. the original NT service packs were just rollups of all the hotfixes they had released. It wasn't until NT4 SP6 if i recall correctly that they really used them to roll out new features to the masses.

And let's not kid ourselves - if you were to even ATTEMPT to wrap your head around the mess that is the Red Hat update system, you'd go completely nutters. I can't imagine OSX is that much better in that regard.