[Mrafcho001]

Microsoft just released RC1 publicly..
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

[MarkoDaGeek]

I was alerted to this via MSDN, pretty awesome stuff...

[Nova Dragoon]

Looks like MS is redefining the meaning of Release Candidate

[supersloth]

Nova Dragoon, on 10 Sep, 2006 - 06:11 PM, said:

Looks like MS is redefining the meaning of Release Candidate

I was going to come in here and say the exact same thing.

[Nova Dragoon]

great minds ...

[Datalus]

Nova Dragoon, on 10 Sep, 2006 - 08:13 PM, said:

great minds ...

think alike.

Anyways, I was wondering what you meant by that. How is Microsoft redefining the definition of "release candidate"?

[Nova Dragoon]

Quote

release candidate refers to a final product, ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge. In this stage, the product features all designed functionalities and no known showstopper class bugs. At this phase the product is usually code complete

Vista is not at this stage yet.

[supersloth]

basically they are calling it a release candidate when they are continuing regular development. when going to an RC stage your "show stopper" bugs should be out of the way, if anymore are not found during test, you should be comfortable with pressing it onto a disk.

[Datalus]

Despite that Microsoft Windows has a history of having many flaws/bugs in it (especially on intial versions), I was under the impression they have gotten rid of the "show stopper" bugs and finished their features. What makes you think otherwise?

[supersloth]

In one of the original posts they made about RC1 they said that they were still working on things that hadn't yet been finished (i believe a few were things like media streaming, as well as application compatibility, but i can't find the article now)

in reality, its not that big of a deal, just semantics, but its funny how things like that can come into play because of business and politics (my personal belief is they are calling this an RC to give their investors something to look at)

on the whole, i'll probably be a vista user at some point, but it seems to be a lot more like xp sp3 than a brand new os. the things that i was exicted for, the new file system and the new programmer friendly shell were both cut from the os, a new look, 'gadgets' and better user controls can only take you so far.

[Datalus]

Okay.

Now that I think about it, it may be usefull for them being not finished. They could even "throw in a few wrenches" on purpose. This would prevent people from using RC1 as permanently instead of buying it. Although, who would want to never update?

[MarkoDaGeek]

I'm pretty sure the Beta drafts have a 180 day or so timebomb like other windows beta releases...

[Datalus]

Yeah, end of 2007. I'm trying it out now.

[supersloth]

let us know what you think

[JediSpam]

i might try it out tonight. i haven't tried any windows vista betas yet