Windows Vista RC2: Nothing but Small Bugs, Bugs, Bugs.

Can you believe it? Microsoft might actually keep its promises!!! All of them?!…

So the last, ultimate and final Release Candidate for Windows Vista is out to play. After more than 5 years of development, lots of delays and concerns for future ones, Microsoft triumphantly declares that the moment of truth nears fast: Vista is on track to be released to the public as planned in January 2007.

When Vista was initially introduced to the Beta testers this summer at WinHEC, many developers and IT engineers have expressed serious doubts about Microsoft’s capacity to overcome the serious flaws encountered in early versions of its OS and to ship it on time.

Symantec jointed the club of critics signaling at least 3 major vulnerabilities in a sector considered crucial for Redmond’s next-generation OS: the security module. Symantec first revealed a missive about the bugs in the next-generation OS in mid-July, stating that networking is one of the weak points. A second report implied that what Microsoft calls advanced security features could actually be the next cadaver to be scavenged by worms, viruses and hoax, serving as loopholes.

In particular, Symantec detailed a handful of vulnerabilities that affect Vista’s UAP (User Account Protection) feature. The UAP is designed to help companies reduce the impact of an infection with a virus, banning the malicious code to escalate its privileges on infected machines in order to further propagate itself or inflict other damage on affected computers.

Microsoft replied that the critical vulnerabilities signaled by the security company are not to be found in the final version of Vista. And apparently not only have they fixed Symantec’s signaled vulnerabilities but they also managed to have Vista ready in time for its November 2006 launch (for the corporate customers) and January 2007 (general public).

According to Microsoft’s official blog, “This new build of Windows Vista offers users a higher level of performance and stability- improving what was established in Windows Vista RC1. The improvement shows as we raised our quality bar even higher.”

Jim Allchin, Platforms and Services Co-President, boasts with the fact that Vista’s many bugs have been fixed (…) and that all they did since the RC1 was unleashed was to track ‘em down and kill ‘em: “All your great feedback has helped us focus on nothing but bug fixes over the past month since RC 1 — each and every day. There are thousands of quality improvements since Windows Vista RC1. You’ll probably notice improvements in performance, application compatibility, as well as fit and finish work. We will continue improving quality until RTM.”

Moreover, Allchin calls Vista a “great product” and invites testers to send their feed-back : “We are just around the corner from RTM and shipping this great product to the world. This will be the last build made available prior to RTM, so please keep the feedback coming so we can hit the finish line.”

The author of the blog where Vista RC 2 is announced also urges customers in the Customer Preview Program to start hunting for bugs and send them back to Micrsoft for…analysis: “Submit as many bugs as you can as we continue to work hard toward shipping.”

The reactions to the new build are contradictory: “Install OK (less than 30 mins) in my Toshiba U200. So far, so good. The best build yet (as expected)” says one user. But others make a list of bugs that are yet to be dealt with: “Fast install. Vista is great on a Tablet PC.

I stall have a few unresolved problems:

1. WebMail OWA- replying or forwarding does not work.

2. Right click menu in IE7 does nothing.

3. Start menu links to programs do nothing,” said one Alex Daryan. “IE7 won't run flash 9 apps without hanging. When it does run it doesn't functioning properly.”

The question in everybody’s minds, now that we are close to the RTM, is: will Windows Vista be better THAN XP or a better XP (and I don’t mean the code for Vista, which is built from scratch)? Those bugs Allchin was talking, are they really going to be eliminated by January 2007 (it’s impossible 100% I now…)

Because if not, all these positive declarations and confident statements will turn against Microsoft and the smallest bug will gain colossal proportions (“hey, they’ve worked 5 years for this crap?”). If Microsoft does not keep ALL of its promises about Vista I'm afraid their target of 200 million installs in the first two years might be far-fetched.

playfuls.com