Wheelman [PT]
07-05-2004, 22:58
Isto será o futuro...
At this year's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Microsoft released another sneak peak at their next generation operating system, code-named Longhorn. PC Magazine, along with the rest of the WinHEC attendees, received a DVD with the 4072 build. This preview is based on that 4072 build.
The latest build is similar to the one released at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference last September. A few things have been added, though not all are obvious. At first blush, Longhorn appears to retain the look and feel of the earlier versions except for some new background art.
The bulky-looking taskbar still consumes considerable real estate on the right side of the screen, though you can minimize the bar. The overall user interface has been streamlined a bit and made more consistent. Longhorn builds a contact manager into the operating system itself and even allows users to pin frequent contacts to the taskbar.
PCmag (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1586821,00.asp)
DWM is not without bugs. The desktop manager is enabled in a DOS shell screen, and resides in \windows\i386. You type "SBCTL Start" to turn on DWM. As soon as you do, all the text and icons in the taskbar disappear, and you're left with a featureless expanse of gray.
These slick, 3D-accelerated features come at a cost, too. Even on our testbed, a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 running a high-end ATI Radeon 9800XT graphics card, the Avalon DWM seemed just a tad sluggish. Additional cool features, like the compositing manager, weren't available yet.
The 3D features require DirectX 9.0, and this version of the OS ships with DirectX 9.0b, unlike the fall preview, which only had DirectX 8. In fact, we were able to run 3DMark 2003 with no problems using the default Radeon 9800XT driver embedded in build 4072. (You can read more about Longhorn's anticipated 3D nature here.)
We observed another interesting feature, called castles, although we weren't able to test it. Think of castles as "mini-domains" you can create on a home network. Unlike full domains, these require no domain server. They have many of the features of full domains and build in greater security than the workgroup paradigm familiar to most users of home networks.
Clearly, Longhorn is still very much under construction. One reason the windows manager wasn't enabled, aside from obvious bugs, is that Microsoft considers the look and feel to be a work in progress. We'll likely see more changes to the UI and the 3D interface over time.
Although our testbed seemed slightly sluggish with DWM enabled, Longhorn was still pretty responsive. The most persistently annoying performance issue was the slow initial disk access, but disk performance subsequent to first use in an applications session seemed adequate. Our test system was high-end by today's standards, but despite the slight sluggishness we observed, Longhorn's requirements aren't as onerous as some rumors would have you believe.
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68713,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68714,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68715,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68716,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68718,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68719,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68720,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68721,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68724,00.jpg
La piece de resistance:
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68726,00.jpg
At this year's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Microsoft released another sneak peak at their next generation operating system, code-named Longhorn. PC Magazine, along with the rest of the WinHEC attendees, received a DVD with the 4072 build. This preview is based on that 4072 build.
The latest build is similar to the one released at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference last September. A few things have been added, though not all are obvious. At first blush, Longhorn appears to retain the look and feel of the earlier versions except for some new background art.
The bulky-looking taskbar still consumes considerable real estate on the right side of the screen, though you can minimize the bar. The overall user interface has been streamlined a bit and made more consistent. Longhorn builds a contact manager into the operating system itself and even allows users to pin frequent contacts to the taskbar.
PCmag (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1586821,00.asp)
DWM is not without bugs. The desktop manager is enabled in a DOS shell screen, and resides in \windows\i386. You type "SBCTL Start" to turn on DWM. As soon as you do, all the text and icons in the taskbar disappear, and you're left with a featureless expanse of gray.
These slick, 3D-accelerated features come at a cost, too. Even on our testbed, a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 running a high-end ATI Radeon 9800XT graphics card, the Avalon DWM seemed just a tad sluggish. Additional cool features, like the compositing manager, weren't available yet.
The 3D features require DirectX 9.0, and this version of the OS ships with DirectX 9.0b, unlike the fall preview, which only had DirectX 8. In fact, we were able to run 3DMark 2003 with no problems using the default Radeon 9800XT driver embedded in build 4072. (You can read more about Longhorn's anticipated 3D nature here.)
We observed another interesting feature, called castles, although we weren't able to test it. Think of castles as "mini-domains" you can create on a home network. Unlike full domains, these require no domain server. They have many of the features of full domains and build in greater security than the workgroup paradigm familiar to most users of home networks.
Clearly, Longhorn is still very much under construction. One reason the windows manager wasn't enabled, aside from obvious bugs, is that Microsoft considers the look and feel to be a work in progress. We'll likely see more changes to the UI and the 3D interface over time.
Although our testbed seemed slightly sluggish with DWM enabled, Longhorn was still pretty responsive. The most persistently annoying performance issue was the slow initial disk access, but disk performance subsequent to first use in an applications session seemed adequate. Our test system was high-end by today's standards, but despite the slight sluggishness we observed, Longhorn's requirements aren't as onerous as some rumors would have you believe.
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68713,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68714,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68715,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68716,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68718,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68719,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68720,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68721,00.jpg
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68724,00.jpg
La piece de resistance:
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=68726,00.jpg