If you install the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) expecting to see visible changes to your version of Vista , you'll be sorely disappointed. At least in this initial beta, all the changes are under the hood, and even they are far from earth-shaking.
Microsoft Corp. says that it has fixed compatibility problems with the third-party Spy Sweeper and ZoneAlarm security applications, enhanced hardware support for Direct X, improved Wi-Fi connections after a system resumes from sleep, improved Windows Search, added support for the newest Bluetooth specification (2.1) and rolled up all previous Vista updates.
In addition, Microsoft says that the RSS gadget now uses fewer resources, that it has added support for burning Blu-ray discs , and that a new feature called Windows Connect Now (WCN) makes it simpler to configure Wi-Fi networks.
But in reality, what's really new in SP2 is somewhat murky. For example, support for Bluetooth 2.1 and WCN have been available since July, via what Microsoft calls the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless. That feature pack was available only to system manufacturers, not users, so perhaps Microsoft means that with SP2 these wireless features are now directly available to consumers for the first time. But anyone who has a Vista PC purchased from a system manufacturer that includes the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless already has WCN and support for Bluetooth 2.1.
Installation a snap -- with a few caveats
You have several choices for installing Vista SP2, including via Windows Update, as a stand-alone installer or by downloading an .iso image file, which you can then burn to a DVD and install from the DVD.
Initially, the beta was available only on MSDN and TechNet before public release, and at that point was available only as an .iso image. I downloaded the image, but had troubles with installation. The first .iso image burner I used, the free ImgBurn application, said it could not handle that particular .iso image. I had used this software to install .iso images before during the original Vista installation cycle, so this was odd.
Next, I tried Nero 7 to burn an image. It had trouble as well -- when the burning was complete, the only file on my DVD was an .ini file and nothing else, so I couldn't install the beta. I never found out the source of the problem. Given that the .iso file is now in public beta and no outcry has been heard, the problem, if any, has most likely been fixed.
When the beta became public, I used the stand-alone installer, which was a 397MB download. Installation went smoothly, albeit slowly. After creating a System Restore point, the entire installation took an hour and required only a single reboot. It proceeded unattended. It was as simple an update as you could ask for.
If you install the service pack via Windows Update, the download is considerably smaller -- about 41 MB.
Some weird anomalies
When you install SP2, you won't notice any changes to Windows Vista. It alerts you that the upgrade is complete. Just to make sure, you can also go to Control Panel --> System and Maintenance --> System, and at the top of the screen, you get a confirmation message. Other than that, though, don't expect to see anything new.
But although I found nothing new in Vista SP2, I did find several odd anomalies. The first had to do with power settings on my laptop. Normally, when I run my laptop, an icon runs in the System Tray, notifying me if I'm using battery power, showing me how much power is left, and letting me change my power plan among Power Saver, Balanced, and High Performance. Right after installation, that power-saving applet seemed to have disappeared. However, after I rebooted, it appeared again.
Equally odd was that when Vista SP2 launched, it showed me that one of the updates available was Windows Search 4.0, even though Windows Search 4.0 is supposed to be part of SP2. Again, though, the reboot fixed the difficulty.
However, the reboot also caused a problem -- Vista no longer recognized my wireless adapter. But when I rebooted yet one more time, Vista recognized the adapter without a problem. The moral of the story: This is beta software, so beware.
The bottom line
Should you install this service pack now? Unless you have some need to do it because you're a systems administrator -- or if you're one of those people who has a burning desire to test new software, no matter its usefulness -- there's no need to try it out now. In fact, you shouldn't try it, because you may run into problems, as I did, with your wireless adapter. You'll be better off to wait until the expected April ship date when it's supposed to be fully baked.
Note: For a list of the most important changes in SP2, see Microsoft's Notable Changes in Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Windows Vista SP2 Beta." You can also find a list of included hotfixes and security updates .
Phasing out an old operating system is nothing new for Microsoft, but Windows XP is unique in that it may be too good to die.
This week, Dell announced it will offer systems with the aging Windows XP for a surcharge of US$150 over the newer Windows Vista--this only five months after it stopped offering XP on its Inspiron consumer desktop and laptop PCs.
The deadline for Windows XP downgrades has been pushed back twice now, remaining in effect until July 31, 2009-a strong indication that enough users want to stay with the aging XP rather than give Vista a chance.
Though market share for Windows XP dropped nearly 10 percent in 2008 as Vista slowly made gains, XP still has a market share of 66 percent, according to Web metrics company Net Applications.
XP downgrade fees from Dell and other OEMs will no doubt continue to irk customers in 2009, while businesses that want to stay with Windows XP will do the downgrades themselves. Industry analysts agree that Microsoft's downgrade fees are a minor problem compared to the bigger problem of so many users still wanting an older, now discontinued OS on hardware that it wasn't designed for.
Don't Penalize XP, Incentivize Vista
Industry analyst Rob Enderle, president of tech consulting firm the Enderle Group, says the XP downgrade fees will ultimately be counter-productive and possibly disastrous for Microsoft because they trade off short-term revenue for long-term customer loyalty.
"The fix for this should be to focus like lasers on demand generation for Vista but instead Microsoft is focusing aggressively on financial penalties," Enderle says. "Forcing customers to go someplace they don't want to go by raising prices is a Christmas present for Apple and those that are positioning Linux on the desktop."
As the economic recession deepens in 2009, the price of laptops and desktops, as with all retail items, will be closely watched by consumers and businesses. A recent IDC report predicts that the price of PCs will drop by close to 10 percent in 2009.
Enderle said the XP downgrade charge and the resulting pressure to move to Vista will put a magnifying glass on Microsoft in the coming year. "Instead of charging a penalty for XP, Microsoft should provide incentives for Vista," he says. "They are too focused on margins for one product and are forgetting the damage they are doing to their brand."
Worse than the downgrade fees is taking away a buyer's freedom of choice, says Roger Kay, president of consulting and research firm Endpoint Technologies. "People never like being 'forced' to do anything. They tend to resent it," he says.
Is Windows 7 the Solution?
Vista's successor, Windows 7, has been regarded as a solution to the Vista stigma, although whether or not users choosing XP over Vista is enough to move up the Windows 7 ship is still anyone's guess. Enderle predicts that Microsoft will change its estimated Windows 7 ship date of January 2010 and drop it sometime next year.
"Windows 7 is designed to fix this problem [the Vista stigma], but it will need stronger demand generation marketing than Microsoft has yet proven it can provide," Enderle says.
Kay, on the other hand, is not convinced that customer reliance on XP and the shunning of Vista affects Microsoft's OS release schedule. "Sinofsky [Windows senior VP Steven Sinofsky] is pretty clear about how his process works. Windows 7 code won't ship until it's ready."
Charging users for Windows XP downgrades may be Microsoft's short-term solution to drive users to Vista and Windows 7, but what else should the software giant do to get its customers to move forward?
Enderle says it's mostly a matter of better marketing. "They have to step up to Apple-level demand generation marketing and work to remove the stigma from Vista more aggressively," he says. "They had an interesting start earlier this year with the Mojave project but it seems to have tailed off of late and Apple continues to out execute them sharply."
As Windows XP fees add up and the OS continues to get pulled from OEMs, the desire to keep using the OS will likely wane in 2009. But that the desire is there at all should be disconcerting for Microsoft, says Enderle.
Microsoft Corp.'s developers missed a critical bug in Internet Explorer because they weren't properly trained and didn't have the right testing tools, a noted proponent of the company's secure code development process acknowledged last week.
The bug, which Microsoft patched last week with an emergency update, had gone undetected for at least nine years.
In an insider's description on Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle blog, Michael Howard , a principal security program manager with the company, offered a postmortem analysis of the IE vulnerability and Microsoft's code-writing and reviewing process.
Howard, who is perhaps best known for co-authoring the book Writing Secure Code , said the flaw was a "time-of-check-time-of-use" bug in how IE releases data binding objects.
The vulnerability was not found by programmers because they had not been told or taught to look for them in such cases, Howard said. "Memory-related [time-of-check-time-of-use, or TOCTOU] bugs are hard to find through code review," he said. "We teach TOCTOU issues, and we teach memory corruption issues, and issues with using freed memory blocks; but we do not teach memory-related TOCTOU issues."
Microsoft's testing tools -- including "fuzzers," automated tools that drop data into applications, file formats or operating system components to see if, and where, they fail -- also missed the bug, Howard admitted.
"In theory, fuzz testing could find this bug, but today there is no fuzz test case for this code," he said. "Triggering the bug would require a fuzzing tool that builds data streams with multiple data binding constructs with the same identifier. Random (or dumb) fuzzing payloads of this data type would probably not trigger the bug, however."
Howard said that Microsoft would update its developer training to account for memory-related TOCTOU bugs like this one.
Several parts of Windows' security toolkit didn't help protect users from exploits of this bug, Howard added, including ALSR and NX, technologies available only in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. "Even though Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 have both ASLR and NX enabled by default, Internet Explorer 7 does not opt-in to these defenses owing to compatibility issues with many common applications," Howard noted.
Before Microsoft released last week's patch and after it had confirmed that attacks were in progress, it urged users to take countermeasures , including enabling DEP (data execution prevention), another term for NX, in IE7.
Another Microsoft defense, however, did protect users running Vista or Server 2008, said Howard, who argued that "Protected Mode" did its job. Protect Mode essentially "sandboxes" IE and its add-ons so that actions taken within the browser are prevented from accessing the operating system generally.
"When the exploit code runs, it's running at low integrity because IE runs at low integrity," Howard said, "and this means the exploit code cannot write to higher integrity portions of the operating system, which is just about everywhere."
Those defensive technologies could not protect users of Window XP, which remains the most widely used version of Windows by a margin of more than 3:1 over Vista.
Howard also speculated that the bug may have been found by hackers armed with custom fuzzers, which Microsoft itself has not crafted for its own testing.
Microsoft has long been worried about Linux competition in the server market. When it came to ordinary PCs and laptops, however, it knew it had little to fear.
But that was then. Now Microsoft may fear Linux on the desktop as much as it does the Mac. It's finally taking Linux seriously as a desktop operating system, and it has designed Windows 7 to kill it.
Let me explain.
The threat to Windows comes entirely from "netbooks" -- lightweight, inexpensive laptops that typically use Intel 's low-powered Atom processor and don't come with substantial amounts of RAM or powerful graphics processors. They're designed mainly for browsing the Web, handling e-mail, writing memos, and taking care of simple word-processing or spreadsheet chores.
Netbooks will account for about a third of all PC growth this year, according to Citigroup . Shipments will rise at an annual average rate of 60% to reach 29 million netbooks in 2010, compared with 18% growth for standard notebooks, says a September BNP Paribas report.
Clearly, the future is in netbooks. And that has Microsoft worried. Netbooks can't handle Vista's hardware demands, so XP is the only Microsoft operating system that runs on them. But Linux is ideally suited for lower-powered netbooks.
The result? Acer and Asustek, which account for 90% of the netbook market, are using Linux on about 30% of their low-cost notebooks, according to Bloomberg. Making matters worse, if Linux is used on those netbooks, it means that Microsoft Office isn't. So Microsoft takes a double hit every time someone buys a Linux netbook.
Microsoft isn't just worried about ceding 30% of the netbook market to Linux. It's also worried that if people get used to running Linux on netbooks, they'll consider buying Linux on desktop PCs as well. Here's what Dickie Chang, an analyst at IDC in Taipei, told Bloomberg: "It's a real threat to Microsoft. It gives users a chance to see and try something new, showing them there is an alternative."
Microsoft, though, has a not-so-secret weapon against Linux: Windows 7. Its new operating system, slated to be introduced sometime next year, is designed to work fine on netbooks. In fact, at Microsoft's recent Professional Developers Conference, where the pre-beta of Windows 7 was unveiled, Windows Senior Vice President Steve Sinofsky showed off Windows 7 on his Lenovo S10 and said it used less than half of the netbook's 1GB of RAM.
When Windows 7 ships, expect a massive marketing blitz pushing it on netbooks with special deals, and netbook hardware taking advantage of Windows 7 capabilities, including touch screens.
In fact, the blitz has already begun. Asus CEO Jerry Shen announced that he plans to release versions of the Eee PC powered by Windows 7 in mid-2009, including a touch-screen version.
This is anything but a level playing field. Because no company owns Linux, there won't be a competing marketing push for Linux netbooks. Microsoft has shown before how tough it can be on competitors -- remember Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and Harvard Graphics? So expect Linux netbook sales to fall when Windows 7 ships.
Despite Microsoft's killer instincts, I don't think Linux netbook sales will stop dead. There will always be a niche for them. But within a year of the Windows 7 launch, Linux market share will drop. The high point for Linux netbook sales will be from now until the launch of Windows 7. After that will come the inevitable decline.
Microsoft is used to criticism; after all, it's a standing joke that the third version of any Microsoft software is the first one that works right. But the backlash against Windows Vista in 2008 was unprecedented. The new OS had been out for a year, finding its way into new consumer systems through 2007 but not getting much adoption by business.
Throughout 2007, InfoWorld heard IT staffers and CTOs grumble about the new OS, despite some nice features for IT, such as unified install images. Application incompatibility, a UI rejiggered without any user benefit to its changes, and a bothersome security mechanism increasingly annoyed individual users and small-business consultants.
[ Can your PC run the forthcoming Windows 7? Download InfoWorld's Windows Sentinel tool and find out. ]
InfoWorld contributing editor Randall C. Kennedy's Vista tests showed that it took way more resources than XP. As his tests revealed, the new Aero interface was a major resource pig, but it wasn't the only one. And in his testing, Service Pack 1 didn't help matters any.
The Vista Backlash Begins
By January 2008, 11 months after Vista shipped to the broad market, InfoWorld launched its Save XP campaign.
Our rationale was that Microsoft had already extended XP's kill date from Dec. 31, 2007, to June 30, 2008, due to customer queasiness over Vista, so we had hoped it might do so again. It was not a birthday present that Microsoft liked.
By the time of the "Save XP" campaign, consumers and businesses alike were beginning to realize that they could not get XP past June 30 and thus no longer had the option to ignore Vista if they didn't like it. In the six months that followed, more than 210,000 people signed an online petition to keep XP available indefinitely, and the news media was full of reports of an anti-Vista backlash. Resistance to Vista grew, especially by businesses. Major analyst firms joined in, recommending that Microsoft delay XP's demise until 2009.
Microsoft defended Vista, saying its usability studies showed that users loved its new interface and that the new security approach was needed to finally force developers to abandon sloppy programming techniques -- to be fair, Microsoft had been imploring developers since 1999 to change their behavior, to little effect.
But Microsoft was embarrassed by revelations that its own execs had trouble with Vista and that computers labeled "Vista Capable" in fact could not run Vista, calling into question Microsoft's honesty, as well as that of many PC makers. The result was a messy lawsuit that is still dragging on, as it became clear that Microsoft was split internally about the accuracy of its "Vista Capable" certification claims.
XP Does Die, Sort Of
During the six months of this anti-Vista brouhaha, Microsoft held firm to the June 30 kill date for XP and indeed pulled the plug as promised. But it also started talking about the "downgrade" option that let many users buy Vista Business or Vista Professional, then use that license to replace Vista with XP. Microsoft also let PC makers continue to sell XP on new systems by using the downgrade approach to call it a Vista sale.
Currently, Dell Computer and Hewlett-Packard offer downgrade PCs, though consumers need to buy them through their small-business storefronts. Originally, downgrade sales were to end on Feb. 1, 2009, but Microsoft recently extended their availability through June 30.
Windows 7 Takes the Stage as Vista Gets Better
As the Vista doubts became mainstream, Microsoft began to talk up Windows 7, the Vista-based successor to Vista scheduled for release in early 2010. As InfoWorld's Kennedy has shown in his tests of the Windows 7 pre-beta version, Windows 7 is essentially Vista with some interface changes, a claim Microsoft CEO Ballmer concurs with -- but he quickly adds that Windows 7 is "a lot better."
And Microsoft has continued to work on Vista, with the SP2 update now in beta. SP2 helps boost Vista's speed, Kennedy's tests show.
As 2008 draws to a close, Vista has returned to being a quiet failure as the world waits for Windows 7.
After weeks of speculation, it appears that the general public will soon be able to get its hands on the first beta of Microsoft's follow-up to Windows Vista. A message on the MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) site states that all attendees of the upcoming MDC events, a series of Microsoft-sponsored road shows running from early December through mid-February, will receive a Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD in the mail "when they become available."
Microsoft isn't giving an exact delivery date for the Windows 7 beta, but some reports speculate the disc will be ready before January 13.
Some bloggers, the few who've actually tested the pre-beta code, have voiced concerns about the Windows 7 feature set. Infoworld's Randall C. Kennedy, for instance, recently declared that Windows 7 was essentially a slightly tweaked version of Vista. Other reports have praised-with some reservations-Windows 7's interface improvements, such as a vastly remodeled Windows Taskbar.
Microsoft has indicated that Windows 7 will likely be ready by late 2009 or early 2010, and given the lack of spectacular new features in Vista's replacement, there's no reason to think that Redmond won't meet that timeline. Certainly, the average Vista user would be thrilled if the hated User Account Control security feature would simply go away. Early indications are that it won't, but UAC will undergo some major changes in Windows 7
Attendees at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could get the first public look at Windows 7, the next version of Microsoft's client OS.
At its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in October, Microsoft said it would release the beta early in 2009. Though nothing has been confirmed, signs are pointing to sometime in January and possibly the CES show in Las Vegas as a likely release date. CES is scheduled for Jan. 8-11.
A member of Microsoft's public relations team in the U.K. said in an e-mail that at the show, "Microsoft will be making some significant announcements including Windows 7." She did not specify exactly what the news around the OS would be. But several blogs, including All About Microsoft, have reported that beta testers are expecting a Windows 7 beta any day.
Furthermore, Microsoft wrote on a Web site for its Microsoft Developer Network Conferences (MDCs) that attendees of those conferences, some of which are scheduled for mid-January, can expect a Windows 7 beta DVD.
Some of the MDCs were this month and the site gave Microsoft an out if the beta wasn't released in December, saying that "the DVD will be shipped to attendees when it becomes available." A Windows 7 beta was not released at those conferences, and the next MDCs are scheduled for Jan. 13 in Chicago and Minneapolis.
Microsoft expects to release Windows 7 in early 2010, although some industry observers expect it may be out by the end of 2009 because of lackluster customer response to Windows Vista. Many business customers in particular have opted to skip Vista and run XP until Windows 7 is available.
