empireum wrote:Seeing I won't be able to install that in the next days –school's keeping me way too busy–, can anybody post some screenshots and tell us a bit about apparent changes as soon as he/she's got it installed?
Bear in mind that I haven't used any LH Server builds before this one though so don't really know what the changes/bugfixes are. Just a few from me then:
Same boring boot screen as Vista - I thought the progress bar looked a slightly different colour to the one in Vista, but I'm not entirely sure.
Like Vista...but server-y!
I'm going to be testing the Datacentre edition (thought I might as well pick the "Ultimate" of the server world ) After entering the product key for your edition of Longhorn Server (like Vista, most of the editions come on the same disc) you are asked whether you want the full Server, or just the Server Core. Strangely enough, the 512 MB Ram limit is still enforced even for Server Core, while Server 2003 is a lot more than just a Core and will run nicely on a lot less than that!
Oh dear oh dear oh dear Microsoft...an issue as obvious as that one, in a public build? I also saw the green Vista "Aurora" background for a second after this, before the grey server-y once returned.
The first sighting of the Longhorn Server desktop Rather than having to complete an OOBE wizard and then sit around for ages while it does that "rating your system's performance" thing that Vista does, where you have to sit through the customary adverts for Windows (strange, considering you've already bought it by that stage) and it still gives you a 1.0 rating, you get to log on straight away and this wizard opens so you can configure the server. I guess I don't need a pretty wizard and a performance rating if I'm running a Datacentre Server, huh?
Service pack 1 eh? Looks like maybe they're developing Vista SP1 partly in combination with this? Also, isn't it strange that they licence it to "Windows User" rather than making you enter a name? PS you don't see a "genuine" Datacentre Server very often now, do you?
A slightly strange thing that noticed is that the "Rating" line is in System Properties, and when you first open it you see the text along the lines of "rating not available, click here to rate this PC", but only or a second and then that line becomes blank - it looks like they've taken the rating feature out (or possibly it comes with the Desktop Experience thing), but left it in that control panel.
What happens when you click the link in the "How to share feedback" app to download the beta client.
And then...ummmmm...we seem to have a problem...
By the way, I had a look in the Task Manager and I'm sure there's a lot fewer services running than on Vista - this looks quite nice! With the "Desktop Experience" I'm assuming LHS is effectively a superset of Vista - is there anything in Vista (Business edition) that is missing? A shame that MS have locked Windows down so much now that there won't be a reliable way of using this as a workstation, like you can with Server 2003.
The default configuration is great too - you get Administrator, so no UAC to have to turn off! No Security Centre to kill either, awesome! So much of the bloat of Vista just isn't here - System Restore, Windows Defender, Tablet PC (on Vista this runs all the time on all types of PC unless you turn it off!)? Not here! There's only 31 control panels by default too, which is better than the 50 or so of Vista I think - much more like XP is on a default install.
