Has anyone heard anything about the new windows OS that is coming out later this year

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~Jon~
if you have to stop and wonder then you have already lost

Yup, Windows XP is essentially the name of for what we used to know as Whistler or .NET.

This is the next generation of OS's from Microsoft, and supposed to be the best as well. This is where we finally see Windows NT and Windows ME/9X (Consumer windows) come together to bring stability as well as support for hardware and other products.

We'll see when it really comes out though. They have already put out Alpha's and possibly beta versions of the OS for testers, I know a friend of mine has been running it. I'll tell him to post here and let you know what he thinks.

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

Quoted:

In a tidy tie-in with company founder Paul Allen's Seattle shrine to rock 'n' roll, Microsoft today formally introduced the next generation of its consumer-level operating system, Windows XP. In a morning of demos and speeches at the Experience Music Project, Microsoft Chief Software Architect Bill Gates promised a revolutionary version of Windows, one that will let users "build on their dreams."

Formerly codenamed "Whistler," Windows XP is the "convergence" operating system that Microsoft has promised for at least three years. It brings together the consumer- and business-oriented lines of Windows by setting Windows XP on top of the Windows NT kernel, the basic engine that undergirds the Windows 2000 line.

"Windows XP is the biggest leap forward since the Windows operating system first shipped," says Microsoft General Manger John Frederiksen. "It will unleash a revolutionary set of new experiences around photos, music, communication, mobile computing, help and support, and the connected home that will empower users to utilize their PCs to their full potential in ways that are simpler and easier than ever before."

Top among Window XP's new features is a completely revamped GUI to upgrade the Windows look and feel and, in Gates' words, "to enable rich user experiences." Frederiksen also outlined a new "Remote Assistance" feature that gives Windows a built-in remote machine administration interface like Symantec's "PC Anywhere."

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

here is a little more information that i found about the os
origional site http://www.winmag.com/specialreport...01/msxp0214.htm

Windows XP Site http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/default.asp

February 14, 2001

After a ho-hum reception for Windows Me in the marketplace, Microsoft has now ripped the covers off something that has a lot more potential for excitement: Windows XP.

Windows XP is the next generation of and the successor to all current breeds of Windows -- Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, and 2000. It's based on the NT/2000 kernel, which is significantly more stable than Win95, 98, or Me, but consumes somewhat more memory. We looked at earlier versions of Windows XP, codenamed "Whistler," in our Microsoft First Windows 'Whistler' Beta, but many of the things that are showing up in XP were not present in that beta.

In a keynote speech at the public unveiling of XP, currently in its Beta 2 incarnation, Bill Gates noted that Windows is "the tool that literally hundreds of millions of people use every day to get their work done." To that end, the changes in XP -- which are intended to be both functional and cosmetic -- reflect how Windows is being re-worked, both at this stage and at stages to come, as a way to get things done.

The word most often used by Gates and other Microsoft representatives for getting things done is "task-oriented"; many extensions have been build directly into XP to support this new concept. The My Pictures folder in Windows Me and Windows 2000, for instance, sports some new hotlinks down its left side that allows anyone with a scanner or camera to quickly acquire images, process them, or upload them to an Internet image host or photo service. In the Start menu, the most commonly used applications now "bubble up" into the menu itself -- something like a program-oriented version of the way My Documents has traditionally worked.

Another major addition in XP that has never appeared in any version of Windows is on-the-fly user switching and a much higher degree of user segregation. This means that one machine can be more effectively used by multiple people, such as different family members or different people accessing a computer in a public environment like a library. You can sign the use of the machine over to a friend or co-worker without shutting down or rebooting, or even without having to close their programs -- sort of like a massive task-switching system, except instead of switching between windows, one is switching between user sessions.

Other features include a remote-administration system that lets you send a secure invitation to another XP user, allowing them to connect directly to your computer through a network and operate it as though they were sitting at your local console. (Although uninvited users can't crash your party there hasn't been any heavy-duty third-party testing of the security of the system yet.)

From the look of XP, Microsoft is trying to walk a fine line between making broad changes to Windows that are intended to make it easier to use -- and trying not to alienate longtime users of the operating system, who may balk at the way things have been significantly redesigned. Those running on machines with 32 to 64MB of RAM will also flinch when they find that the memory requirements have been upped -- tests with the beta show you need 64MB or more to get any real work done.

The one major change that won't alienate anyone is the dramatic increase in stability: The earlier beta showed it ran the vast majority of Windows 9x applications without problems and with noticeably better speed and multitasking smoothness than any existing version of Windows 9x.

The consumer and professional editions of Windows XP are slated to ship towards the end of the summer in 2001. Microsoft also has plans for server editions, which are designed to eclipse its existing server products. Relatively little information has been released about these products, or about the planned 64-bit versions of Windows designed to run on Intel's Itanium processor.

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~Jon~
if you have to stop and wonder then you have already lost

From what I saw, Whistler seems like a kiddy OS.

Let me explain myself : a while back a friend showed me screenshot (on slashdot I think) showing whistler's look. It was, how to say it, TOO user friendly. It's push to a ridiculous level. I remember the new user management thing, with each user being represented by a pic, and the sweatshirt's color represented that user's access level. I also remember the Control panel, with HUGE icons and all in all useless descriptions.

I just hope those options (and some others) can be turned off. If not, I'll stick with 2k. It has been a great OS so far for me

[REMINDER : what I saw was quite a while back, I haven't checked for new developments]

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Check out:
http://www.tech-review.com/review.pl?id=212

They have 40 or so picture of "Whistler". The one thing about it that I seems good is that you can have that start menu in either the way XP will do it, or with the way 95, 98, 2000 and ME have it.

Arrggghhh, BBS software ate my reply when I tried to preview it

What I said was that the OS looks like pure eye-candy, but I don't really care about that, if i want my OS to look different, I'll get Windowblinds or something. What I want first a working, stable OS.

Let us hope it can be done

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I've had a couple of the past builds passed on to me, and I must say I like it alot. It's got some real nice features like built-in CDRW support, and some great profile enhancements. Some of the features have been over simplified, but that's just the default view...you can choose to have the traditional, more complicated view if you like. But they have done wonders for the interface in my opinion, and even though it's still in Beta it's suprizingly stable...I'ld run it as my sole OS except for the problem with my Hollywood Plus DVD card...tis a shame NERO!!!

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How many times has it crashed for you InTheWayBoy?

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

And how do I get on the list for beta!

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

I don't know if they are still signing up for the Beta, but they should start selling the Release Candidate soon...that's how I got hooked up with them, I bought the Windows 2000 RC2 last year...I don't have a link handy but I'll do some searchin...NERO!

Opps...missed the crash thing. For me, it's only crashed a few times, mostly when I was trying to get the DVD card to work. Otherwise, it's never really crashed. In fact, I haven't seen a blue-screen yet! I'm excited about it...NERO!

A stable operating system may be comming out? You guys are getting me all excited.

[JOKE]Dude...where've you been? The world's most stable OS came out over 30 years ago! [/JOKE]

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

There's some other worthwhile material in the sister thread to this one...Anybody use Whister?

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"And knowing is half the battle!"