Reader Comments

Wow.. congrats MS... finally the baby is born.. let's hope it is healthy :)

"On Wednesday, November 11, 2006, at 11:00 am PST" Should be November 8 @ 11AM

Finally!! Will be d/ling as soon as it is available via MSDN AA.

While I'm not interested in Vista itself yet, as a developer, the WPF (WinFX) is very attracting and it run on Windows XP sp2. Office 2007 also rocks. .Net 3.0 was also released yesterday. (also, how are we suppose to read such complicated CAPTCHA image that include symbols that require the charmap program to be typed properly?)

"(also, how are we suppose to read such complicated CAPTCHA image that include symbols that require the charmap program to be typed properly?)" You must be new here. We have been having this issue for months and months. Just copy your comment and refresh until alphanumeric digits are displayed

Awesome news ! Can't wait to get my hands on a copy in January :-)

Better late than never. Congrats on the RTM, Microsoft.

Does anyone know if Office 12 finally fixes the issue where Powerpoint won't use sound files with pathnames longer than 128 characters? My boss ripped a track in Windows Media Player, which copied the .WMA to My Music. Powerpoint 2003 wouldn't play it. Imagine how stunned I was to learn from the help files that Powerpoint won't play something with 128+ character pathnames. That's some modern technology, folks (snicker). I'll definitely check the new Powerpoint and let you know if this ridiculous, ***-backwards bug still exists from the "#1 software developer in the world."

Who the hell uses 128 character file names anyway? Man, you'll pick at anything. I'd be more stunned that you found the answer in the help files.

Good luck to Microsoft....and while I am using Linux on all machines except one with XP, I do hope this is a better product than what they have offered in the past. Normally I would jump on this but for the first time, I am going to watch patiently for a couple of years and see if it goes to another round of service packs and constant updates....if that is the case, this will be their first product I ignore.

NateB2, nah, I'm not new. I've been here for a while. I just don't post often.

"Does anyone know if Office 12 finally fixes the issue where Powerpoint won't use sound files with pathnames longer than 128 characters?" Just checked. Yep. It's fixed. Some people are picky...

RETARDED preseton, who the hell uses 128 characters in the file name anyway. You are such a sore looser. Such a RETARDED

cuibap: You're just as bad as him. Please shut it. Thanks in advance. PS: "Such a RETARDED" The proper usage is "You are so retarded". If you don't type it right, then that's what you are.

Glad its finally here!!! I've been using RC2 for a while and it has been solid on my old GW laptop. Lookig forward to seeing the final "fit and finish"!!! I'll probably build a new system after the first of the year...I'll be looking for advise from this board...particularly Waethorn!!! --tayme

Heh heh, thanks tayme. Obviously you can't go wrong with a Core 2 Duo if you're buying now. Core 2 Quad's are supposed to make headway next year too (those are the MAINSTREAM quad cores, not like the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad core that's out now). Also, Core 2 Duo's will increase bus speed to 1333MHz next year from their current 1066MHz. Obviously, 2GB of RAM will be a "good minimum" in less than six months time. And for those that are looking into graphics cards, WAIT!!! Buy a mainstream DirectX10 card in a couple months. The GeForce8 just got released TODAY (!), but is the new premium card so it carries a hefty pricetag. Best to wait until all cards are DirectX10 to see what's in store for the mainstream and value segment. Hard drives are pretty standard now. SATA2 w/ NCQ and 16MB cache are coming on strong, but next year we'll see hybrid hard drives kicking into gear. Those are hard drives with an EXCESSIVE amount of cache compared to today's standards (think 64MB+). What Paul says about waiting to get a new system next year is accurate, as new technologies are right around the corner. For those that can't wait, there's still plenty of options on the table for building a fast system that'll last a few years, and of course, getting an OEM copy of Windows is the cheapest way to go, unless you plan on replacing your motherboard more than once. If you REALLY want the direct support for Microsoft, buy an RETAIL UPGRADE copy or FULL VERSION, otherwise buy an OEM copy, as it's usually cheaper still than the upgrade. If someone tries to sell you a copy and says you need to buy hardware with it, THEY ARE TRYING TO SCAM YOU! Microsoft doesn't require hardware purchases with OEM copies anymore. They DO require that they be sold in their original OEM packaging though. Those are the brown boxes for 3 or 10 packs, or brown bubble envelopes for 1 packs. The book, cd, and COA will be celophane wrapped inside too. Hope that helps.

Just been to read Pauls Reveiw on the WinSupersite. Here's some of what he wrote: "It's incredible, isn't it? The sheer size and scope of Windows Vista makes it difficult to review, to digest, and to understand. If you step back too far, it doesn't look very impressive at all: It's like XP with a spit-shine." "Windows Vista is something new. Under the hood, Vista is, in fact, quite different from its predecessors, despite the surface similarities. Indeed, it is to Microsoft's credit that hundreds of millions of Windows users will be able to upgrade or otherwise move to Windows Vista, install and run almost all of their existing applications ..., all without any understanding at all of the major changes that Microsoft has wrought." "After the reset, Microsoft scaled back the Vista feature-set dramatically and ensured that features were added in a more logical fashion." "Apple and its supporters will tell you that Apple spent the past five years churning out major new Mac OS X versions while Microsoft fumbled around trying to finish Windows Vista. This is completely untrue. ... virtually every version Apple has shipped since 2001 has been a minor update, akin to a Windows 98 SE or Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). First he says on the surface Vista isn't very impressive and might be merely seen as a XP with a spit shine. Then goes on to gush about the huge changes and improvements under the hood. Fair Enough, and congratulations to Microsoft for getting it done. Then he compares the various versions of MacOS X as merely minor updates akin to service packs. What new features did XP SP2 provide, other than bug fixes and a security center? Someone please educate me. Each new version of MacOS X on the other hand provided many new features for the average user, a spit shine on the previous version and extensive changes and improvements under the hood for developers etc. Isn't that how he just described Vista?

"What new features did XP SP2 provide, other than bug fixes and a security center? Someone please educate me." Well, the wireless networking system is all shiny and new, along with a few new toys. I think the point is, there is a vast overhaul to the kernel in vista. Akin to how there was a vast overhaul to the kernel in NT (2k and XP) from 98. OSX's kernel remains untouched in over 5 years. At most a few extensions are added. But essentially, the way you access portions of OSX's innards are the same from version to version. That is not true with XP, 98, 95, Vista, etc. Yet Windows maintains full backwards compatibility back to 16-bit DOS. Apple requires you to update an "OS" as they call it that is only 2 years old to run its new applications. Odd.

@sticknick: "Who the hell uses 128 character file names anyway? Man, you'll pick at anything. I'd be more stunned that you found the answer in the help files." Sigh. Next time, instead of revealing yourself as yet another ignorant Windows user, maybe you'll actually read a post before writing such a dumb, ignorant reply. I didn't say a 128-character filename. I said a PATH name. That means "C:\Documents and Settings\Judy\My Documents\My Music\Herbert - Foo\FooSong to use in PowerPoint.wma" won't work in Powerpoint. @NateB2: "Just checked. Yep. It's fixed. Some people are picky..." PICKY?! I'm picky because my boss can't use music in Powerpoint that she ripped in Windows Media Player because the file's full path is too long for Powerpoint to handle? It's hysterical, insane, ludicrous, and very sad. Why is there a limitation on the file path name? It doesn't even make sense and only proves how bloated and old Microsoft's codebase is. @culbap: "RETARDED preseton, who the hell uses 128 characters in the file name anyway. You are such a sore looser. Such a RETARDED" Just wanted to quote this so everyone can see the typical intelligence level of the peanut gallery around here. It's not 128 characters in the file name. It's the PATH NAME. PATH NAME. PATH NAME. Idiots...

Here, morons: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841022 "Media file does not play, you receive an error message, or a blank box appears on the slide where you inserted the media file when your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation contains a media file CAUSE This problem may occur if the media files path or the file name is longer than 128 characters. WORKAROUND To work around this problem, move the media file to a higher level folder or rename the media file to a shorter file name so that the whole path and file name is not longer than 128 characters. WORKAROUND To work around this problem, use one or both of the following methods: • Move the media file to a higher level folder or rename the media file to a shorter file name so that the whole path and file name is not longer than 128 characters. • Move the media file to a higher-level folder so that the whole path and the whole file name of the media file is not longer than 128 characters." --------- Yes, that's right. Microsoft is actually telling you to move the file just to get Powerpoint to use it. That's what I had to do for my boss, sticking the file in a root folder on C: just so Powerpoint would play a freaking music file. That's some modern technology right there!

@will84: Aaaand now Windows users are flat-out lying. "I think the point is, there is a vast overhaul to the kernel in vista. Akin to how there was a vast overhaul to the kernel in NT (2k and XP) from 98. OSX's kernel remains untouched in over 5 years." 100% flat-out lie. The kernel is updated in every release, particularly in OS X Tiger where the locking behavior was updated to a specialized model that improves performance on multiple cores. "At most a few extensions are added. But essentially, the way you access portions of OSX's innards are the same from version to version. That is not true with XP, 98, 95, Vista, etc." Absolutely flat-out false (you've obviously not even researched this or asked a developer). The kernel changed so much between versions of OS X that Tiger introduced a higher-level, versioned API so that Apple could continue making underlying changes without breaking system applications. "Yet Windows maintains full backwards compatibility back to 16-bit DOS." No, it doesn't. It has some compatibility but not "full backwards compatbility." DOS isn't even in the NT line. "Apple requires you to update an "OS" as they call it that is only 2 years old to run its new applications. Odd." That's because Apple's new OS releases actually introduce new APIs and other technologies that applications depend on. This is sad. Not only did you guys wrongly attack me by confusing file names and path names, but you don't even know anything about OS X. Please read Arstechnica's reviews of each OS X release to see how much changes. Here's OS X Tiger: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars

"Does anyone know if Office 12 finally fixes the issue where Powerpoint won't use sound files with pathnames longer than 128 characters? My boss ripped a track in Windows Media Player..." i suggest you go to support.microsoft.com instead of posting questions about what your boss should do here.

@guruguru: If you didn't notice, I posted Microsoft's hilarious "workaround," which is to copy the file to a location that will have a shorter path name. So if you dare to rip music in Microsoft's own media player in the hopes that you get to use it in a slideshow, forget about it unless you're willing to move it to a root folder. That's modern technology! I guess I shouldn't expect any less from the peanut gallery around here, who compared Bill Gates to Jesus Christ, didn't know the difference between filenames and path names, and claimed the OS X kernel hasn't changed in five years and that SP2 is a bigger update (ROFL).

"Absolutely flat-out false (you've obviously not even researched this or asked a developer). The kernel changed so much between versions of OS X that Tiger introduced a higher-level, versioned (sic) API so that Apple could continue making underlying changes ..." Maybe I should have rephrased what I meant, for clarification purposes. OSX, yes, Apple does enjoy throwing out new APIs like candy. When you access the innards of the kernel, the API does it in the same way. What changes from API to API is the user-side. Essentially they add a few more plugins, depriciate a few others, shuffle the board so to speak. Now, does that a new OS make? Not really. Sure, to a programmer at a superficial level, 'Ooh, new API'. But its the same old kernel down below. Yes, you have to recompile the kernel to work with this new API, but you don't have to change it. You are looking at an OS from a top down view and stopping at the application layer. I'm talking about looking at it from the machine up, and assuming that the API is disassociated from the OS. Another system engineer may say, 'But aha! The API should be considered part of the OS!' This really reduces to a semantic debate, my stance is that an OS is the bridge between 'code' and 'machine' and nothing else. I.e. the kernel. My argument is that you can change the API and not change the OS. And you can. There is plenty of room for ambiguity and opinions in this realm, and everyone is free to their own. IMO from the bottom up, OSX10.1 and OSX10.4 are the same thing, wherein they corrected alot of their buggy problems. That is another quip I have about 'new OSes'. If you fix a large section of bugs in an OS, it doesn't make it a new one, just what the first ought to have been. I did make a mistake on dos 16-bit mode compatibility. Full compatibility (emulation) only goes back to Win95, with the oldest relics being roughly 13 years old. Roughly 13 times older than Apple can claim full compatibility for.

Preseton, brother, let it rest, man. Windows Vista finally shipped. It's no longer late -- it's shipped. It is what it is as far as bugs/security/v1.0 API, etc go. No anti-Windows or pro-MacOSX comment will take away from this moment. Let the Windows enthusiasts enjoy this news. It's a significant milestone. They deserve it. We will be feeling the same way when Leopard hits this Spring/Summer. (Here's hoping they won't flame about 10.5 being "another point release" and Time Machine being a pretty UI on the Volume Shadow Copy Service and the usual anti-Mac stuff.) Now I just hope all the third-party hardware manufacturers make Vista-certified drivers (especially ones that rate high) before Vista's consumer release in January 2006.

@will84: "Maybe I should have rephrased what I meant, for clarification purposes." It's just annoying when you hear the same tired criticisms from certain people claiming no major changes in a major OS X release, especially coming from journalists like Thurrott who should know better. "Now, does that a new OS make? Not really." Nobody said OS X Tiger is a new OS. It is, however, a major upgrade to an existing OS, like Vista is to NT. "Sure, to a programmer at a superficial level, 'Ooh, new API'. But its the same old kernel down below." By that logic, Vista is the same old kernel because it's still NT. Tiger's kernel was updated for metadata notification hooks, fine-grained locking behavior for improved multi-core performance, and more. The kernel kept changing so much that Apple finally introduced versioned APIs so that developers could more easily hook into the kernel without it changing on them again in the next release. You have to remember that OS X 10.0 was a brand-new operating system, and going to 10.2 and 10.3 brought major changes. Most of the big ones occurred in Jaguar, from the new hardware compositor to several API changes. The most common baseline application requirement for many years was OS X Jaguar because of how many sweeping changes it made going forward (some consider it the first truly "usable" version of OS X).

(cont.) @will84: "You are looking at an OS from a top down view and stopping at the application layer. I'm talking about looking at it from the machine up, and assuming that the API is disassociated from the OS." Even disregarding new APIs and technology layers, the internals of OS X have changed dramatically since 10.0. There's too much to describe here, like Panther upgrading to FreeBSD 5, Tiger unifying UNIX launch services into launchd, several major kernel updates, and much more. The compositor has gone through a large number of changes starting with Jaguar, which as you know introduced GPU-accelerated compositing back in 2002. I could go on for far too long here. "Another system engineer may say, 'But aha! The API should be considered part of the OS!' This really reduces to a semantic debate, my stance is that an OS is the bridge between 'code' and 'machine' and nothing else. I.e. the kernel. My argument is that you can change the API and not change the OS. And you can." My argument is that the foundations of the OS have changed as well. These changes in each OS X release are widely documented, especially by John Siracusa at Arstechnica. "There is plenty of room for ambiguity and opinions in this realm, and everyone is free to their own. IMO from the bottom up, OSX10.1 and OSX10.4 are the same thing, wherein they corrected alot of their buggy problems." And I have to respond again that they are not the same. 10.2 especially updated a lot. "I did make a mistake on dos 16-bit mode compatibility. Full compatibility (emulation) only goes back to Win95, with the oldest relics being roughly 13 years old. Roughly 13 times older than Apple can claim full compatibility for." The lack of 13 years of legacy baggage is considered Apple's advantage. That said, Classic still runs OS 9 on PPC machines, and the old Mac APIs were ported to OS X and called Carbon to facilitate the transition to a modern OS that replaced the crumbling old one.

You know, bonch, you should lower your tone slightly. Calling people morons and idiots does nothing to help you. It only plunges your reputation further, which already is not great. And you wonder why everyone rushes to respond to your posts... "It's just annoying when you hear the same tired criticisms from certain people claiming no major changes in a major OS X release" Replace OS X with Windows, and that is exactly what you sound like all the time. Between the "nobody cares", "20 year old BIOS", "Vista is XP with a new UI", and the various other negative adjectives (which I can not recall right now) you (and others) have used to describe Windows, I really don't think you have a leg to stand on with that argument. I've said it before, that Apple is very liberal with their use of the word "feature" when they describe the 200 new features in Tiger. True, it is improvements. And even if you change one line of code in the kernel, it is a new version (and I'm not trying to say that only one line of code was changed in OS X). That however, does not mean it has been rewritten every point release. I feel this complaint about the 128 character "PATHNAME" is overblown. Should it still be a limitation in the software? No. It's a little piece of legacy code poking through. I don't think that MS has maintained that they have re-engineered every component of Office, especially PowerPoint, which probably sees less attention than Word or Excel. A quick question: Are you "linking" these files by inserting an Object, or are you embedding them, by going to Insert...Movies and Sounds? Considering that a PowerPoint document is meant to be portable, linking it to another file doesn't make a lot of sense.

@bmnbmn: "You know, bonch, you should lower your tone slightly. Calling people morons and idiots does nothing to help you. It only plunges your reputation further, which already is not great. And you wonder why everyone rushes to respond to your posts..." I only responded that way this time because people were insulting me after confusing file names and path names with regards to Powerpoint's 128-character limitation on linked media. I was even called "retarded." "Replace OS X with Windows, and that is exactly what you sound like all the time." But Mac users have been hearing it for 20 years. "Between the "nobody cares", "20 year old BIOS", "Vista is XP with a new UI", and the various other negative adjectives (which I can not recall right now) you (and others) have used to describe Windows, I really don't think you have a leg to stand on with that argument." It's convenient that you don't remember any examples to cite. As for the use of a BIOS, that is a valid criticism. The BIOS is 25+ years old, buggy, and slow. "I've said it before, that Apple is very liberal with their use of the word feature when they describe the 200 new features in Tiger." But there are a ton of very real new features. "That however, does not mean it has been rewritten every point release." Nobody has said this. Why do people keep thinking someone said every OS X release is a new, rewritten OS? Nobody has ever claimed that. "I feel this complaint about the 128 character "PATHNAME" is overblown." You don't seem to realize it means that any CD track you rip in Windows Media Player can't be linked to in Powerpoint because WMP stores the files in My Music. "Are you "linking" these files by inserting an Object, or are you embedding them, by going to Insert...Movies and Sounds?" It doesn't matter either way; the limitation was still there. Microsoft's workaround is to move the file to a location with a shorter pathname, which is ridiculously stupid and embarrassing.

"That's what I had to do for my boss, sticking the file in a root folder on C: just so Powerpoint would play a freaking music file." Wow. That must have eaten up, what? Sixty seconds of your time? I feel for you man, I really do. And I applaud you. I don't think I have the technical know how to pull off a major feat like that. Ok, so I misread. You said path name. I apologize. However thanks for making me at least half right. The MS help you posted said FILE or Path name. That being said, no matter the software, no matter the company, if there is a simple workaround, like moving a file, developers are not going to bust their ***** to fix it. They're, instead, going to try and solve larger issues like, oh, I don't know, random kernel panics. This isn't MS propaganda. Since I work for a software company, I know this for a fact. And just to say: There are very few people, like your boss, who rips music to the default directory. Others, like most here, I'm sure, edit the rip directory to suit our needs. For example: C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music (whoa, that is kinda long) can be changed to C:\Music\ right in the player. Neat, eh? I have to ask you Preseton, why all the venom? vandil has actually calmed down and now makes some really good points about both MS and Apple. You still act like a child. What gives? Just curious.

vandil2 "(Here's hoping they won't flame about 10.5 being "another point release" and Time Machine being a pretty UI on the Volume Shadow Copy Service and the usual anti-Mac stuff.)" You know we will ;-)

@sticknick: "Wow. That must have eaten up, what? Sixty seconds of your time? I feel for you man, I really do. And I applaud you. I don't think I have the technical know how to pull off a major feat like that." Well, I had to make up for Microsoft's apparent lack of technical know-how to use a mutable string for a file path. As much fun as it is to micro-manage the Windows filesystem to make sure asset file paths don't offend Powerpoint, I have better things to do with my time, and I hate being called away from my work to help the boss with a media file that's not playing in Powerpoint because of a 128+ char file path. "Ok, so I misread. You said path name. I apologize. However thanks for making me at least half right. The MS help you posted said FILE or Path name." A file name is a part of the path name. "That being said, no matter the software, no matter the company, if there is a simple workaround, like moving a file, developers are not going to bust their ***** to fix it. They're, instead, going to try and solve larger issues like, oh, I don't know, random kernel panics." This is some dizzy spinning here. Yeah, increasing the length of a string to store a path name in a highly-used Powerpoint feature really requires them to bust their **** to fix. Silly. "This isn't MS propaganda. Since I work for a software company, I know this for a fact." I also work for a software company. This is not a hard bug to fix. "And just to say: There are very few people, like your boss, who rips music to the default directory. Others, like most here, I'm sure, edit the rip directory to suit our needs." Complete and utter bull. Most people ripping in Media Player are ripping to their My Music folders. "I have to ask you Preseton, why all the venom? vandil has actually calmed down and now makes some really good points about both MS and Apple." Because I got called "retarded" and other names over a seriously stupid Powerpoint bug that you guys misunderstood.

Fair enough. Although, you do manage to come in to pretty much every article and post off topic rantings. As for being called retarded, that's one guy we all can't stand and constantly tell to shut it. Then again, it does take one person to make a whole group look stupid. "This is some dizzy spinning here. Yeah, increasing the length of a string to store a path name in a highly-used Powerpoint feature really requires them to bust their **** to fix. Silly." By busting their ***** I meant that they are not rushing to fix it. I wasn't implying that it was a hard fix. "I also work for a software company. This is not a hard bug to fix." Then you should know that easy fixes with workarounds get pushed to the back burner unless there is nothing pressing on ye old bug list. I know that I push stuff to the corner on a daily basis because my goup is more concerned with major functionality problems as opposed to, say, a slight GUI issue. So I'm sure the Office team is more concerned with service packs and security holes than the length of a path and/or filenames.

"It's convenient that you don't remember any examples to cite. As for the use of a BIOS, that is a valid criticism. The BIOS is 25+ years old, buggy, and slow." Why is it convenient? You know, I may seem like I know everything when it comes to my users, but I don't. This forum doesn't have any sort of search feature or user management of any kind. How can I remember all that you have said, when in many cases, you post, or have posted 5, 10, 15 different comments to any one article. There is nothing convenient about it. And you seem to like it both ways. You say it is a valid criticism. However, it is something that you have stated ad naseum here in this comments section. And you complain when others call out valid criticisms of the Mac OS, sometimes with a couple of different replies, calling us morons, pathetic, that we (or MS) are "owned", etc. Are these valid responses? And you complain when you are called retarded, by one poster who is not well liked at all, and has difficultly with grammar and the English language. Should we all be morons now? The pathname issue is overblown. Read the rest of the paragraph I wrote. It is a ridiculous limitation. But, software is complex, and it's not getting any simpler. If you have read the shell:revealed blog, some people have provided a little slice of life of as a programmer at MS. In it, they described the effort required to change even little things, like the add fonts dialog. With bigger bugs to squash, something like this is irrelevant, even though it may be important to a subset of users. But it should be fixed. bonch, if you want your opinions to be respected, you need to earn it. While I may disagree with lotsa and bdk on some issues, at least I respect them, and they present things in a logical manner. You tend to take the childlike approach, and get us all riled up.

Windows Vista Hits RTM. Either I missed the announcement that Powerpoint was now a component of Windows, or, yet again, I have read four pages of primarily off-topic comments from the same old names, spewing the same old venom, and the childish personal abuse which has made this site the joke it has now become.

forkieboy: Four pages of off-topic comments is our specialty ;-) Seriously though, I initially signed up to say: "You're all crazy! Look at you! This is silly!" Six months later I'm still here contributing to four pages (sometimes eight pages!) of off-topic venom. It's addictive man, walk away while you still can! -grin-