Paul Thurrott heeft een leuk verhaaltje geschreven over de laatste externe build (2257) van Windows Whistler. Hierin wat algemene praat over het besturingssysteem van Microsoft, maar ook worden er een aantal nieuwe features ten opzichte van de vorige build vermeld. Zo is in de Personal Edition het Start Menu nu standaard vervangen door het Start Panel en is het Professional Theme aangepast. Vreemd genoeg verdwijnen bij gebruik van het Panel een aantal icoontjes van de desktop:
By default, Whistler Personal Edition now features the Start Panel replacement for the Start menu that was hidden in the previous build (2250). The Start Panel, along with a new-look Professional Theme, provides most of the obvious visual change in this build, and I suspect that most people will be happy with these defaults. But using the Start Panel - which can be set using an option in Start Menu Properties - removes most desktop icons for some reason, leaving only the Recycle Bin. And there's no way to get back the standard desktop icons, such as My Computer and My Network Places, without changing back to the "classic" view style. This is ridiculous, of course, but since we're pre-beta, I will assume that this will eventually change.[break]In de Professional Edition is onder andere een "Alternate Configuration" tabblad toegevoegd bij de TCP/IP eigenschappen om verschillende profiles in te stellen voor één netwerkkaart. Ook is Internet Explorer 5.6 bijgesloten:[/break]Networking users will applaud a new feature that allows multiple configurations on a single network interface card. This feature is exposed through an "Alternate Configuration" tab in the TCP/IP properties dialog for each NIC. Otherwise, networking is identical to that in Windows 2000, though the QoS (Quality of Service) Packet Scheduler is installed by default (only in Pro, not in Server). Internet Explorer is updated to IE 5.6, but I've heard that 6.0 will be in the final version.[break]Als laatste worden de Server en Advanced Server versies genoemd. Hierin zijn echter maar een paar vernieuwingen:[/break]The Server editions of Whistler--currently Server and Advanced Server--contain the fewest changes. An improved Configure Your Server Wizard allows administrators to easily configure the server for a variety of tasks, such as Application serving (Terminal Services), Web serving, and the like. And the Server editions retain the "classic" Explorer from Windows 2000, though the new stuff is available optionally. I expect most system administrators to simply leave this as-is, thank you very much. And finally, in Whistler 2257, Internet Information Services (IIS) has been upgraded a notch to version 5.1, further indication that this release is a simple point release upgrade to Windows 2000, and not a major new product.
Al met al dus niet echt revolutionaire mededelingen. Toch bedank ik uiteraard GBits, die voor vriendelijk was ons even op de hoogte te stellen van dit nieuws.