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Microsoft Corp. is working on a significant new feature for Windows Vista, known as Restart Manager, which is designed to update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine.
Microsoft officials have not talked much publicly about this new feature, but Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsofts platform products and services division, recently told eWEEK that this is an example of just how important the reboot issue was to the Redmond-based software giant.
“If a part of an application, or the operating system itself, needs to updated, the Installer will call the Restart Manager, which looks to see if it can clear that part of the system so that it can be updated. If it can do that, it does, and that happens without a reboot,” he said.
“If you have to reboot, then what happens is that the system, together with the applications, takes a snapshot of the state: the way things are on the screen at that very moment, and then it just updates and restarts the application, or in the case of an operating system update, it will bring the operating system back exactly where it was,” Allchin said.
If a user has Office 12 running on Windows Vista and the system has to do an update of either of them, and the user goes home leaving open files, the system would update and the screens would come back right to where they were before, Allchin said.
Anthony Risicato, the general manager for search and contextual at 360i LLC in New York, told eWEEK that Restart Manager is a concept that, in a vacuum, seems like a wonderful idea.
“Get the latest and “greatest the minute its available. But I do not like it, because it is trying to solve the effect, and not the cause,” he said.
He also said he is cautiously optimistic that Microsoft would be able to get Restart Manager to do what they say it will if they “decide to take the time to do it right, with an emphasis on testing and quality assurance. But they must still overcome the inherent weaknesses on the Windows platform as related to file corruption, shared memory space, etc.”
But Allchin told eWEEK that Restart Manager is an example of where the reboot problem has been something that Microsoft has been focusing on “and it is so important as continuous updating is the world of the future, where there will be a constant flow of updates,” he said.
There would be an option in both Microsoft Update and Windows Update where users would be able to “select and say I want everything from Microsoft. Give me the best that you have, keep me updated to the best you have, not just for security fixes, but for everything. With that type of situation, you cannot have the machine rebooting a lot. Its not that there wont be reboots, there will be, but we are certainly trying to minimize them to a large degree,” he said.
Constant Change
But 360is Risicato did not agree that that a world of continuous updating awaits us not too far into the future; he said PCs and servers need to become more like appliances and less like bleeding-edge widgets.
“The operation of the hardware-software environment must evolve to more stability, less volatility in order to allow IT staff/operations/consumers to spend their time creating value for organizations. Our digital world will be predicated on the deft manipulation of information/data, and every minute spent on managing and updating hardware is time stolen from productivity,” he said, suggesting that if computers operated like phones or refrigerators or televisions, then users could spend all of their time using the device rather than working on it.
“Thats the future I want to see companies like Microsoft striving for. Constant change is only good for the people initiating the changes. For everyone else, its disruptive, risky and labor intensive. In 2005, people are excited about their equipment if it doesnt crash for a month or two in a row. If only my computer equipment was as reliable as my 3-year-old car,” he said.
Earlier this week, Microsoft said it had pushed back the release of the second beta for Windows Vista into next year.
But, at the same time, it has accelerated the development of the feature-set for that operating system, which should be mostly complete by the end of December and integrated into the product early next year.
Amitabh Srivastava, Microsofts corporate vice president for Windows core operating system development, stressed that the beta two pushback will have no impact on the final release schedule for Windows Vista, which is still on track for release in the second half of 2006.
Microsoft will also release a CTP (Community Technology preview) before the December holidays, which will include a number of new features, he said, declining to give details on those.
“But these changes will result in testers getting a feature-complete version of Vista earlier than for any other Windows product,” he said last week.
CTPs are interim pre-release versions of a product that are not beta quality and represent a snapshot of a product under development at a given time.
Microsoft has decided to move away from its policy of issuing monthly CTPs for Windows Vista, and will now release these based on when they achieve quality milestones, Srivastava said.