Thursday, January 25, 2007 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

Q&A with Microsoft's Jim Allchin

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Jim Allchin answers your questions.

In a rare opportunity for readers of The Seattle Times, top Microsoft executive Jim Allchin answered your questions about Windows Vista, the company's new flagship operating system.

Allchin has led Windows development for most of his 16 years at the Redmond software giant and will retire after Vista becomes broadly available Jan. 30.

The live question-and-answer session was hosted by Times technology columnist Brier Dudley.

At home I've been running Windows XP with Service Pack 2. It works just fine and I haven't had any security problems. Can you tell me in a nutshell why I should upgrade to Windows Vista?
— Brier Dudley

J.A.:

I am so glad to hear you are having such a great experience using Windows XP Service Pack 2. Helping customers like you to be safer on the Internet is EXACTLY why I redirected the Windows team off of Windows Vista (then code-named Windows Longhorn) to get Windows XP SP2 done. I know it was the right call, but it certainly impacted our ship date. If I had to do it again, I would.

That said, while Windows XP SP2 was an important milestone in customer safety, Windows Vista takes safety and security to the next level. I have always said that the security in Windows Vista is not perfect (no software from anyone I have seen is), but it will absolutely make customers safer. Key enhancements we have made include a protected mode for Internet Explorer that makes browsing on the internet safer, integrated anti-malware support with Windows Defender, improved firewall, enhancements in the way that people log on to the system with a new feature called User Account Control which you can think of as a usable standard user, integrated parental controls, etc.

It's also very important to remember that Windows Vista is the first version of a client operating system to go through our Secure Development Life-cycle which not only does static code analysis, but also includes a very thorough approach to looking at (and eliminating) potential attacks called threat modeling. We built Windows Vista with a new compiler that helps protect against buffer over flows. We have also used a number of other defense-in-depth approaches including varying the way that the OS is loaded into memory using a technology called Address Space Layout Randomization that makes it harder for certain types of malware to attack the system using known addresses.

While no one technology is a silver bullet here, the combination of these key investments in security, makes Windows Vista the most secure version of Windows ever.

But, do you know why you should consider Windows Vista? It will be more fun to use. It makes working with photos easier, managing your music easier, setting up multiple PCs easier, making your own movies and sharing them, finding and managing your documents, and on and on.

Vista has been a challenging project. What have you learned and how has the experience changed Microsoft?
— Brier Dudley

J.A.:

In my view, nothing of importance comes easy. If it did, then everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't mean as much. Windows touches more lives around the world and is used in more ways that about any other product I know. The breadth of usages, applications, hardware peripherals, different computer manufacturer models, languages, etc. is actually mind-numbing. The impact will also be large. It will be years in my view before all the capability is appreciated, but it will come in my view.

You should remember that this may have been the largest, most comprehensive software project ever done before. And largest doesn't mean the product is more complicated! Cars today are much more complicated than in past, but they are absolutely easier to use and maintain. We paved new ground in many ways. When our engineering machinery couldn't handle the scale of what we were doing, we had to re-engineer it. This took time. When lower level dependencies were not coming together in time, then we needed to restructure around them. This took time. And when we decided that security was a higher priority than Windows Vista, then we had to stop and do Windows XP SP2. And this took time. Each decision was the right one.

We always do post-mortems after projects. We learn. We improve. It has always been that way at Microsoft.

Today, we have better tools to monitor OS dependencies. And we invested in modularity in Windows Vista. We won't have to go back and do a release focused on security like we did in the past. And we have the engineering machinery to handle the next few OS releases. So, we're set up for fast delivery in the future. Windows Vista is a great foundation for the future.

Much has been published about the new security features of Vista. How will these features affect the ability of legacy third party vendor apps to run on Vista?
— Steve, Wenatchee

J.A.:

Application compatibility was a top priority in Windows Vista as it has to be in any mainstream operating system. However, when push comes to shove, if there is one thing that trumps application compatibility, it's security. So as a result we worked very hard throughout Windows Vista to make sure that we had great focus on how we could make applications compatible — even with the new protections in Windows Vista. This was not without its challenges.

The biggest potential area for application compatibility was Windows Vista new User Account Control (UAC) capability. I posted what I hope is a helpful (although super long) blog entry on User Account Control a few days ago. As I said in that blog post, the goal of UAC is to make standard user work better. (Remember in the past with Windows XP, since most users ran as administrators on their system most applications were written assuming that the user was an administrator.) I look at applications in three buckets:

Packaged applications that are used by users to do user class things….writing documents, reading e-mail, working with photos and listening to music, etc. These applications should just work. If one of these applications does something that requires admin privilege, then we can usually make the application work with a compatibility update. However, there were a few cases where we had to get the application vendor to update their application. I should note that when applications get installed, they often need to elevated to be an administrator, but once the application is installed, they typically work great as standard user.

The second example is some Web applications that install controls that require admin privilege. In most cases we addressed these issues automatically, but there may be situations when you might go to a Web site where you have to be an admin to get the control to install (or perhaps run).

Finally, there are applications that I see as system utilities. System utilities are doing things at a system level that puts them into a special class where we just can't make them compatible from version to version (because of low level API interface changes). That said, many system utilities (like disk partitioners, etc.) should require admin privilege because they do admin things. Others, like anti-virus software really shouldn't require admin privilege and needed to be updated.

Jim, Could you please talk about the design challenges of creating Vista for the 64 bit environment compared with the 32 bit enviornment? Thanks, Gautam
— Gautam Venkatesan , Bellevue

J.A.:

As it turns out, creating Windows Vista in the 64-bit environment was not that much different than creating Windows Vista in the 32-bit environment because we built the two together from a single code base. We delivered 64bit and 32bit builds simultaneously through the development cycle. Remember we did the work to move to 64-bit when we delivered Windows XP Professional 64-bit edition and Windows Server 2003 64-bit edition.

When we first made the move to 64-bit there were several challenges. One hard problem is getting all of the device drivers ported to 64-bit. For Microsoft code, our approach was to have the 64-bit team port (and fix) all of the Windows code for 64-bit. This was not so difficult in terms of the specific work, but was a real challenge when it came to the scope of the number of sources we had to touch—but we did it. It's not so easy for third party code where we often didn't have access to the source code. So we worked with the third parties to get the key drivers moved to 64-bit. The good news here is that because we had more insight into the drivers being moved, we were able to do better testing and as a result establish a policy where only signed drivers (ones tested to our standards) can run on 64-bit Windows.

Another challenge around the move to 64-bits for Windows was essentially a cultural one. As I noted above, most of the work was initially done by a core 64-bit team, but over time we needed to get the feature teams to own their 64-bit code….and we certainly needed them to test it. So the challenge here was to get the 64-bit work prioritized in the context of the many other things that the teams were doing. While the short term needs often seemed more important than 64-bit, it was so clear that 64-bit was a key strategy for the long term that we had to prioritize it.

The good news is that those early investments in 64-bit really paid off for Windows Vista.

I just bought a new notebook computer with a 64 bit processor. I am eligible for the Express Upgrade to Vista. I have heard that the full retail versions of Vista will contain both 64 and 32 bit versions in the same package. Will this be the same for those of us who bought our computers before the full release? If not, please explain why. Thank you.
— Cheryl King, Edmonds

J.A.:

If you bought a PC with a 32 bit OS installed (Windows XP home, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP media center edition) that is eligible for the Express Upgrade to Windows Vista, then your computer manufacturer should send the corresponding 32-bit version for Windows Vista. If you bought a PC with a 64 bit OS installed (Windows XP professions 64 bit edition) than you qualify for an upgrade to 64-bit version of Windows Vista Business. If you purchased a 32 bit OS on your new notebook and you would like to move to a 64 bit OS for Windows Vista please contact your computer manufacturer for fulfillment options.

If you buy the retail version of Windows Vista, then you are licensed to use either the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version. That said, we only include the 32-bit software in the package--- unless you buy the Windows Vista Ultimate (which includes both versions). If you purchase the retail product and you want the 64-bit versions, then you can contact Microsoft and we will send you a disk.

With the retail version of Vista, may I install and activate the software onto multiple computers in the same household?
— Joey S., Seattle

J.A.: Great question, Joey, and one that I think a lot of people may be confused about. The retail version of Windows Vista provides a license for you to install and activate Windows Vista on a single PC. If you have more than one PC running Windows Vista, you need to have a license for each PC. We have created a provision that allows you to move a retail license from one PC to another, if for example you get a new PC, but it doesn't allow you to use the same license on more than one PC at the same time. We recently announced the addition of a family discount offering which is something that you might be interested in.

As a senior-level technology manager, how do you convince me (so that I can, in turn, convince my bosses) that we should move from XP to Vista on the desktop sooner rather than later (if ever)? In particular, tell me how Vista makes our employees more productive. Thanks!
— Russ H., Seattle

J.A.:

There are really two dimensions of my answer here Russ. The first is quality. Windows Vista is the highest quality version of Windows we have ever shipped. This is true from a experience perspective, from a reliability perspective, from an application compatibility perspective and of course from a security perspective. In fact I think the security improvement alone may justify the upgrade for many people – from the home to the enterprise. Even the power savings possible by running Windows Vista should get IT's attention!

The second dimension is productivity and I think that is really the question that you are asking. Here we have made great progress including a new user interface designed to make it easier for business users to get their job done. This includes a new shell with new search capabilities (including ubiquitous search throughout the system), as well as powerful new data management capabilities. How much time do you waste trying to find documents?

For mobile users, we have also made great progress to help remote users be more productive. This includes a new network center to help you get connected more easily (and stay secure at the same time), a mobility center for quick setting changes, and improved tablet support. We have also made collaboration easier with Windows Meeting Space.

I can't begin to enumerate all the cool new things in Windows Vista. I really encourage you to take a look at a great guide about the features in Windows Vista that you can find at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bbc16ebf-4823-4a12-afe1-5b40b2ad3725&DisplayLang=en or by going to www.live.com and typing "Windows Vista Product Guide". I think this guide will help a lot.

What will Vista be like for people who use computers but don't really understand how they work?
— Brier Dudley

J.A.:

This is a great question. Ideally you shouldn't have to know how a PC works to use it. Back in the days of MS-DOS and Windows 3.x, unless you were doing pretty basic things, you had to be quite technically inclined to get a PC to do anything interesting, so the product appealed primarily to enthusiasts. Windows 95 was a significant milestone with regard to usability and really brought PCs much more into the mainstream. But it was still very geek oriented. With Windows XP we were able to bring together the usability of Win9x with the reliability that we got by moving to the NT Kernel. The focus of Windows XP was really about enabling a new set of experiences and encouraging folks to store information digitally. For Windows Vista, the goal was bring an engaging, fresh user experience into the mainstream, create a better foundation for safety and security, and simply make the PC fun to use. And frankly it is fun to use.

We've spent thousands of hours in over 1 billion user session observing how people use Windows Vista and Office, which represents more 60 years of simulated performance testing by humans. This has provided valuable feedback on the usability of Windows Vista for the consumer experiences that people use the most. Throughout this process input was considered from a variety of customers (including people who didn't understand how computers work) and where we found problems we made changes. The result is a product that will change the way you use your Windows PC for the better — even if you don't know how your PC works on a technical level. In fact, we added features specifically so that the machine does more of the management of itself so that you don't have to know or care; instead you can just get your task done faster and more securely.

Several tech writers have said the upcoming update to the Apple OS will easily surpass Vista in features. Can you comment? Thanks, TB
— Tim Bueneman, Seattle

J.A.:

You have to think more broadly about differences if you are going to do a comparison. Apple's a good company. However, they have a very different philosophy than we do. We believe in choice of content providers, choice in hardware provider, the largest choice in peripherals, application choice and compatibility that eclipses all others, choice in development tools, etc.

However, I will still try and answer your specific question. When I look at Windows Vista and OSX along key dimensions, it's pretty clear that we have done a great job — even when you compare it to Apple's future release given what they demonstrated so far. Microsoft is a very innovative company and Windows Vista is a great example of that innovation in action.

One has to remember to look at any comparison across customer types. We have a strong offering for business users today and Windows Vista takes this to a whole new level; we will make people more productive at the office and on the road. We will have the best support for IT professionals for managing thousands of machines. Today we are unique in being able to connect to the TV with things such as cablecard support coming in Windows Vista. We will be the best in terms the richest, most comprehensive set of applications. I think we will have the coolest laptop support with things such as Sideshow. We will continue to be the leader in gaming – with the best platform and the hottest games. We will be the best in handwriting recognition and speech recognition. And we will have the most comprehensive partner system so that you can have widest choice of computer manufacturers and peripherals to choose from at the widest array of price points.

Again, I'm not trying to answer comprehensively. I am not sure that accomplishes anything given the big philosophy differences. In short, Windows has a huge customer base. We are just trying to bring the best operating system we can to them so that people can be more productive, have more fun, and be safer.

I was disappointed to hear that WinFS was not part of Vista. Can you shed some light on what happened?
— Yong, Des Moines

J.A.: I explained a little about how we evolved our data management work in Windows Vista in a blog post.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/06/working-with-data-in-windows-vista.aspx

Why should a PC gamer upgrade to Windows Vista?
— Steve Taylor, Everett

J.A.:

In a word "graphics." The next generation graphics capabilities just make games on Windows awesome. There are two reasons for this. First, we improved the graphics driver model and made it more stable and reliable for games. Second, we have also improved the capabilities of the graphics model with a new technology called DirectX 10 that is only available on Windows Vista. DirectX 10 can work with older graphics hardware, but when you combined Windows Vista with graphics hardware that supports DirectX10, then Wow. Windows Vista together with DirectX 10 hardware provides a truly revolutionary experience that I will sum up with the word realism. This realism comes as a result of both performance and detail. What this means is that game developers will be able to deliver games with more enhanced details and complexity in their games including dynamic lighting, weather conditions, etc.

You really have to see it to believe it. PCs almost always lead gaming consoles in raw gaming capability. But, with Windows Vista and DirectX10 hardware, the PC is actually a generation ahead of even the newest dedicated gaming consoles.

One of the other cool things we did was to provide baked in support for the Xbox 360 wired controllers which is very cool for action, sports and racing games. Microsoft is also introducing new gaming accessories that work with your PC, such as the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows, which lets you use the Xbox 360 wireless controller and wireless racing wheel on your Windows Vista-based PC.

Be sure to check out the new Games for Windows titles that are coming out regularly.

What's your favorite thing about Vista?
— Brier Dudley

J.A.: That is such a hard question because there are so many very cool features in Windows Vista. While I hold a soft spot for the search and data management features, I have to say that my favorite feature in Windows Vista is Address Space Layout Randomization (or ASLR). I love ASLR because it's simple, elegant and extremely effective. In simpler terms, ASLR enhances security by loading code into different memory locations every time the system boots so effectively each Windows Vista machine that is running is unique and different from every other Windows Vista. The result is that it's much harder for certain forms of malware to exploit vulnerability in the system. ASLR is NOT a hard security boundary but it is a great example of one of many "defense in depth" approaches that we use to make the system safer. And that is cool!

Jim, why hasn't Microsoft spent more time getting users off of the "typewriter", and using computers more intuitively? I'm still keyboard and mouse 100% of the time, just like Win 3.1. Is it in Microsoft's future? And good luck on your future ventures, whatever they may be...
— Mat Chavez, Issaquah

J.A.:

Hi Mat,

I am assuming your question really has to do with moving away from making the keyboard the primary (input device). This is something that Microsoft has been focusing on for many years.

We believe we are leaders in the use of alternative input methods including speech and handwriting. We have done a lot of work in Windows over the years to make these technologies work well. One of the key issues deals with the process of teaching your computer ("training") how you speak or how you write. So, the real opportunity is to provide better prediction of what you are saying or writing by understanding the vocabulary that you tend to use. In Windows Vista we already had an index of your content on your PC, so we simply use this "corpus" of terminology to help the system disambiguate your input and deliver a more accurate result. (In case you are worried about privacy, there is no need. All this happens only on your machine with no communications to any other computer.)

The result? During the beta testing of Windows Vista someone on the team received a note from a quadriplegic saying that Windows Vista was going to dramatically improvement his life because of the huge improvements in speech recognition. By the way…the email was written of course using Windows Vista speech recognition.

We have also been investing in touch screens as well. You'll see more and more machines with touch capability in the future. The new HP TouchSmart hardware is a great example of new touch screen capabilities.

Longer term, the challenge has to do with "understanding" – not specifically the speech recognition or handwriting recognition. Today, the computer can understand what you wrote or said very well, it just doesn't know what you mean because it doesn't the basic world model of facts and relationships that you and I do (or even a 3 year old understands). This is a very active area of research that will bear fruit eventually, but it will take time. I do believe this is the next huge leap ahead and progress is being made every day.

I have 1 gigabyte of memory. I've heard that Vista will run with 1 gig but 2 gigs would be better. Your comments? Thanks
— Larry Crowell, Seattle

J.A.:

I discussed a little about memory usage as well as some of our cool innovations in a blog post that I include here.

This blog post covers the capability of readyboost, which lets you use an external storage device (e.g., USB flash device) to augment the primary memory that you have in your machine. The result is a fairly inexpensive way to up the performance of your current machine.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/11/20/windows-readyboost.aspx

Regarding new machines, it depends on what you plan to do. More memory is almost always a good thing for performance (especially if your disk may be slow). The key thing to look for in new systems is a "balanced" architecture. We created something that we call the Windows Experience Index which Windows Vista displays to you. It shows how we believe a particular machine will work in the "general" usage case. WEI is a usage gauge to understand how your machine will perform with Windows Vista.

What does the Windows horizon look like after Vista?
— Joe Decuir, Issaquah

J.A.: This is in the planning phase right now. Nothing to report right now. There is a great team at Microsoft in place. They are talking with customers, analyzing technology trends, etc. right now.

Microsoft is no longer the only game in town. I have friends who only use non-microsoft technologies. For those that email, surf the web and compse simple letters, what would make these people pay for Vista? Is it better than alternatives from Apple and others? Thanks for your time
— Jason Reed, Dallas

J.A.:

Of course, I personally think it is awesome!

Seriously, though, I encourage you to check out http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bbc16ebf-4823-4a12-afe1-5b40b2ad3725&DisplayLang=en (or go to www.live.com and type "Windows Vista Product Guide"). I think this guide will help a lot.

For document writing: Have you ever not been able to find a key document? Well, Windows Vista's integrated search and data management capability will really help you out here. You can even turn on a setting so that we can see previews of documents in the Explorer so that you don't have to open the document to see its contents in many cases.

For Web browsing: Internet Explorer 7 is a huge improvement and Protected Mode IE, for example, is only available in Windows Vista so that you get a safer browsing experience.

For e-mail: Windows Vista will index your e-mail in most cases so that you can search quickly and find that e-mail simply by using some snippet of the text / content that you might remember.

There are so many other features that would benefit you even if you are just doing the basic things on your computer. If for no other reason, you should consider Windows Vista for its improved security/safety features.

But...I think if you try it you'll find that it is just fun to use!

My impression of UAC (user account control) is that while it has value, the defaults seem a bit restrictive and some fairly safe procedures require confirmation. Also, the tool for modifying UAC settings seems to have been hidden deliberately. Any comment on the philosophy behind UAC implementation?
— Jim, Redmond

J.A.: I did a lengthy (and complicated -- sorry) blog entry on this topic.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/23/security-features-vs-convenience.aspx

It explains some of our reasoning behind what we did. I explain some of the ways that you can tailor the system to fit your usability/security balance that you might want.

Can you talk a bit about the improvements in networking. Is it easier for a small business to put a network together with multiple subnets, remote users etc.
— Thom McCann, Seattle

J.A.:

This is a great topic. There are so many improvements in this space. I have used the link to the product guide in several other responses and here again you might want to review it.

Here are some cool things that come to mind quickly.

1. We sense new networks and ask the user whether this is a "home." "work," or "public" environment. Depending on the answer we automatically set the defaults for security. In the public space (a coffee shop) the defaults protect you from spying eyes. At home we set up an environment to easily share between PCs. Ditto for the work environment. If you leave the area and some time later come back to the location, then the system automatically adjusts your settings without you having to think about it. That's cool and that's easy!

2. We can automatically share media libraries between machines at home so your kid can listen to your Barry Manilow collection (yeah... right).

3. All the networking setup is more visually intuitive. In many cases we do it for you automatically and in other cases the system helps you configure the system.

4. We improved remote assistance. I often use this to support my mother who is in Boston or my mother-in-law who is across town.

5. We have a native TCP/IP v6 stack. This prepares businesses and users for the coming future.

6. Our new TCP/IP stack is very efficient. allowing higher-speed access in high-latency networks.

7. We updated the ability to roam documents from machine to machine. It is quite seamless in Windows Vista. I have my documents on a server and it doesn't matter what machine I use, my documents are update to date. This is great when you have a laptop that you travel with and an office computer.

Needless to say ... there are many improvements.

When Apple migrated to 64 bit Unix in their OSX platform they left a lot of hardware and users behind. Many hardware manufacturers could not keep up with Apple's demand for driver updates so some users were stuck with cards and peripherals that were rendered obsolete before their time by incompatibility with the 64 bit architecture. My question is: What assurance do we as users have that this will not be a protracted issue with the current generation of 32 bit peripherals that are currently XP compliant when Microsoft launches Vista? Thank you.
— Lance Hayes, Burien

J.A.:

Great question.

We are not changing processor architectures or bus architectures so your hardware will in most cases be fine -- what you need are the drivers to be updated.

We have been working this issue for many years now. Remember we shipped the Windows XP 64bit version several years ago. What we decided to do for Windows Vista is say that to get the logo you needed to have both 32bit and 64bit drivers. So, we expect this will help create a bigger array of drivers.

Still, this is going to take time even though we have made awesome progress with Windows Vista. Windows has such a huge device base that it will take time for all the drivers to be converted. Windows Vista and the programs we have put in place will really help this move. What's cool is that as drivers become available they will show up on Windows Update and they can be installed in a very simple fashion.