Summary
The intent of this article was to provide you with a glimpse into the way Whistler is performing in real-world terms on workstations, desktops, and laptops. The video support for laptops, according to the testing completed, is the best across all three classes of systems. Graphics support for the higher-end graphics accelerators from 3Dlabs and S3 is still seriously lacking in the initial release and RC1, making Whistler a long way off as a prime-time operating system for workstation users. Further, the power management on laptops also seems to be working very well; the one caveat to this is the deep Hibernation that Whistler invokes on laptops when the top is closed, which forces a cold boot to get the system up and running. Networking, while not discussed in detail in this article, is also only sporadic at best on all platforms. The Network Connection Wizard on both the workstation and desktop systems hung at 50% completion, forcing a reboot of the systems. On the laptop, the dial-up definitions worked, yet the Add Hardware applet in the Control Panel did not find the embedded modem in the IBM ThinkPad. Bottom line: Whistler is showing promise, yet has much ground to cover if it will have a successful technical launch in October of this year.