Gordonsmall From UK - Scotland, joined Jun 2001, 1995 posts, RR: 24 Reply 1, posted (7 years 6 months 1 week 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 1407 times:
1) I've had that build for quite a while now, early-mid september I think. I've got 2 PC's running it at the moment mainly for testing, but to be honest I don't expect to be rolling it out before 2008. I recieved shiny new DVD's from MS the other day which I'm led to believe contain the new 'developer-only' beta release - I'll be playing with that later this week.
2) It's pretty OK, but I've noticed as the beta's get closer and closer to release spec they are removing more and more of the 'new' features. For instance the fancy sidebar with the analog clock in the early beta's is gone from the lastest one.
One feature I really like is the scalable 'vector' icons. Icons thankfully are no longer bitmaps.
Another feature I like is the 'auxiliary display'. I saw some laptop mock-ups at an intel conference recently that had small LCD displays on the outside of the lids - these are apparently the 'auxiliary displays'.
Start menu is a lot better, uses sort-of sliding panes now instead of expanding menu's.
New logon authentication model is a lot better, more unix like.
They finally got rid of the silly 'My Computer' labels, it's now just called 'Computer' along with 'Documents' instead of 'My Documents' etc.
Best thing for an IT manager like me is the new installation routine, it no longer requires user input during the installation routine - just set it running and bugger off for 45 mins, come back and it'll be sitting at the login screen for you. No more messing around with unattended installation scripts!
A really big feature which has now been abandoned from the initial release is the new filesystem. WinFS was supposed to replace NTFS, and was more akin to a relational database than a filesystem. This will now be a seperate project and I've recently recieved a copy of the Beta 1 version of WinFS, with the realease of the production code due a little after the relaese of Vista. I'm told that the functionality of the much-hyped new search tool in Vista will be vastly reduced due to this.
3) Now that's a question - the very early Beta's were time restricted, but no-one found this out until the time was up. Later beta's were restricted also, but MS made no secret of this. The current beta's I'm running make no mention of being time-restricted, but that's not to say the aren't. Also, I was recently told that MS maintain two Beat streams, one for us developers which have no time restriction and another for 'the rest' which is time-restricted. I have no idea how true this is!
Statistically, people who have had the most birthdays tend to live the longest.
Nighthawk From UK - Scotland, joined Sep 2001, 4989 posts, RR: 38 Reply 2, posted (7 years 6 months 1 week 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 1395 times:
Quoting Gordonsmall (Reply 1): 2) It's pretty OK, but I've noticed as the beta's get closer and closer to release spec they are removing more and more of the 'new' features. For instance the fancy sidebar with the analog clock in the early beta's is gone from the lastest one.
Now thats beta testing at its best...if its broke...remove it! lol.
By the time its released it will be no different to XP!
Gordonsmall From UK - Scotland, joined Jun 2001, 1995 posts, RR: 24 Reply 4, posted (7 years 6 months 1 week 1 day 16 hours ago) and read 1360 times:
Quoting FLYtoEGCC (Reply 3): Is it more of a Windows 95 - Windows 98 type upgrade, or a completely new OS as in Windows 98 - Windows XP?
It's sort of a combination of both.
Some drivers were very patchy to start with (Nvidia drivers were notoriously bad) but most manufacturers have now released at least beta drivers to cure the problems.
Some hardware works fine straight out of the box.
Most software seems to be fine, unlike the switch from 98/ME to XP.
Statistically, people who have had the most birthdays tend to live the longest.
Rossbaku From United Kingdom, joined Jun 2005, 673 posts, RR: 1 Reply 9, posted (7 years 6 months 1 week 1 day 9 hours ago) and read 1276 times:
I got a copy of it and I have to say that it is nothing special. My mate currently is running it on his system which is on dual boot, although I suspect he too, is not a fan....
The only main differences I noticed is the icons, taskbar and wallpapers.
I will, however install it whenever it is on final release. Anything to be up-to-date!
Dan2002 From United States of America, joined Dec 2002, 2055 posts, RR: 5 Reply 12, posted (7 years 6 months 1 week 7 hours ago) and read 1198 times:
Quoting Gordonsmall (Reply 4): Some drivers were very patchy to start with (Nvidia drivers were notoriously bad) but most manufacturers have now released at least beta drivers to cure the problems.
The Creative driver debacle was much worse. When I first installed Beta 1, I had no problems with the nvidia drivers. I havnt installed beta 2 yet, im waiting for my DVDs aswell.
Dan
A guy asks 'What's Punk?'. I kick over a trash can and its punk. He knocks over a trash can and its trendy.
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