But you need to get a key by registering with your net password thingy off the main MS site first.
Anyway’s although its beta, its extremely resource hungry and will rape any pc more than a few years old, and if a good clean install of xp uses 180-250mb of memory whilst just sitting there doing nothing…this thing uses about 800-900 I kid you not ! Did anyone say bad programming ?
Apart from that, its pretty, and the menu’s are sharp and cool, the media centre bit works well with tv tuner and stuff only issue I have is with sound drivers.
The wallpapers and visual styles are something else, deluded self involved mac fanatics will puke when they see the widgets and functionality and bearded linux users will shake their heads.
The main issue, its about half as fast as xp or slower. There are pauses and screen re-adjustments all over the place, the sidebards sap resources and the prompts and security popups will drive you nuts, but apart from that, I reckon its got promise.
BTW : anyone thinking of downloading it would best avoid the download manager. I tried about five times and even got to 80% when it came up with some crap like can’t handle size od download or something. I used the normal download bit in firefox and on my second attempt it downloaded the full 3.12 GB which at the speed it downloaded at 400kb/s did not take more than a few hours. But if you are dial up or ADSL / equiv speeds of less than 75kb/s it might take too long and possible crash during the dl. Its also going to eat up your bandwidth limit if you have one, so ordering the DVD is worth it.
Regarding memory consumption: betas of XP used around twice as much memory as the release. Part of this is all the debugging information in the code you’re running, which will also slow things down.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
I would never buy a first release of any MS product. Downloading a beta version is even worse.
I am going Linux on all my machines. either that, or crossing over to the darkside and getting a Mac. [/quote]
Which Linux ? I have Kubuntu, but I can’t get it to recognise my LAN. You gotta be patient with the Linux, and write bits of code along the way.
A guy once told me to get Linux because I would never be dogged by viruses again. I said, yeah, that’s cos none of my friggin applications would work on it.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
Regarding memory consumption: betas of XP used around twice as much memory as the release. Part of this is all the debugging information in the code you’re running, which will also slow things down.[/quote]
I can believe that, hopefuly too, because any computer under a certain price won’r be running it in a hurry which would cock up the market. All the cheap ACER and Dell notebooks and home PC’s won’t cope. I can’t see them having XP and Vista even if they say they will promote both.
[quote]Meddyg Stigg wrote:
rainjack wrote:
I would never buy a first release of any MS product. Downloading a beta version is even worse.
I am going Linux on all my machines. either that, or crossing over to the darkside and getting a Mac.
Which Linux ? I have Kubuntu, but I can’t get it to recognise my LAN. You gotta be patient with the Linux, and write bits of code along the way.
A guy once told me to get Linux because I would never be dogged by viruses again. I said, yeah, that’s cos none of my friggin applications would work on it.
[/quote]
I’m not a guru, so I will probably go with which ever version boots straight to a GUI and beypasses the cmd prompt. I hated dos, and command line stuff makes my head hurt.
[quote]Meddyg Stigg wrote:
All the cheap ACER and Dell notebooks and home PC’s won’t cope. I can’t see them having XP and Vista even if they say they will promote both.
[/quote]
They won’t cope. MS has a very strict set of hardware requirements to meet minimum vista specs (for Vista certified status, or whatever it is). It’s going to be interesting…
[quote]nephorm wrote:
Meddyg Stigg wrote:
All the cheap ACER and Dell notebooks and home PC’s won’t cope. I can’t see them having XP and Vista even if they say they will promote both.
They won’t cope. MS has a very strict set of hardware requirements to meet minimum vista specs (for Vista certified status, or whatever it is). It’s going to be interesting…[/quote]
I’m sure the new file system will have some people scratching heads and waiting for service packs too.
I tried the alpha off of bittorrent on my desktop a few months ago… it’s a decent computer, I used to be a computer hardware geek and did a lot to it… it’s an Athlon XP running at 2.2ghz with a front side bus of 200fsb and 1.5gigs of RAM.
…Anyway, the alpha was terribly laggy. It wasn’t practical to use at all. To be fair, it was an alpha and I’m sure it will run a bit faster, but none of the features really interested me anyway.
Hopefully it’s not another Windows ME-like failure.
[quote]Freaky Styley wrote:
Ah, Vista…Microsoft’s futile attempt to catch up to OSX.
I can’t imagine myself not going with Apple now that you can dual boot.[/quote]
Catch up with OSX ? Microsoft OS be it Server or XP is the industry standard.
By catch up you mean a pretty clock and some widgets on the desktop right ?
Dual booting and Intel processors has little to do with MAC’s though doesn’t it, once its using MS OS its just like any other PC especially with an Intel processor.
Apple are great innovators, bringing USB and stuff to the world, but any MAC you can buy is pretty much useless for proper use. By proper use I mean playing Oblivion on High res. No Mac can do this, for gaming they suck ass !
That might not be important to you, but it is to me.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
Meddyg Stigg wrote:
All the cheap ACER and Dell notebooks and home PC’s won’t cope. I can’t see them having XP and Vista even if they say they will promote both.
They won’t cope. MS has a very strict set of hardware requirements to meet minimum vista specs (for Vista certified status, or whatever it is). It’s going to be interesting…[/quote]
When XP came out, they encouraged people to move from 98, or that dog ME which was 98 with poisoned mushrooms.
Now to go to Vista you have to have some great spec PC, I think they might be reducing the appeal somewhat. You’ll get people with Celeron M 1.2 256mb Acers and Dell’s and wotnot going to the shop and buying Vista and being really pissed off. They were talking about in on a BBC radio station just today and saying how good it is, with no mention of the requirements.
[quote]kevbo wrote:
I tried the alpha off of bittorrent on my desktop a few months ago… it’s a decent computer, I used to be a computer hardware geek and did a lot to it… it’s an Athlon XP running at 2.2ghz with a front side bus of 200fsb and 1.5gigs of RAM.
…Anyway, the alpha was terribly laggy. It wasn’t practical to use at all. To be fair, it was an alpha and I’m sure it will run a bit faster, but none of the features really interested me anyway.
Hopefully it’s not another Windows ME-like failure.[/quote]
The beta 2 is more laggy than an Old Saab Turbo, if you select control panel it takes 15 secs just to open the folder without displaying icons. My XP setup with RAID 0 does it in a blink.
I partitioned my hard drive and slapped the Vista beta on its own little area (the V: drive lol). Not terribly quick just yet, but visually it is quite striking. It’s obviously not just about how it looks, but in terms of presentation, very high marks. I am still looking to get a little more into the file system and see how it operates. I did notice that when I tried to look back into my C: drive to open up some files, I could not find all of my folders (like My Documents, My Music, etc.) Thought that was a bit odd.
I also downloaded the Office 2007 beta, but have not had a chance to fiddle around with that much.
Overall, not sure what to make of it, but hope to figure out more over time. One thing I do know is I am not a big fan of the IE 7 layout. It’s like they have moved everything around and I cannot find anything. lol I am really hooked on Firefox (especially with the Sage and StumbleUpon extensions).
I can’t say I have any need to upgrade. My computer runs just fine right now. Loads of current-generation software bound to drop in price over the next five years.
One of the main things with Vista is that everything is rendered now, backgrounds, icons, everyghing. If you have a video card with less than 256mb of on-board video memory expect lags in screen refreshes.
Linux: I’ve noticed with Ubuntu that if you’re having trouble with it recognizing the LAN, try going back to the earlier reliese. I’ve got Ubuntu file server running at the office and the current build wouldn’t install, but the previous build works great.
Microsoft are sloppy coders. They set their sights very highj but their products usualy fail to deliver on anything but the base functionality. ANY server application that uses the Microsoft Management Console is going to be very hard to manage.
Microsoft Vista, hold on for a second while I laugh. Microsoft always has tons of issues in the beginning I will wait till its been out awhile. By the time a new OS actually becomes the norm, most people will need new computers anyways, or they can upgrade their memory to max it out. I dont know if that will allow it to run the new OS, however most things are dual core now, and upgradeable to 4 GBS. I dont see issues there. I wont be rushing. I dont see why people are hating any kind of computers. I think PC and MAC are both good. MAC is more expensive but you will never have to worry about viruses or anti virus software but PC is alot cheaper. I have both and like them both, they each have their benefits and drawbacks, its choice. I wont be touching Vista until I have to. I hope Microsoft starts to smarten up and make a better, more secure OS one of these days.