Windows Vista Beta 2 public release

[Vincent]

Yes, I'm a sadist :-D

I've just spent 1 hour installing Vista Beta 2 on a second HD on this PC (the HD is on a removable rack).

I'm actually impressed that it's running reasonably well on this AMD Sempron 2600+, 1Gb ram, GeForce FX5200, 30Gb HD.

I thought the GeForce would be the killer, okay it is running slowly because of all the glam, but I'll be turning that off shortly.

Still a bit resource hungry (12 instances of svchost, wtf's up with that?), but all in all it's not too bad.

It's just as fast (slow?) as XP when loading.

It's going to take quite a while to get used to the changes to My Computer though (just called Computer now), the layout is different.

Overall first impressions are good, once I've got used to a few things I might actually be impressed with m$ for the first time in my life :lol:

IE7 and WMP11 are included in the installation.

I'm *really* impressed with IE7.  The changes are quite drastic, and it actually seems to be a little bit faster than Opera 9.x (the last beta release) :-o

I'll still install Opera on here aswell though :-)

WMP11, I've never been impressed with WMP and that still stands today.  It's bloated and very GUI heavy (wants to load thumbnails for everything).  But seen as I never use it I'll never see the improvements/disasters that it has.  And I won't be trying it out either.

All in all this has been an hour well spent.

I'm installing the Public Beta of Office 2007 as we speak.  I actually had this installed on a spare XP HD and I was impressed with the new Ribbon instead of the toolbar.  Again, a bit GUI heavy, but it's very easy to use.

Anybody else tried Vista or Office 2007 yet?

Subtle hint - I'm hoping people don't post with the usual m$ sucks stuff :-)

[Vincent]

That's why I've installed it on a removable HD.

If I fancy a look or testing something I'll boot up Vista or Linux, if I want to do something more I'll boot up XP normally.

It's handy having a few spare HD's and a removable rack :-D

I'm posting this on Opera 8.54 and IE7 is slightly faster.  Maybe only a second, but it's still noticable.

[Vincent]

:lol:

I meant masochist.

[Vincent]

adolescent wrote:
Sadist is correct... you're inflicting pain on your computer.  :-P

:lol:


Okay, I'm annoyed that there's no menu in any of the My Computer windows.  That means I can't find the Options to show all folders etc.

I know there should be more files than I can see, but I can't find a way to see them.

[Vincent]

Vincent wrote:
Okay, I'm annoyed that there's no menu in any of the My Computer windows.  That means I can't find the Options to show all folders etc.

I know there should be more files than I can see, but I can't find a way to see them.

Problem solved.

You have to go into the Control Panel and use Folder Options there.  The Folder Options are the same as in XP, except in Vista there's a "Always show Classic menus" option.

Very nice, now I have the File, Edit, View menus.  Makes things a whole lot easier.

Another problem reared it's head though.  I couldn't see what was inside the Documents and Settings folder.  I had to fuss about with the security settings for 5 minutes before I could see what was in them.  There seems to be 2 levels of security per user.

--edit--

btw, the "Performance Rating" is:

2.9 - AMD Sempron 2600+
2.9 - 1.00GB ram
3.2 - Primary HD - 13.58GB Free (27.95GB Total) (*1)
2.4 - NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 (*2)
2.4 - 128MB Graphics Memory
2 - Overall

(*1) - 2.19GB for Prog Files (Half Life, Blue Shift, Office 2007, Opera, Winamp and a few others), 7.04GB for Vista itself (not including Docs and Settings) and 3.10GB for the old XP install (that was renamed Windows.old during installation).

(*2) - Using Vista's own drivers, the proper NVIDIA ones don't recognise Vista as Windows.

[Vincent]

ptek wrote:
A 2600Ghz CPU, 1Gb ram and it's slow ?!

Actually, the AMD Sempron 2600+ runs at 1.8GHz, not 2.6 (which is what I think you meant).

AMD haven't used proper GHz numbers in the names of their chips for a while now.

@Waccoon
I'll be having another look at Vista this afternoon, mainly to try out the new explorer shell.

@laser
I tested a few pages and found...

Using IE7 and Opera for the first time to load up the same page, IE7 was slightly quicker.  The same with revisiting a page.  But Opera does go "Back" slightly quicker than IE7, although IE7 has made a drastic improvement with that.

[Vincent]

Waccoon wrote:
How does folder navigation compare to older versions of Windows?  Can you add classic or custom buttons?

Unfortunately you can't really do anything with the toolbars in the explorer shell.  Which is a bit of a c***, I liked having  things like folder options on the toolbar.  You can add the normal file menus though (as I mentioned earlier) and they do appear the same as the menus in 2k and XP.

You still have the back, forward, address bar and search bar, but there's no "up" like before.  But that's not really missing as they've improved the address bar.

The address bar now looks like:

> Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows >

The arrows are clickable and give you relative folders to what the arrow is for.

Example:  if you click the arrow to the right of Computer you'll get a drop down menu with all your drives.  If you click the one to the right of (C:) you'll get a list of all the folders on C:.  To go up one level, just click on the name of the above folder, eg clicking Computer will take you to Computer.  Funny how it's not My Computer anymore, I wonder why ;-)

It's actually a very handy improvement.  You have more control over where you want to go, and it's a lot easier to go back to previous locations without having to hit back a few times or delete part of the path in the address bar.

Below the address bar you have another toolbar that changes depending what type of folder you're in.  A normal folder (eg Windows) has Organize, Views, Share, Burn, Previous versions and Add to Index...

Organize > New Folder, Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Select all, Layout, Folder Options (I wish I knew about this much earlier), Delete, Rename, Remove properties, Properties, Close

Views > Extra Large Icons (big thumbnails), Large Icons (medium thumbnails), Medium Icons (small thumbnails), Small Icons, Details, Tiles (small thumbnails with name, type and size).

You still have the info pane on the left, but you have a Folders button at the bottom that shows or hides the folders pane.

I find it awkward not having buttons like "Stop" and "Home" in the web browser (Safari on the Mac drives me crazy)

IE7 has Back, Forward, Address Bar, Refresh, Stop and a search bar in the main toolbar.  Below that you have the normal IE6 menus (if you've enabled them).

Below them you have your tabs bar which has Favourites, Add to Favourites, open tabs, new tab, Home, RSS, Print, Page and Tools.

Home, RSS, Print, Page and Tools all have their own drop down arrows:

Home > (homepage), Change Homepage, Remove

RSS > gives a list of the feeds for the page you're on

Print > Print, Print Preview, Page Setup

Page > New Window, Cut, Copy, Paste, Save As, Send this page, edit, Zoom, Text Size, View Source, Security Report, Web Page Privacy Policy

Tools > Delete Browsing History, Diagnose Connection Problems, Blockup Popper, Phishing Filter, Manage Addons, Work Off line, Give Beta Feedback, Windows Update, Fullscreen, Toolbars, Internet Options

So, without having the menus avaliable, everything is still easily accessible.

One thing about the "classic menu"s (in both IE7 and the explorer shell), they appear below the main toolbar.  But once you start using them you don't really notice the change.

Navigation and hotkey shortcuts are very important to me.  The Mac is geared too much to people who don't do serious work, and Apple has intentionally cut out the "useless" buttons.  I'm worried that Windows is going in the same direction.

I'm not sure about shortcuts, I haven't really tried many except the usual copy (Ctr C), paste (Ctr v), Task Manager (Ctr Shft Esc), Start Menu (Ctr Esc), normal menus (Alt), program switching (Alt Tab).  What shortcuts do you use a lot and I'll check if they're still working.

[Vincent]

Wow, just found something quite nifty.

I've just tried installing Sygate Personal Firewall without any problems.  But after restarting it doesn't appear.  Smc.exe is running, but there's nothing in the taskbar.

A window (with Sygate as the title so I'm assuming it's a Sygate warning message) pops up saying that the service has been started but it is unable to show the user interface.  the only option is to click OK.

Then another window pops up titled "Interactive services dialog detection":


Check device or program request

A device or program has requested attention but can't display it's own dialog box on your desktop.  The device or program may need information or permission to complete a task.  Windows can help you check the request, then return to your desktop when you are done.


You have two choices, Check request... or Cancel.

Clicking Cancel does exactly that and it leaves the process hanging in limbo.

But upon clicking Check request the screen goes black for a few seconds then a window pops up at the top:


The device or program will display it's own window below if it still needs attention.

When you are donw, or if you need to return to your Windows desktop for information that the device or program needs, click My desktop.


And the smc window does appear in the middle of the screen.  It's saying that Sygate has a missing component and needs to be reinstalled.

Now, you can have two options.

One is to click My desktop on the Windows message.  That takes you back to your desktop where the first message window (blah blah needs you attention but can't display the message) is still showing.  You can just click that again to return to the black screen with the error message.

Or you can follow the instructions on the device or program error message (for me it was just to click ok which made Sygate terminate itself).  Once the error has been resolved (or cancelled, whichever) the Interactive services window changes:


The device or program is no longer requiring attention.

The message may have been one that required no action, such as a quick status notification.  Windows will notify you if it reappears.


All you can do at this point is click My desktop.  You return to the desktop and carry on as normal.  If the device is still causing a problem then this process will repeat itself, if not then there's nothing to do.

I was quite surprised that Sygate couldn't show that simple message, maybe the Vista GUI is heavily changed from XP.  But then everything else has worked fine.

All the programs I've installed (no problems unless stated):

DivX Player 6.2
Google Earth (Using software rendering, but that's due to not having the official nvidia drivers, works fine anyway)
ICQ 5.1
Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4
MSN Messenger build 7.5.0324
Quicktime Player 7.1
RealPlayer 10.5 (Vista warned that there was a problem with updating RealPlayer, but I haven't been able to check yet)
Winamp 5.23
XChat 2.6.5
Steam (Half Life and Blue Shift only so far, working fine)
Opera 8.54
UltimateZip 3.0.3 (works fine until you try to quit, you have to end process)
Sygate Personal Firewall (unknown version, but possibly not 5.x) (see the above problem - reinstalling doesn't work)

All in all not too shabby :-)

--edit--

Oh, and DirectX 10 is installed with Vista.

[Vincent]

Your PC should be powerfull enough for a look.

I still haven't turned off all the eye candy and this AMD 1.6GHz is still managing to cope.  And I'm using a 7 year old 30Gb HD that's probably a bit on the slow side ;-)

To get the Beta 2 Public Release just click here.  There's links to an "Upgrade Advisor" that (once installed) asks you what you want to do with Vista (and no, shoving it up Bill's ass is not an option :-P ) then scans your system to see what needs to be upgraded, if anything.

The scan told me that I'd need a bigger HD:

Additional hard drive storage
15GB free space required (Your computer currently has 9.45 GB)

But I just ignored that as I wasn't going to be installing it to that HD anyway.

But instead of doing that you could just click on the System Requirements to see what you need.

To get Vista itself you need to have a Hotmail account (even if you never need it for anything else, it's a good idea anyway if you want to test out Office 2007 aswell or any further public beta releases).  Once you've registered you'll be given the link to download it along with the product key.

A word of warning though, when I tried the servers were getting too many requests.  And it is 3.2Gb.  You'll need a DVD burner aswell.  Or if you've got a DVD drive you could just order a DVD of Vista from m$ themselves.  All you do is pay the postage.

You can download it using any download manager you want, or you could use one provided by m$.  I used GetRight myself and didn't have a problem.  And I regularly maxing my connection speed (4Mbps) and if you have a faster connection I'm sure you'll still max it out.

As for bringing something new besides eye candy?  Wasn't that what they said about XP? ;-)

[Vincent]

Waccoon wrote:
That's actually one thing that really annoyed me about XP.  By "simplifying" the taskbar, combining all windows for an application as one button and not giving each window its own button, that made navigation a lot more difficult.

You can turn off that "feature" in Vista the same way as in XP (right click the taskbar, Properties, uncheck Group similar items).  I've always hated that and I've always had it switched off.

I might switch it back on the next time I boot Vista though, I want to see how the preview works with grouped items.

They're getting rid of spaces in folder names, thank God, presumably to make things easier now that Windows will be getting a proper shell.  "Documents and Settings", for example, will now be "Home", which is what it should've been in the first place!  Less clicking, more typing.  That makes me happy.

Maybe they are, but there are still plenty of folders with spaces in at the moment (like Local Settings, Temporary Files etc).

Thanks for all the info, Vincent.  I'll probably update to XP (so I can actually get drivers) and stick with that.

No probs.  I knew people here would be interested in Vista and seen as no one had posted on it yet I though I'd make a start.

It's probably not going to be an important upgrade for a lot of users until 2008 anyway, and by then most people will have upgraded, SP1 would be released for it and it'll be working a lot smoother.  But it's still an interesting upgrade.

I'm going to try out stuff with the User Access Control (I think that's what it's called) activated.  I was getting so annoyed at not being able to do anything I switched it off, but now that I'm a little used to Vista I'll switch it back on again and see how it limits things.

That's probably the most important security feature that's being introduced.  Itll stop anything making changes on a system level unless you allow it.  And you can't do anything in Vista until you either allow or deny the request so there's no risk of losing the requester or the action being carried out without you being notified.

[Vincent]

DonnyEMU wrote:
5) if you miss the run command on the star menu don't forget the short cut it's still there (WinKey + R)

Thank you, I couldn't find it and thought they'd disabled it so I had to run tasks through the Task Manager.

This is a great tip :-)

[Vincent]

I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that it could be that Vista is now using vector graphics.

That window has only happened with Sygate.  Absolutely nothing else so it's maybe the way that Sygate draws it's windows on the screen that's the problem.

[Vincent]

Okay, strange things afoot in Opera when User Account Control is on.

It's not allowing me to save changes to the bookmarks:

Could not save hotlist file.
File exists

C:\Program Files\Opera\profile\opera6.adr

Try again?

Feck knows why.

I have full access to the folders now, yet Opera can't overwrite what's already there.  And even if I delete the file it still can't save the bloody file.

[Vincent]

Still can't figure out that problem, so I've switched off the UAC again.

It's far too restricting to really be of any use.  It's a nice idea, and it would generally be ok... But when you're trying to go into things like the Windows, Documents & Settings (even on another HD that has an independent install on it) and others and it won't let you it's a bit off putting to say the least.  You've then got to change the access restrictions on the folder and subfolders (you can actually change them when the warning about the restriction opens).  For each user.

And I'm *meant* to actually *be* an administrator!

If the default restrictions weren't so bloody high it'd be great.  But as it stands this setting should only be for the guests or non-admin level users.

Anyways... enough ranting about that, onto Opera my point in this post.

You can't install the Netscape WMP plugin for Opera.  The installer plugin doesn't recognise WMP11.

The files in question don't come with WMP11 either, so you'll have to get the necessary files elsewhere.

The files in question are:

npds.zip
npdsplay.dll
npwmsdrm.dll

Once you have these files, just copy them into:

C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player

and

C:\Program Files\Opera\program\plugins

and then restart Opera and that's it.

Oh, it was tested with Opera 8.54 (build 7730) and WMP 11.0.5384.6167 (god m$ love combining their version/build numbers don't they).  I can't see why this won't work with other 8.x and 9.x versions of Opera - or earlier if the files/installation is the same.

[Vincent]

Can't say I feel sorry for him.  AOL?  Deserves what he gets really ;-)

My modem didn't even need installed (Motorola SURFboard SB5100) and the Blueyonder (Telewest) CD didn't need to be installed either.

It was just plug 'n' play for once! :-D

We just got a router this afternoon (D-Link DI-524) but I've yet to see if it works under Vista.  Maybe tomorrow...