Windows Vista Beta 2 users

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ictgeeknz

255 posts

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#9012 13-Aug-2006 22:28

I think I used Windows Vista Beta 2 for about three weeks, before I got fed up with it. It was nice to preview the new interface, functions etc. however, it was too buggy for me. I think I'll wait now until the Release Candidate version is available before installing it on a test computer again.

Is anyone currently using this release (on a daily basis)? Comments on performance and/or issues?

bradstewart

4338 posts

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#43871 14-Aug-2006 01:38

I used beta 2 for some time. I felt there were many improvements over the previous builds but it was still disapointing. It just didnt have the reliability or performance that there should have been for a beta 2 release. It would frequently freeze, fall over and many games wouldnt run.

Although there were just too many issues for me to be able to get rid of XP completely I was able to do all my day to day stuff on it without issue. Photoshop and all the other design programs I use worked fine, but it was when it came to intensive programs like games that it got problems.

I have been using build 5456 for the last month and a half and the improvement over beta 2 is remarkable. Its fast, havent yet had windows crash on me, sure there have been program crashes and a couple of explorer crashes, but hasn't managed to bring down windows yet. It was almost 6 weeks before i restarted my PC.

I've been playing Need for Speed: Most Wanted with every graphic setting st its highest and it funs smoother than it ever did on XP.

I'm eagerly awaiting RC1 and hope it will be a good release - theres no reason a Release Candidate build should not be able to replace XP fully.

ictgeeknz

255 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#43874 14-Aug-2006 07:47

Things I liked:

Finally, a free Chess game!
Backup and Recovery (updated)
Aero Glass theme
Start Menu (updated) and no more 'Start' button!
Windows Shadow Copy
Windows Media Player 11

Things I'll need to get used to:

User Account Control (UAC)
Issues: as an 'admin' do I really have to authorise Disk Defragmenter and other tools to run?!? CA eTrust triggered UAC everytime I logged on.

Network Center
Issues: sharing was difficult in that, despite the shared folder having read/write permissions, my Windows XP workgroup computers could read but not write to the folder! Microsoft... it'd be nice if you didn't hide Map Network Drive!

Things that I managed to break:

Windows Media Player database became corrupted.
Windows Explorer degraded in performance over time?
Windows Media Center went into an unrecoverable black screen state during setup.

Things that were "ho hum"

OS installation took too long?
Windows Sidebar (two years, too late)
Windows Mail (Outlook Express rebranded)
Windows DVD Maker (slap ya personal photos/movies onto DVD!)
Internet Explorer 7 (bit too much of a memory hog for my liking)

Things I neglected to look at properly:

Windows Firewall
Windows Movie Maker 6