Windows Vista Public Beta 2 Has Hit
 

I'm downloading my ISO image of it as we speak, getting yours yet? :D

Also please use this thread for vista beta 2 discussion if you so wish. :blah:

I got it last week, unfortunately the unusual hardware on my fastest machine means I can't really use it, which is a pity.

unusuall hardware? do explain please :)
by the way, any idea if virtual cd-rom drives are bootable?
and anyone who thinks that means i'm stealing/pirating it, it doesn't, i simply don't have a dvd-burner.

been released 2 weeks ago...

lol oops :p

:p hehehehehe

I have a Shuttle system, and it's got a lot of unusual stuff on the (small form-factor) motherboard. Hopefully better driver support is coming for it.

Not a chance. The virtual drive is hosted by your OS.

Well it is freely-available, why the hell would you steal/pirate it?

1. uhm... cool... i guess :)
2. any other way to do this without waiting the 2-4 weeks for delivery? and without a blank DVD/DVD burner?
3. i wouldn't, but people might think that, if they didn't know it was freely available.

quote:Originally posted by Too-DAMN-Much
by the way, any idea if virtual cd-rom drives are bootable?

There is a possibility to do that, although you would need something like VMWare ESX server.

bootable in vmware... otherwise no.

vista is shit, i downloaded it, installed it, played with it for a few mins... formatted the partition soon after.

looks nice, works shit. It does too much shit automatically uses too much resources and you can't turn enough stuff off.

On test systems here I haven't had a particular problem with it over XP or 2000. It's a little slower (which is to be expected, considering it's 5 years newer, and certainly not considerably slower), but I've not seen a problem as regards configuration.

What couldn't you turn off?

Normally it takes more than few minutes to turn "stuff" off, unless you are an MCSE....

i don't like how theres no file menu

i don't like how theres no UP button in explorer.

i don't like the sidecart

i don't like the control panel, and how you can't go to classic mode... maybe you can but i didn't check very hard.

i don't like the popup's that hound you all the time, whether it be browsing your extra hard drives to installing an app.

you shouldn't have to fuck around for ages turning stuff off. you should be turning stuff ON.

depends what sort of user you are.

IIRC most users are retards so having stuff ON by default is probably wiser.

An option to easily turn stuff off would also be a smart move.

I'm aiming to try this beta out, once I clear off one of my partitions and do the uber download.

I'm considering Ubuntu.

I use Ubuntu on this machine, it's really good. :up:

Worth noting on the "unusual hardware" note that Linux doesn't work on the machine that doesn't support Vista, either. I've only ever gotten XP to work correctly.

I've tried out Ubuntu. IT is a nice alternative to say...Windows 98 or the early NT series.

But I deleted it after a few months.

I might give it a go again once KDE4 has landed.

Ugh, KDE. I dislike that DE.

press Alt key anytime you want the file menu, or turn it on through Folder Options

in case you're wondering why they removed it from view: to reduce the amount of time spent searching for or reaching a program's functionality, M$ is aiming for a more task-oriented workflow rather than menu-oriented ... the new Office 2007 beta is a prime example

look at the address bar; you'll notice that it resembles breadcrumbs found on most major websites ... you can click each arrow in the breadcrumbs to see the file structure of that directory/folder ... much better than any UP button ever could be IMO

then turn it off! and disable it from starting when windows starts if you never want to see it again

and i don't know about you, but i've been using sidebar-type apps for ages now, it's a huge productivity boost for me, and on widescreen monitors or multiple display configurations (both of which i use), you don't even notice the loss of screen real estate

maybe if you had left it installed for more than a few minutes, you would easily notice it in the sidebar of the main control panel window ... can't miss it, it's only one of two items on that entire side of the window

you can turn those off too ... just five minutes of googling will tell you how

of course, that requires you to leave the operating system installed for more than five minutes ;)

and some people wonder why it's still in BETA .....

to each their own, but i've been using vista for quite some time now, and there are already many features in it that i can't live without anymore

In applications? I quite like that. I personally think that's a familiarity thing.

Breadcrumb bar does this better, you're just familiar with "up".

This is a security thing. I'm happier that it's there, although it's apparently still under heavy tuning so that the number of times it pops up is minimised.

And you can install an app just for yourself without the popup. Not a lot of applications support this right now, for obvious reasons.

Poor guideline. The defaults should be sensible for a novice user.

man i wish my Vista DVD would hurry up and get here, i mean i woulda paid for express shipping given the option...

on another note, would someone care to explain what a breadcrumb bar is to me?

The bar at the top and bottom of this forum that reads:

Is an example of a breadcrumb bar. It shows where you are. The one in Vista allows for sideways navigation at any level by adding dropdowns to the "breadcrumbs" (so, in this case, you could drop down "Breaking News" and get GD etc., all the things at the same level), but the principle is the same.

hmm.... sounds very cool.. stupid slow ass shipping... grumble grumble.

If you want a taste of it now, the GNOME "explorer" (called nautilus) for *nix has used a breadcrumb bar for a while now. It doesn't include the neat dropdown stuff though.

nah, i can wait, plus i'm not even sure what "*nix" is..
:)

*nix = linux, unix, other unix type operating systems, etc...

Yeah, it's a generic term for "UNIX-like" operating systems, because "UNIX" means something specific (in fact, one of several specific things, depending on context), and "UNIX-like" is a whole 5 characters longer ;)

so... tell me guys, what would you say is the best and worst things about vista?

The worst thing is definately having hardware whose creators are too lazy to make drivers for ;)

UGH...GNOME is waay too dumbed down for my tastes. And last time I tried it, it was buggy...very buggy. I forget which version came with Breezy Badger but all I remember is going back to KDE right after...

Gnome is good. Earlier versions were pretty buggy, but this is really getting to be a great window manager.

If I were a little more anal, I'd point out that GNOME isn't a Window Manager, it's a Desktop Environment. GNOME's default WM is Metacity.

The relationships between these things are so bloody complicated, though. It's insane.

On the KDE vs. GNOME thing:

My experiences with GNOME are that the 2.x series has always been pretty good, if with the occasional bug (mainly in very old versions though, I never had a problem with the version in Breezy). KDE, in my experience, is at least as buggy and really, really ugly.

I wouldn't say GNOME is very dumbed-down though. The settings are clear and functional, which is what's important. I don't like KDE's interface busy-ness. There are a couple of annoying missing settings in GNOME though (what the hell is gnome-screensaver doing missing out the xscreensaver page which is necessary to use half of the bloody savers, for example?).

When comparing KDE to GNOME, though, I think that GNOME wins in clarity, usability, look and style, and minimalism (which is really more relevant as part of the earlier factors). Both DEs have a couple of apps without real equivalents in the other, but that's temporary at best.

I know some people are happy with KDE, and I can certainly see where they're coming from. I just think that GNOME has been better-designed to work with people, in usability terms, whereas KDE occasionally suffers from devs adding things without thought because it'd be cool (the term is usually "creeping featurism"), meaning that it's pretty good for geeky people who like to play with stuff, but I don't think it's the desktop I'd recommend to a new user, and it's not one I particularly enjoy using.

amen to that ... of the people in my office, i'm the only one using vista that can use aero glass, and even then i had to do some "fixing" myself to get it working

my other gripe is Java ... the current JRE disables aero glass, so i haven't used any java-based apps on a regular basis yet ... other apps i use disable glass as well, so i've found replacements for those apps for now

mm ... what else ...

- lack of windows gadgets currently available (i'm beginning to develop my own)

- speaking of gadgets, the rss gadgets don't allow custom rss feeds (LAME!) ... well, not yet anyway, so i'm working on hacking the rss gadget to show my feeds instead

- similar applies to the slideshow (photo) gadget ... only allows you to use the Pictures folder of your user account, can't customize to use a different path, or web path for that matter

- wireless network connection is a little buggy for me .. disconnects every 3-4 minutes or so (VERY annoying)

- had system lockups (crashes) from doing too much ... serves me right for being a power user ;)

luckily, this is still a beta build, and the good FAR outweighs the bad at this point for me, because there are plenty of features that are just amazing

Well, usability depends on what the particular person is looking for. GNOME's usability seems to mirror Apple's OS9-OSX. But KDE's tends to mirror Windows, which is what I was used to. Though it seems that GNOME hasn't gotten the seamlessness of Apple's OS right yet. If and when GNOME acts and feels like OSX in terms of stability and appeal is when I will adopt it. But until then KDE wins my vote.

Dude, you can turn all that stuff off, you can swuitch to classic mode to get the up button, and the file menu-etc. you can remove the sidebar and yu CAN switch to classic, its in two big words, "Classic View" right there.and the popups can be turned off in Control Panel (classic)>User Accounts>Change security settings>Uncheck the boxand hit ok and restart. there all your problems fixed if you would take oh, i don't know 10 minutes to look through the settings...

To be fair, you actually have to mess a little with XP to get it running on that machine, and Linux won't run properly at all, so I can't really complain too much.

I expect driver support will come in time. Because it's dependent on third-party developers we can't reasonably expect full support at this point.

That's a real shame, I didn't know that. I know that OpenGL conflicts with Glass, is it because newer versions of the JRE use GL-acceleration of Swing rendering (although I though they used DX on Windows)?

Edit: AHA! Java 5 (Tiger, current) conflicts with Glass because of some random thing, but this has already been fixed in the beta versions of Java 6 (Mustang). If you're feeling brave, you can get the development versions (which have worked pretty well for me :)) on the Java 6 website.

Why do they even bother...JRE runs like crap on any machine. And more development on it only makes it worse.


On the Vista Tip, It just finished downloading this morning and had it installed in an hour. I can understand the gripes about Vista, but it seems more organized than before. And Aero runs pretty nice on my GF 6800XT.

What really surprised me is that hardware installation was very good out of the box. It detected and installed drivers for things I had to struggle to get installed in XP. And for some unknown reason, Bon Echo runs faster than on XP.

Bull, I'm afraid. Java's main problem is desktop APIs, since its OS-independence makes these kinda wonky. Its performance and reliability are well-known to be exemplary.

Whatever you say...