“Microsoft has officially released Windows Vista Build 5381.1 today on Microsoft Connect. Internal sources have confirmed that this is ‘what will be’ Beta 2 – in a couple more days at WinHEC 2006. What we are seeing right now with this build is a feature complete Beta without the performance guarantee. If you want to put it in terms of practical use, etc. this is Beta 2; it will be compiled and recompiled several more times, mini-glitches taken care of, size and speed optimized, and maybe a couple of minor things changed, but for all intents and purposes, those of us that have been dying for another beta ever since the first; it’s here.” Update: Err, an update.
MS is not releasing this to MSDN developers that paid to get preview SDKs and OS.
I went to my MSDN just now… nothing there since Feb!.
What are they afraid of?
“MS Connect” I think is for “buiness” testers I think? Why give it to them and not developers?
The business developer don’t even know what they are looking at.
I am looking for more managed code in OS so I can start using it BEFORE the product ships, we can have a product.
Will it ship on time?
Anyway, I will check MSDN “in a couple of days” to see if they are ready for developers.
.V
“MS Connect” I think is for “buiness” testers I think? Why give it to them and not developers?
Connect isn’t just for business testers (who are usually a part of TAP). It’s the site for most MS betas and is primarily used by technical beta testers in the private beta program.
MSDN (and TechNet) generally only get milestone builds (i.e., Beta 1, 2, etc., RC 1, 2, etc., and RTM). There are also CTPs of various WinFX components publically available from MS Downloads. Look for the next milestone build to be on MSDN during WinHEC.
I heard that this is the first of Beta 2 builds. I wonder how will it fare compared to dreadful Beta 1.
Keywords are gone, Virtual folders are gone, The sidebar is back with avengence and UAP is rediculously bad (‘Filer Operation’ requires permission…). I don’t see it getting much better if they’re heading for Beta 2 and RC Status.
Vista does look stagerringly beautiful http://winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista5365_rev_053.jpg but it’s got no substance left.
How fast does it feel compared to XP with all the effects turned off (only font antialiasing on)?
My reason for asking:
I turn all the effects off, except for those like font antialiasing and bigger icons. They are practically useless, they slow down things a bit in some cases and I find them distracting. And I know a lot of people who do the same thing.
I’m not sure about “staggeringly beautiful,” but it certainly looks pretty nice. However:
* The whole translucancy thing with windows is rather distracting I find
* Yes the design is nice, but why suddenly make the EQ sliders in green when every other widget is blue?
I never liked the idea of virtual folders myself. If I see a folder it should be a real folder, not some virtual copy of another folder. Windows already drives me crazy with all the “fake” folders that show up in Explorer.
Vista does look stagerringly beautiful
——
Seems to me that its feel & touch is still below Mac OS X Tiger.
Its Recycle Bin blew me away…
I half agree. I’m currently running 10.4.6 but some features seem to look better on Vista and some better on Tiger. The proof is in the pudding though, I’ve only seen screenshots of Vista so far but I’m looking forward to testing it properly once it’s released to see exactly how it does compare once the user is able to configure things exactly how they want them.
For all we know, the person who took the screenshot in Kroc’s posting made it as ugly as possible as he knew lots of people would pick up on it thinking that’s exactly what Vista would look like. I think the screenshot actually looks ok though, but nowhere near ‘staggeringly beautiful’.
It would be far more convenient for MSFT to setup a development blog or site to catalog their roadmap/progress. This would allow users and customers to actually verify their work and see if they are making good on their claims of the “next big version of Windows”.
Dear god, that is f*cking hideous! I’m no artistic guru, but I can assure you, that has to be the best example of how not to present a GUI.
Over the top transparency, ugly colours, poor consistency, there isn’t one outstanding aspect of that operating system that could possibly rip me away from my current setup using KDE.
As for the tool bar on the side, unless you’re running something the size of a 20inch wide screen, running at something like 1600x something, that gadget bar is going to suck up a lot of important realestate.
> Dear god, that is f*cking hideous! I’m no artistic guru, but I can assure you,
> that has to be the best example of how not to present a GUI.
>
> Over the top transparency, ugly colours, poor consistency…
I absolutely agree! I especially dislike the blue/green gradation everywhere. It looks weird and pretty ugly.
I like it.
OS X Aqua looks like clear blue flowing water, Vista has added an innovative green to the mix. It’s reminiscent of algae. It says “Hey, don’t lick this.”
Yes… well you can change all the colors if you don’t like the default… so stop complaining.
Turn off the side bar if you have an 10 year old monitor at 640×480
About two months ago I was experimenting with adding transparency to XFCE 4.4 beta. I turned on all the bells and whistles and had my menus, windows transparent. I ended up turning it all off since it didn’t really add to the UI in terms of ease of use or aesthetics. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you really ought to. Take for example the transparent look of Vista’s Windows. Maybe people actually like their windows to be more solid cutting out distractions from the desktop. I just wonder if the usability of the new Vista UI was really studied to see if it is more effective or if it trying to capture some of the sex appeal of OSX but doing so poorly.
Edited 2006-05-07 23:58
Toots, I’m on machine sitting on 1280×1024 – and no, I don’t feel inclined to ‘upgrade for the vista eXPerience’ – I want my system doing better things, like getting my applications running as fast as they can, rather than trying to juggle the ever expanding system requirements of Windows Vista, then on top of that, the layers upon layers of pointless backwards compatibility for those who think that they should be able to run their 20 year old application, flawlessly out of the box.