Good news everyone

Today, Microsoft have released Vista previews, in both 32 and 64 bit to the general public for testing purposes. You can get your copy here!

Please follow all instructions prior to installing, and don't do this if you don't know what you're doing. Especially if you're using a hookie XP

They ripped a lot of features off linux, and the looks are similar too (nice quality icons and the like).

vista is good, but i have 2 words of warning for you. aol broadband doesnt work with vista yet, and you'll be pulling your hair out trying to find compatible drivers for your sound card/vid card/ webcam/printer etc. be patient and wait 12 months before you invest. vista is also heavy on recouces but microsofts website has a scanner that will check if your pc can handle vista properly

Vista has lots of added features like DRM, so if your mp3 collection not have drm, it might not play, nor might a pile of other things like BT, but then u need hardware upgrades for the most part, but not into betas so will wait for a while

company my m8 works for has just upgraded all it's pc's to xp from something else, cant see them getitng vista next year

Is the beta version stable and if so straight install or a clean system?

yes vista looks very pretty, has lots of nice toys! but as for user friendly! nope! used it for a month 32bit and 64bit, what a nightmare, every thing is hard to find, u wouldnt be able to use it well on an older pc, i shall be sticking with xp for a while yet. as will most people i would think,and its gonna cost a fortune and thats never a good thing! oh and even when its offically released getting drivers for some things will be nigh on impossible for another year,....
thats my opinion and to me! its the only 1 that matters lol ;-p

ive been beta testing it for the last year, and to be honest, it looks by all means awesome, but im not finding any major improvements from xp sp2, so im not impressed at the moment, still prefer my macs. but lets wait for the first release!

I'm no Windows fan. However Vista is 100 times better than XP SP2.
New kernel architecture, programs are not run by the kernel any more (similar to how unix runs applications).

Your PC won't crash if an application looses the plot, new internet security ideas. IE7 looks ok.

I hate NTFS(the hard disk killer), so looking forward to WINFS.

Shell is back and more powerful.

On top of all this there has been great modularising of most system components to make them completely independant of each other. You can terminate your window interface and launch a shell. This modularisation means you get even better performance. Less resources spent.

Search features are an integral part of Vista so indexing is now built in (Winfs enchances this as well) making it so much easier to manage the TB of data you have lying around.

To Toby: Indeed NTFS is a killer. WINFS is awesome and from what i've read performs well. If anything Microsoft have thought long and hard and come up with something different.

In the end it will appeal to many people and i think alot of people will upgrade fast. About the cost i would say you're looking at between £40 - £300 for the various versions, they are releasing 7 different versions (saw it on digg).

However my Gentoo install is very safe for years to come :p

I have heard this Windows vista version is different from all the other xp versions,i know my friend house had this Windows version at his computer in Lake city but he told me this is the latest version for Windows.

Well, I have the home edition and Pro version and
I like the pro version better because it has more selections in the other xp versions.



Thanks,
Richard

Vista codenamed longhorn was supposed to be out 2006, and was forced for an early 2007 release. The problem with it is that you will need alot of RAM and also a good graphics card, it also helps work with 64bit architecture, so it will eventually take over the market. XP is the most used OS around at the moment, and the large advertising for Vista is to help people realise it will be needed.

I know at PC Worlds, Dixons (now known as Currys.Digital) have stickers on their computers saying if they are able to take vista.

it costs u nothing to try vista and the prototype versions is very stable and reliable, guess what im using right now as i am talking to you yep


go to micrsoft, sign up to get a free code, and download the demo in a few hours

as for media centre, media centre is unstable as hell, and vista has media centre in built, vista media centre and vista in general allow the computer to work faster and better, you can even view all ur movies as thumbnails playing without any lag

rotate the media player screen 360 by 360 and spin thru all the windows, and switch from media centre mode and back in seconds

of course assuming ur pc cost u £600 and is a ok spec within the past 3 years

512mb ram, 128mb graphics card, 1ghz processor

i am due a free copy, and the business i am working for are already building micro "book" sized pc's capable of supporting it

and unlike dell, they dont chuck vat in the end

I've been trying RC1 out at work this week.
Its quite different to XP and takes a while to work out how to do all the old things.
The look is quite nice, but it doesn't really help with productivity.
Im kind of glad that there is a bit tighter security, but while i was using it I was still aware of how easy it is to give every thing that asks, permission to run.
Diddn't run all that fast on the quite high spec pc either. Intel core 2 duo with 2GB of ram

VISTA
Viruses
Intruders
Spyware
Trojans and
Adware

Just a thought

Unless you are planning to buy a new computer from March 2007 do not upgrade to Vista, it will not give you anything new or worth while compared to XP. If you have a operating system earlier than XP wait two months an buy a new computer.

If you are going to buy a new computer on my advice make sure it has at least 1GB of memory above all else.

If anyone doubts my advice I'm an IT techie of 18 years......!!!!!

Kind regards

Si