Anyone Tried The Vista Public Beta?


Thats the default blue one? Ya, I changed the theme too. I dont hate the regular theme, just brown isn't my tatstes. And any OS that installs windows drivers for a windows networked printer without me giving it the drivers is A+ in my book.
 
...More beautiful and efficient than Windows will ever be.
We must not be talking about Ubuntu anymore.

Windows user?
Good god no! What do you take me for, a fool? I've been linux-only for about a year, and dual-boot for a year before that. I'm just saying, ubuntu's pretty ugly. I like the way it thinks though... even if 6.06 doesn't work on my computer.
 
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Attempt to create new partition for Ubuntu - fail, not enough space.
Attempt to resize XP partition to make room - fail.
Solution - wipe hard disk.

I am now free from the bonds of Windoze.
 
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...More beautiful and efficient than Windows will ever be.
We must not be talking about Ubuntu anymore.
I think ubuntu is much nicer looking than windows. Its default theme is brown/orange, which most people don't like, but I actually think it looks good. But if you don't like it you can easily change it to look MUCH better.
it's better if not equal to pre-XP, I hate the XP theme

but there are some themes that look much better than windows defaults
 
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For me, the most interesting news was that there is supposed to be an option to install Vista without all the graphic crap, just the system console (UNIX times?). I hope it'll be like that :rolleyes:.
 
For me, the most interesting news was that there is supposed to be an option to install Vista without all the graphic crap, just the system console (UNIX times?). I hope it'll be like that :rolleyes:.

If only you were given the raw OS and then build it up using the components of your choice. But never going to happen while MS want to bloat it up and shove there own products at us ..
 
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For me, the most interesting news was that there is supposed to be an option to install Vista without all the graphic crap, just the system console (UNIX times?). I hope it'll be like that :rolleyes:.

Don't worry - they will bloat it too. It isn't a way of the wintel business to operate making things smaller and more efficient.
 
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Here's a bit of info:

Windows vista boasts a totally new desktop, it's vector based, this is why you need a super graphics card. Okay this is not news, but what may have escaped us is: The beta version of vista does not impliment this feature, it's still bitmap based. The Vector based desktop will be an implimented option in the full release, so we have still yet to see how it will really perform.
 
I'm thinking about full booting ubuntu on my half buntu - half xp machine, but the only thing really stopping me is a good dreamweaver like website creator and p2p program, do they exist for this platform?
 
I'm thinking about full booting ubuntu on my half buntu - half xp machine, but the only thing really stopping me is a good dreamweaver like website creator and p2p program, do they exist for this platform?
im sure azureus works on ubuntu, and for website creation, you can use dreamweaver using crossover office.
There are not really good naitive website editors, as far as I know...
 
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Here's a bit of info:

Windows vista boasts a totally new desktop, it's vector based, this is why you need a super graphics card. Okay this is not news, but what may have escaped us is: The beta version of vista does not impliment this feature, it's still bitmap based. The Vector based desktop will be an implimented option in the full release, so we have still yet to see how it will really perform.

There are some apps what are using vectors for all their GUIs. Mackie Traction and Ableton Live are very good examples of such vector GUIs. Suprisingly they don't need Vista massive requirements for that. And they are drawing everything using just a CPU. How it can be, how? :rolleyes:

I know how.

But doing things efficiently is hardly Wintel philosophy. The whole PC business is based on imposing bigger and bigger hardware requirements in the name of a feature bloat. (and I was part of it for some time too...)

So I will ask - how Vista "flashy" gui will allow me to write C code better?

I can not be excited by such "features" anymore. It got just boring after all those years of upgrades. Things are fast and good enough and it will be interesting how common people will react to the Vista.
 
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But doing things efficiently is hardly Wintel philosophy. The whole PC business is based on imposing bigger and bigger hardware requirements in the name of a feature bloat. (and I was part of it for some time too...)

Actually, I'm not sure this is totally true. The nature of computing is "I need something faster and better" And it's not just Microsoft that's the root cause of this. It's guess what? Games! Games require better hardware all the time, if you don't keep up then you're not going to be able to play them, or at least not get the full experience. So don't go blaming Microsoft alone for this.

I know what people are going to say next: The operating system should be the slimmest use of the computer system, giving 99% of the hardware over to the applications. But, the operating system these days is so much more than a basic file and application manager.

Myself I see this as progress, it doesn't matter that the hardware requirements are higher, we will all eventually have the minimum hardware to be able to run vista eventually anyway. You can't go backwards when designing something new, whether is be the latest OS or the latest game, both usually are designed for something better than the hardware you are presently running.

Edit: Can I just add, that there are people who will slag off Microsoft no matter what. Microsoft could bring out an identical package as a Linux distro and these people will still say it's cr*p. I find this quite annoying, I have said before and I will say it again, the marketplace has an opening for all. On another point, Linux will never take over the home market. The home user wants simple connectivity to media devices such as cameras etc. Okay so Linux can do this, but not without a lot of playing around, if you want to know what I mean, go out and buy the latest firewire video device and plug it in to your Linux box, I bet it's not a matter of throwing in the supplied CD and you're away! It's a bit like your television, you want a TV that just works and you click a button and you are viewing BBC! You don't want to know the real channel number or how the UHF or digital decoder works. This is where Microsoft has cornered the market. Plain and simply, Linux is not designed as a multimedia system and windows is not as secure as Linux, but both have their place in the market.
 
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The market would be completely stale if there wasn't such an increase in requirements all the time! So it doesn't bother me too much has anyone got anything positive to say about vista taking into accounts its beta and isn't called linux?
 
But doing things efficiently is hardly Wintel philosophy. The whole PC business is based on imposing bigger and bigger hardware requirements in the name of a feature bloat. (and I was part of it for some time too...)

Actually, I'm not sure this is totally true. The nature of computing is "I need something faster and better" And it's not just Microsoft that's the root cause of this. It's guess what? Games! Games require better hardware all the time, if you don't keep up then you're not going to be able to play them, or at least not get the full experience. So don't go blaming Microsoft alone for this.

I know as I once had been an avid gamer myself. I'm for all that responsible too. But at one moment I just got enough of it. In other words I got exhausted because of this constant strugle with hardware/software upgrades.
(and how many FPS games you can really play and don't have enough?)

And I'm not blaming Microsoft for having an effective business scheme. I just don't like where is it coming as "faster, bigger" isn't that needed to pursuit so much today.

And it can be discussed if the Vista features like flashy gui is actual good for a system productivity. It all look like a nerd type feature. And hardware tax is heavy, too heavy imho as I know examples of apps what are doing similar things at fraction of resources.

I know what people are going to say next: The operating system should be the slimmest use of the computer system, giving 99% of the hardware over to the applications. But, the operating system these days is so much more than a basic file and application manager.

Actually even windows kernel isn't taking that much resources itself. It's a whole enviroment what is eating most of it.

Myself I see this as progress, it doesn't matter that the hardware requirements are higher, we will all eventually have the minimum hardware to be able to run vista eventually anyway. You can't go backwards when designing something new, whether is be the latest OS or the latest game, both usually are designed for something better than the hardware you are presently running.

For games how the screenshots do look is an everything. Obviously developer has to be competitive here and it will push an envelope. Sometimes even too much hence some insane hardware requirements for some games.
(I consider "Doom3" prime example of it where its stencil type shadows putted a very heavy strain on GPUs)

But for productivity type apps it's not good thing imho. Applications should have just enough of functionality for a given task. But it's not so and prime example is MS Office. Rarely anyone is using even 10 percent of its functionality and what MS is offering for more basic (but not primitive) word processing? The Wordpad? Oh my...

Edit: Can I just add, that there are people who will slag off Microsoft no matter what. Microsoft could bring out an identical package as a Linux distro and these people will still say it's cr*p. I find this quite annoying, I have said before and I will say it again, the marketplace has an opening for all. On another point, Linux will never take over the home market. The home user wants simple connectivity to media devices such as cameras etc. Okay so Linux can do this, but not without a lot of playing around, if

Never say never. Empires were falling before and Microsoft isn't invisible.
So far its greatest asset is 3rd company support. But Linux is gaining here too albeit slowly but it is. Linux has also a great advantage being completely platform indepedent. I know that there was WinNT for Alpha but MS can not match such flexibility. Even because of bureaucratic reasons. It's an elephant or perhaps I should say a dinosaur.

you want to know what I mean, go out and buy the latest firewire video device and plug it in to your Linux box, I bet it's not a matter of throwing in the supplied CD and you're away! It's a bit like your television, you want a TV that just works and you click a button and you are viewing BBC! You don't want to know the real channel number or how the UHF or digital decoder works. This is where Microsoft has cornered the market. Plain and simply, Linux is not designed as a multimedia system and windows is not as secure as Linux, but both have their place in the market.

The driver support is important but imagine a hardware manufacturers would make an agreement for making a platform indepedant (even at low level) protocols for such devices? X11 is very good example of such protocol.
There are also things like I2C and 1-wire for communicating between even simple chips. (but not revelant for os level things)

Put a RISC cpu into a GPU (Rendition had been offering such GPUs) and you could implement some higher level protocol for 3D graphics not unsimilar of X11. With such method all hardware components would be basically network devices and with upcoming acceptance of IP6 it will became a real possibility.

Then all this driver/3rd party support MS's advantage will be gone. Remeber that Microsoft wasn't really that good forecaster of market trends. The web got it surprised and we know it could only dominate Netscape just including IE in every Windows install.
(and making outrageous claims that IE is a part of os when faced with possible antimonopoly prosecution).
The same goes for Windows Mediaplayer.

There is also a factor that many emerging markets (such as China or India) will be far more price sensitive than we are in the west. Then also it's worth keeping in a mind that such hardware requirements of Vista will impose higher everall powerconsumption of a computer. Multiply those extra watts by tens milions of machines and it's stopping being funny.

Now 500W psu is quite common thing. Few years before it'd be unthinkable for a personal computer.
 
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