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Vista RC1 - Post your thoughts...


br0adband
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Well, it's out and about and a lot of people jumped on it quick on the heels of the pre-RC1 earlier in the week. I've got it myself but I haven't had a chance to install it just yet. I don't expect to see much difference from pre-RC1 actually, but the build numbers did a nice big jump up to 5600 for RC1.

 

I'll spend more time with it probably tonight or tomorrow, so I wanted to make this thread as a placeholder of sorts to see what people think, so if you've got it installed and you're using it, let's hear what you think about it, good or bad.

 

bb

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VASTLY improved. Very usable now, and the gui looks very nice at least. Sidebar gadgets are nice and polished now, and branding is everywhere it needs to be.

 

 

 

Oh, and one more thing, OPENGL WORKS AGAIN! If you've been using interim releases, you'll agree that lack of OpenGL support is a PITA.

Edited by REVENGE
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I'd like to make a second reply (I gave Vista a second chance).

 

The theme is gorgeous, and the effects are very nice. There are some nice changes, none that I really feel like mentioning, but they're there. But still, it's Windows, and a lot of the new features, well... Apple thought of them first, and more so, did them right. Oh well. At least the $40+ billion company is trying. /Gasp

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actually i think the changes are under the hood. the network part has been rewriten (which was necessary. now i am able to see other computers in my workgroup :compress: ). there's .net 3.0 for future apps, which dont need to be recompiled for 32/64bit. there's the new search functionality. there's 64bit support in every version of vista (if you have a 64bit cpu of course). aero is just the most obvios feature. the bundled apps have been improved too, although i gotta admit most of them are not realy useful but some are quite good. therefore i personally think vista is a good modern operating system

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I'd expect it to be an improvement over Beta 2. I found beta 2 to be somewhat unstable when I installed it on my desktop some weeks ago. Although Aero was very nifty, and all the effects were awsome.

 

Hopefully RC1 will have better driver support than Beta 2 did. Although I expect it would; since beta 2 had better support than beta 1 did.

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Much faster, but buggy still none the less. I never tried Beta 2 (although I had/.have it) but I had seen it run. Overall its alot faster, utilizes ram alot better. I was really excited when I got pre RC-1, so I installed it almost immediately on my MBP. I then proceeded to make a full backup to a ext. usb hard drive, which it did well, and proceeded to messing around with the system. Then, 2 days later, the wireless became unpredictable, would'nt connect any longer. I tried reloading driver, uninstalling, etc, to no avail. Just stopped working, so I decided to restore my full backup. No workie, restore wont work or even start!!!! It would not start the process no matter how I tried (and I read all the instructions (boot from the cd, etc, everything), but I could not get it to work. So, pissed off, I wiped it and put xp on instead. Oh well, maybe it was me, but it's definetly not stable enough for prime time, but it sure looks good as hell. Only time will tell, and I look forward to hearing other reviews as well from forum posters here.

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Could someone who has used both versions tell me what the major differences are between RC1 and 5536 besides OpenGL? I installed Pre-RC1 thinking RC would be released late into the month, so I don't really feel like backing up all my stuff and installing this new beta unless the differences are substantial. (Also, does anyone know how to check how many times you've activate windows with the key you have? i think I'm running low on the amount of times I have left, so I want to ration)

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Ok, after having enough of the mac mimickry i sent my Vista Partiton to the gates of hell, It looked nice at first but hte moment i saw the gadgets i pulled out the power plug and reinstalled os x, Microsoft is pathetic. Im sticking with XP

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RC1 (5600) is an awesome improvement over beta 2 (feels like ages ago to me), however I acually find 5536/5552 to be best the experience for me personally so far. It is a huge step for Windows. I dont really expect a mac driven site to be very high on it and the 'rip off' comments have already started, so what does it matter.

 

Someone above me hit alot of it on the head, most of the work in Vista is under the hood and its there. doubful? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista is an awefully long list of stuff that's been modified. To each his own.

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Well this thread (and this subforum, actually) are for Windows and related stuff, so if anyone comes here bashing it, get ready to be shown the door (by a Mod, which I'm not one of, however). Since Macs can now dual boot Windows and OSX because of BootCamp, to not talk about Windows at a "Mac forum" would be basically simple ignorance considering the sheer number of people that fully intend to run Windows on their Intel-based Macs.

 

Soooo... having said that, post away your thoughts and experiences. If all you've got to say is Vista bashing (without anything to really back it up), then move along. ;)

 

bb

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I don't think the newer versions of Daemon Tools are working with RC-1 at least the last few builds. I was able to install 3.17 with previous Vista builds. I have RC-1 loaded but haven't tried installing yet. I had 5552 installed and very similar to RC-1. Running smooth with most applications. I'll be anxious to see how some of my newer games respond. New driver for RC-1 released by Nvidia. Loaded fine for me. Also to disable UAP (User Account Protection) and eliminate all those privileged, non-administrator account to run programs, etc, :

1. Click Start

2. Click Control Panel

3. Select System and Maintenance

4. Click Administrative Tools

5. Double-click System Configuration

6. Click Continue (if prompted)

7. Select the Tools tab in the System Configuration window

8. Here you can choose Disable UAP or Enable UAP from the bottom of the listbox

9. Click Launch

10. Reboot to see effect

 

ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/96.33/

 

Allot of their sounds are still generic as their startup and shutdown sound like logon logoff sounds. We'll probably get more of the authentic Vista sounds released with RTM

 

Good review and read that Thurrott put out on RC1:

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_rc1_worst.asp

 

I'm still dissapointed in the new bootmanager, the alias bcdedit.exe. Yikes. It doesn't even see my OSx86 10.4.7. Now thats the worst part. :guitar:

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Disabling UAC (User Account Controls) is a bad idea, regardless of whether you know what you're doing or not, especially if you use the computer in a non-Admin account. It's there for a reason, so if you choose to disable it, don't cry when and if something goes wrong. It's not really much different from OSX in some respects.

 

Try and install something on OSX and it asks for credentials most of the time (especially system utilities). Linux too does this, so why the fuss over Windows finally getting into the game? Why people are complaining or even bringing UAC up only points to the fact that for so long Windows was "wide open" to anything; now that Microsoft is implementing some far better security tools for system stability and reliability, the first thing people want to do is turn it off.

 

Go figure.

 

As for the boot manager, make the OSX partition active and chances are it'll list the other installs on the machine. I have WinXP, WinFLP, OSX, Vista, and 2K3 installed right now on small partitions for testing purposes. The installation order was XP, 2K3, OSX, Vista, then WinFLP. After all of it was done, I just set the OSX partition as active and the Darwin bootloader sees the other 4 OSes automagically.

 

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Then again, why be bothered with UAC when people will end up configuring admin level operations and eventually reinstalling on the next RC. It's not like it's an RTM or the user has an itch to actually use it as the main platform. I might think about enabling UAC, driver signing, and DEP when I feel like I don't have to tweak anymore settings and drivers get more stable.

 

This might come in usefully for some peeps; http://www.vistabootpro.org/

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The point is:

 

If you disable UAC and your system gets pooched, typically you're not going to know why it got pooched because it was wide open, meaning Vista remains a big bloated pig of code that never gets optimized and working properly because people running the beta version of the OS are failing to submit reports to Microsoft so they can fix those big bloated pig sections of code and make things work right.

 

So, disabling UAC is a bad idea, especially in beta stages because you're just bypassing the entire reaason for UAC in the first place: to keep the system working and reliable and not prone to every little stupid issue that comes along due to user error.

 

bb

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I think we all know that UAC, driver signing, and DEP works and does what it's suppose to do. Looking though the change logs, most of the latest updates are either UI or driver related. My point is, I don't want to be bothered with confirmations after confirmation when trying to install non-Vista supported drivers and tweak vista settings.

 

If you want me to confirm that it's a good idea to leave UAC on for common users, then yes, I agree with you. I personally have not gotten a BSOD in 3 yrs and not been infected with a virius since Win98. So yea, common users, leave everything as is and let MS control every aspect of you computer for you.

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