Windows Vista Beta 2

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
s.dot
Tranquility In Moderation
Posts: 5001
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:18 pm
Location: Indiana

Windows Vista Beta 2

Post by s.dot »

Do forgive if there's already been a topic made about this.

I've been exploring a lot of operating systems lately. So I decided to try out the windows vista beta. It's pretty cool! The graphics effects are amazing. Everything has a new and refreshed feel, much more modern and high-techish. I haven't really done anything on it yet to notice any bugs or anything (although my sound doesn't work at the moment). I shall have more feedback after I play around with it for a little bit

Here are some screenshots I took.

1. My desktop. The start menu, task bar, icons and background. It's pretty cool. Everything has a "glass" feel. You can choose to set the opacity of the glass. Which means if you wanted to, you could "see through" your task bar and windows, etc. Notice how when I mouseover the task bar, it shows a thumbnail of what i'm doing... in this case, my website.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9035/11wr1.jpg

2. This picture shows the cool fading effects when you minimize and maximize windows. (also when you open and close them).

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8928/23wo.jpg

3. This shows the look of internet explorer (with showmypro of course)

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/5025/30py3.jpg

I'll post more feedback when I find other cool stuff.

I had heard the hype that it would be hard on memory. My computer seems to be handling it very well. (task manager shows 1% cpu usage, at the moment). Could also be because I have 1.5 gigs of RAM.

Have any others tried it?
Set Search Time - A google chrome extension. When you search only results from the past year (or set time period) are displayed. Helps tremendously when using new technologies to avoid outdated results.
User avatar
JayBird
Admin
Posts: 4524
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 7:02 am
Location: York, UK
Contact:

Re: Windows Vista Beta 2

Post by JayBird »

scottayy wrote:Notice how when I mouseover the task bar, it shows a thumbnail of what i'm doing... in this case, my website.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/9035/11wr1.jpg
Just like OSX
scottayy wrote:2. This picture shows the cool fading effects when you minimize and maximize windows. (also when you open and close them).

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8928/23wo.jpg
Just like OSX
User avatar
Maugrim_The_Reaper
DevNet Master
Posts: 2704
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:43 am
Location: Ireland

Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

lol, I clicked the images to load in the background and thought? OSX? KDE? Where's Windows? :)

The icons/buttons look a bit blocky/cartooney to me... I can envisage checking for an XP/98 styled theme. They better let you change that search field in IE7... Anything under the hood except nicer graphics and memory hogging effects and such? I keep reading about Vista but can't find a reason to switch from XP (outside of a dire need to play the next Halo release).
User avatar
jayshields
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1912
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 12:11 pm
Location: Leeds/Manchester, England

Post by jayshields »

Looks very visual memory intensive.

Good job I've got 1.5gb of RAM and a 6600GT :) Although I've always been an "old-skool" Windows user - I always keep the '98 theme on.
User avatar
John Cartwright
Site Admin
Posts: 11470
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 2:10 am
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Post by John Cartwright »

I will likely disable all animations, and set the computer for maximum performance.. It's not my computer can't handle it but I'm much more utilitarian than aesthetic
Jixxor
Forum Commoner
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:53 pm
Location: Lakeland, FL

Post by Jixxor »

Indeed, the entire visual setup is very "OSX"ish. I mean, 3dish icons, opaque desktop, transforming windows during minimizing, etc.

I am also still waiting for a very good reason to upgrade to Vista from XP Pro...
User avatar
Maugrim_The_Reaper
DevNet Master
Posts: 2704
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:43 am
Location: Ireland

Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

It's a feather in the hat for OSX useability...

Only driver towards change I have so far is if near future PC games start requiring Vista in order to work. The next Halo for PC for example has already being announced as requiring Vista (will not work on XP full stop). It's the same reason I switched to XP (eventually). I'd prefer to put it off for a year or more and see what gets packed into SP1.
User avatar
feyd
Neighborhood Spidermoddy
Posts: 31559
Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:24 pm
Location: Bothell, Washington, USA

Post by feyd »

yeah, I'll wait until at least SP1 is out... and even then.. I'm not all that interested. For games, if it's on a console, I'll buy it there first, likely. There's little driving me to want to upgrade right now, since XP is near ideal for me right now (as far as Windows installs go) I'll stick with it for at least a while longer.
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Post by matthijs »

From what I've read vista indeed tries to mimick OSx in many ways. But in the process not doing it entirely well, according to some reviews. We'll see.

For me, it's only a few days and I'll say goodbye to XP :) and welcome to Tiger (macbook!).

Then I'll only have to look at xp again if I need to test once in a while. yipee!
User avatar
Maugrim_The_Reaper
DevNet Master
Posts: 2704
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 5:43 am
Location: Ireland

Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

Are any OSX methods patented? I have such a bad memory for such things, probably because the notion of being able to patent stupidly obvious things is intolerable to me...
User avatar
s.dot
Tranquility In Moderation
Posts: 5001
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:18 pm
Location: Indiana

Post by s.dot »

Meh, it could all be in my head.. but I don't really notice an increase or decrease in performance. I like how it has the auto-save like kde or gnome does. You can shut it down and it'll open up what you had up when it shut down. I can't hardly download anything, because i guess it's non-compatible thus far. Plus I'll need my sound.

I installed it as a separate partition, and I can access my other partition through the 'Computer' area. I don't know if this is how its supposed to work, but I've always had two different OS's and I could never "see" the other partition.
Set Search Time - A google chrome extension. When you search only results from the past year (or set time period) are displayed. Helps tremendously when using new technologies to avoid outdated results.
User avatar
Chris Corbyn
Breakbeat Nuttzer
Posts: 13098
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:57 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Post by Chris Corbyn »

The window thumbnails have been inspired by kicker in KDE by the look of it. Or is that OS X? :P
alvinphp
Forum Contributor
Posts: 380
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2005 11:47 am

Post by alvinphp »

Jcart wrote:I will likely disable all animations, and set the computer for maximum performance.. It's not my computer can't handle it but I'm much more utilitarian than aesthetic
Same here, if I feel like aesthetics I would go turn on my Mac. As for the new IE Beta 2, you can download that now for XP.
Post Reply