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Windows Vista Beta 2

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:16 am
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?

Re: Windows Vista Beta 2

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:57 am
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

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:13 am
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).

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:17 am
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.

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:40 am
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

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:48 am
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...

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 11:12 am
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.

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 11:15 am
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.

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:52 pm
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!

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:12 pm
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...

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:11 pm
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.

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:25 pm
by Chris Corbyn
The window thumbnails have been inspired by kicker in KDE by the look of it. Or is that OS X? :P

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:00 pm
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.