Nine Thoughts About the Current Windows Vista Beta

What major features did Microsoft remove from Vista that they were originally going to include? i heard that there were some major features that had to get dropped due to time constraints.

I am a lab coordinator for a software company and had a problem with Vista 5308 this week. After installing it on three different model PC's, the system would crash with a blue screen shortly after loading. We could disconnect it from the network, and it would run successfully. If we left it alone on the network, it would cycle through restarts.

We tried it on a Dell GX270, GX280 and an comparable IBM (I just blanked the model at the moment) with the same results. Then we got the 5320 vendor build and successfully ran Vista on all three machines.

I got sound to work on the IBM and the GX280, but not the GX270 yet. Like you said in this article, sound didn't install during OS installation, but it installed from the Device manager when I reinstalled the driver.

Have you heard anything about network issues on the 5308 version? The version we have will expire every 14 days. Would like to get the 5308 to work. I will be running Vista on at least 6 machines soon, and later on around 25. It is a pain to reinstall so often.

I had similar problems with it on a machine I installed it on. I thought it might be my router. I have a DLink DI-624 on Cable. Couldn't get a connection to hold. Works ok off the internet service.

In reply to the comment below, WinFS, or Windows Future Storage, was dropped from Vista due to time constraints. It essentially entails the idea of keeping all your files in one "store" and having them sorted completely by metadata.

More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/winfs

I believe I speak for most Windows users around the planet that the Windows OS has had a long history of interface inconsistency. Dear Microsoft, pleeeeeeeease banish this pernicious problem once and for all in the forthcoming Vista!

microsoft paint-- truly the least progressive "feature" of all windows releases-- has remained the purest, simplest, and most useful component of the windows operating system. (take that how you like.)

Have you heard anything about network issues on the 5308 version? The version we have will expire every 14 days. Would like to get the 5308 to work. I will be running Vista on at least 6 machines soon, and later on around 25. It is a pain to reinstall so often.

Babe, if you had the legal version, you would be able to activate your version of Windows Vista Beta and use it for the full length of the beta (IIRC, 180 days).

Please, stop spreading miss information.

I just installed Vista on an Emachines T6420, it detected the onboard network card (nvidia nForce) also detected built in sound card, but the sound does not work whatsoever (Detects it correctly, yet no sound from any of the ports) It did cause me to lose ALL access to the XP partition, could not boot or access it at all... No problem, thats what backups are for :)

Microsoft should fix the problems in XP first before rolling out another halfass product.

You should mention what apps you are using in your adventure. Email, productivity, utilities / tools so we get a better idea of what you are doing.

I would be really pissed if they messed with Window's Paint. It's one of the few Window's features I actually USE. I don't do heavy image editing, but the little I do, Paint is perfect for. It's easy to use, and i've been using it....forever. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If I need a more fully-featured editor, i'll get Photoshop. But leave Paint alone.

What is really scary about the whole issue is that they are suppose to release vista sometime this year and they are having such issues with the beta versions. I hope Microsoft can clean up their act before they loose more customers than what they have already

"But Microsoft's Widget platform has the interesting capability of letting software developers write one Gadget that can run in Vista, in a browser (via the Windows Live site), or in a new hardware feature for notebooks called Windows SideShow."

That's great. Now we can have Gadet-class viruses. Is this capability really a good idea?

Hi, I am a home user, I have two children who are gamers and go online for some games. I have a wife who is just setting out to learn basic uses for the p.c. such as email. I myself, with nothing except browsing experience get to try troubleshooting every time there is a problem. What would help me would be a media player capable of playing every type of media file. I would love it if I didn't have to choose an app. to open a file because I often choose the wrong one and then am stuck with the results. I imagine that if media player could tell what codec I needed to play a file and then get it for me and install it, my problems there would be over. That would be fantastic, I'm lost with all the xvid, divx, vorb orbis, ogg, avi,wmf, choices and don't want to be facing this problem for the rest of my life or have a machine with twenty different media players. Anything else to simplify the emailing would be great. I have hotmail, if I want to "send page" the computer automatically uses Outlook Express which can't work for some reason and I don't know how to make it work. I have to copy the page and open hotmail and then send the page after pasting it. I'd prefer a one click solution to this and not have to learn anything else. thanks very much if you can help with this...
p.s.
I don't want to install power point or programs like that either to see one email a year sent using that..

Peter Kerr: Yeah, that would be a good idea for the media player, but I have to imagine it would be hard to implement. Those codecs are all third party, and there's no real way for the media player to KNOW what it needs until it has it, if that made any sense.

It's kinda like Congress. They didn't know they needed Blackberry's until they had them.

Matt: Babe? :::tsk tsk::: Anyway... the 5308 does allow you to keep the OS for the 180 days and activate it, but the OEM version does not. It expires in 14 days. I suspect the "other version" mentioned in the post is probably referring to the OEM version and it will not allow you to activate it.
Perhaps you don't know everything about licensing as you seem to presume.

Ladiesman: hey, I like the name, I remember that guy on SNL, Tim Meadows played him, I'm sure you knew.

I downloaded a little program which analyzes files. It tells me what type of file it is and I then have to look for the way to open it. I thought if all this could be incorperated into the Media Player and if the Player could download and install approved software to allow it to play the file, that would be Brilliant. I have bought DVD ram recorder, DVD R+ and R- DVD with dual layer...etc. I can burn a DVD on my lap top which won't play on my desk top which may or may not play on my DVD Ram/DVD-R VHS combo player recorder (panasonic), it's crazy Now I'm reading about the New but competing DVD technology about to be released by Sony and Toshiba. I just bought all kinds of gadgets to burn my VHS family video's to DVD so my kid's can have them in the future, but the way things are going it seems hopeless. I don't know why they can't work on perfecting and simplifying one format and making it as user friendly as they can. I am on a steady Aspirin regimen now, I never had to take those before. Technlogy is taking too much time out of my day as I try to figure it out. It's not good that the DVD recorder can transfer my tapes to disc but I have to read for an hour to find this out and which button to press when. Also, my kid's are constantly messing up the computer and can't tell me how. If the computer could analyze itself ancd correct mistakes that would be perfect. Why is there downloads to clean up my hard drive and get rid of duplicate on non used files, why can't the O.S. have this ability built in?

I want the computer to be simple, I don't want to have to learn a new language and I don't want to learn a new trade just to make the thing do something simple, like open a video or burn a dvd my home player can then play.

I am getting headaches thinking about it all the time and it's getting worse instead of better. I need technology to simplify my life, not complicate it and eat all my time. I would pay twice the ammount for a computer if it could look after itself.

Sorry to go on so much, but I got two cell phones and they gave me two little MP3 players, my kids were thrilled to get the players, for some reason when I use media player to transfer the music to the player, it says it has done it but while my computer reads the content of the player, the player won't play all the songs which are on it. I can't figure this out either. I have a brother who is a musician and I tried to load his songs onto the MP3 player, the media player "sincs" the files and transfers them but the player doesn't play them. When I plug the player back into any computer it will read the files in the player and tell me the songs are in there. I have no idea why they won't play. I can load say ten Led Zeplin songs which will play but maybe none of my Rolling stones songs will. I put all the songs from C.D. into the Media Player Library and I can listen to them all, but not on the MP3 player for some reason. I am tired of this crap with everything I buy. If I buy the old technology it works universally, a record worked on any record player in the world, a cassette tape worked on any tape player, a c.d. on any c.d. player so what's the use in getting more sophisticated technology which more or less takes all the pleasure out of these things at a high cost in both money and time?

Peter Kerr: Heh, yeah. I do know about the Ladiesman. He's my namesake!

About the file format thing, thus is the problem. Everyone has their own, and nobody wants to stop using theirs. Luckily, alot of players DO read most of the typees, but there are still oddballs. The problem comes from the fact that companies want to have THE format, while often times third party people come along and make BETTER ones. Much like DiVX.

The more tech advances, the worse it gets. Plus, there's all the anti-piracy crap nowadays that only provides a headache for people who get their stuff legit. The pirates still get past it.

Check out VLC Media Player if you want a player that will play most all formats.

Hi Pete,

I actually did get the VLC media player, but now I can't play my lost in Space shows in my media player. It's not that important, I am wondering why that is though? I have a video capture card so I can put stuff on my computer to watch when I go on the road, I can also burn discs of shows and watch them wherever without taking the original DVD with me. So, I had the lost in space series on my media player but since I got the VLC player I can no longer play that in media player, it won't play there. So, now I am wondering, I tried to burn a disc and watch a show on tv using my home player and while my home player used to recognise the disc and play the shows, now it doesn't. Have you any suggestions for that? The VLC media player is excellent though, it's so small and yet it works so good. It even played some Japanese animations which my kids had and couldn't open before, that's where I heard of ogg files, this is driving me nuts, my brains just not big enough! Isn't there some other program that can burn all these things so I can just play them on my home DVD which doesn't have the VLC abilities?

I'm not usually an open source fanatic, but one application that I'm evermost grateful for is called Mplayer. It can play a huge variety of music or video files, is simple to use (just drag & drop onto .exe file) and no codec rubbish!

I KNOW IM LATE ON THIS TOPIC, BUT CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP
WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD THE VISTA BETA 1??

You dont download it you beg microsoft to be a beta tester and to address a msg from above "Microsoft should fix the problems in XP first before rolling out another halfass product." let me point out that microsoft has been working on vista for 6+ years where as with windows xp they only worked on for about 2.5 years.. so think before you open your mouth and stick your foot in it..

Wow, I realize that this discussion has long since ended but I could not resist responding to the last moron's comment.

All you've done is point out that Microsoft, a multi-billion dollar monopoly with virtually unlimited resources, can not make a stable, secure, efficient operating system (their flagship product). The previous comment was made to express their disgust with the fact that Micro$oft, in all of these years has never been able to fix the problems with XP. Now, as you have so graciously pointed out, they have spent all these years making a product that from all accounts, of every person who uses it, has issues (some major, some minor). What have they been doing all this time? Why is it so difficult to produce something that just works? OSX and Linux are both superior and they do not have a monopoly. In fact, wonderful Linux (which I use everyday after switching from Windows this year) has every feature that vista has either in it's core or through free add-ons.