Vista December CTP Reviews

[XPero]

Part 1

Part 2

[clavicle]

Good review! Looks promising!

[N1K]

Part 1

Part 2

Thx for the info...

[suryad]

Now I feel a lot more confident about Vista. Good read especially part 2. I am glad to see MS is on the HD bandwagon. All these extra multimedia management tools would come in very handy! Very nice. I just didnt like that comment about Itune ripping WMP off...I am not a Mac fanboy but it seems like Apple has been blazing a trail and the rest are trying to follow lately and not the other way around.

[mightydrake]

Looks like Mircosoft is on right on the ball, good to see. Should be a good OS.

[sevenalive]

i have had the pleasure of testing Vista Decemeber CTP.

The installation takes forever, but after that your good to go.

a few remarks

Most computers today will not handle most of vista's security features, so if you want vista wait untill mid 2007 for the computers to have these features, plus Ultimate edition will be out. (and better computer's)

Also, if you like the glass look, better start shopping for a great video card. I have a Nvidia Geforce 440 MX AGP 8x and it does not support glass. You will need a Geforce fx 5500 or better for glass to run.

Ati owners, you can read the release notes on the vista site.

Overall it needs work, images are definatley a big issue. In my experience, most icons were a screwed up some how. And as far as icon sizes are concerned, they suck. Small icons are to small, Normal are too big.

Normal icon size is 48x48 there is no 32x32. there are 16x16, 48x48. 128x128, and 256x256.

I like 32x32!!!

Also the games are great, solitaire is improved a lot, hints, sounds animations, decks and tables. Plus you can save your game. I know its solitaire but it is better than nuthing. MS brought Minesweeper back with the enhancements too.

Vista still has classic theme. They need it because if the theme service crashes, how would you use the GUI???

I am not to fond of the shutdown method. The off button just puts your pc to sleep, you can't change it (yet). You must click on a drop down arrow to logoff, shutdown, restart....etc....

The security in vista is great. But there are issues, i kept getting prompted for permission if vista can open up a control panel sub-system (like sounds, or add/remove) They should have those allowed automatically.

I think it was windows defender's fault, but it seemed to ask me every time (no always allow) for you noobs out there, windows defender is microsoft antispyware today.

Another thing, if you still have a cdrom drive, your out of luck. Vista takes 6-8 GB of space on your HDD. The disk is a DVD only, so if you don't have a dvd rom, youll need one.

Vista has a long windy road to take before RTM. I expect no public beta, Come on its an OS not MSO 2003.

However there will be a beta program. also activation is still there, deal with it. Windows is a 200 dollar peice of software, you use it for 3+ years, its worth it.

Windows update is gone, its built in the OS. no more windowsupdate.com!!!

Overall, its a great OS so far, it has issues, i expect RC1 in august

[Ideas Man]

The security in vista is great. But there are issues, i kept getting prompted for permission if vista can open up a control panel sub-system (like sounds, or add/remove) They should have those allowed automatically.

I read Microsoft said this was because they haven't been signed yet, this is why some obvious applets will prompt for permission.

[Biohead]

Also, if you like the glass look, better start shopping for a great video card. I have a Nvidia Geforce 440 MX AGP 8x and it does not support glass. You will need a Geforce fx 5500 or better for glass to run.

I'm using an Intel 915GM integrated chip and glass runs fine. Remember that not all cards have glass ENABLED as default. To enable it you'll need to edit the registry. I think in 5270 its in HKCU rather than HKLM.