Anybody using Vista?

[netmaestro]

I saw today that Vista Beta 2 is now available to anyone who cares to download it, and so I gave it a try. It was very impressive in some areas and not so impressive in others. Where it was strong was in the area of device drivers and ease of setup. You literally have nothing to do except sit back and watch it install itself. Video, sound, printers, scanners, everything comes online automatically. And the graphics are stunning. (my clock is better than any of theirs though, imho.) Where it was not so enjoyable was the speed, which was extremely poor (although it may have been busy indexing my drive or something like that) and the frigging thing asks for authorization to do EVERYTHING. Jeez. Is there some way you can turn the paranoia down? I wasn't happy with the 32-bit version, so I'm downloading the 64-bit and gonna give that one a try. Might be faster and it should run OK on my AMD 64 3000+, shouldn't it?

[u9]

... and the frigging thing asks for authorization to do EVERYTHING. Jeez. Is there some way you can turn the paranoia down? I wasn't happy with the 32-bit version, so I'm downloading the 64-bit and gonna give that one a try. Might be faster and it should run OK on my AMD 64 3000+, shouldn't it?

It's the same with XP SP2. It asks "are you sure? this is dangerous blah blah blah" when ever you want to do anything. EVERY file downloaded/received over the internet is marked as "unsafe" and a requester pops up when ever you want to edit/view/execute that file. I expect this paranoia level will only increase with time as "normal" people don't much about viruses and spy-ware etc., so they need this "protection". I also read that Vista cannot dual-boot (I mean linux/windows) because MS has changed the boot loader for security reasons, so no linux/vista machines. But someone probably will get it to work

I don't think there is any difference with 32bit/64bit vista other than speed, but then again that’s the most important thing

[Barney]

It's the same with XP SP2. It asks "are you sure? this is dangerous blah blah blah" when ever you want to do anything. EVERY file downloaded/received over the internet is marked as "unsafe" and a requester pops up when ever you want to edit/view/execute that file.

It only happens if the files are downloaded with IE. Files downloaded by other means (Firefox, FlashGet, etc...) are executing normally without annoying confirmation window.

Regarding the speed, it works OK for me and no noticeable speed loss was encountered.

Barney

[rsts]

Nice. Happy to see that it's getting better. I had "experimented" with some earlier versions without much success. I'll have to find time to try the latest.

Have you experimented with Purebasic? Does PB 4 work OK. Do PB programs run OK?

u9 - regarding dual boot. Vista installs it's own boot manager but from there you can get to the "boot.ini" boot and select any operating systems known to it. Haven't tried it with unix.

The only way I could find to remove the vista boot manager was a re-install of XP, which created a "normal" windows boot.

I had an experience with an earlier version of vista (a crash) which trashed the boot manager and cost me quite a bit of time in recovery (it "lost" a partition), but I'm hoping that was just associated with the early beta.

cheers

[SFSxOI]

Yep...i'm in the beta, had it almost two weeks now. Yes, it asks you for authorization to do most everything, its part of the security permissions and has something to do with not allowing things to give their self elevated permissions and stuff like that. You can adjust the levels of security thru the advanced security plug in but I haven't tried to turn down this yet. MS has learned I guess, too many people complaining about security things in windows so they adapted and this is what you get. The speed will pick up in another release. The 64bit version is not any better, it does the same thing, its just 64 bit instead of 32. Installation was 'enjoyable' , your right about the driver thing and its very robust with more being added all the time. Just a word of advice tho, dont do an upgrade install - do a clean install.

Just in case anyone is wondering, PB4 does work in Vista - at least mine does.

I saw today that Vista Beta 2 is now available to anyone who cares to download it, and so I gave it a try. It was very impressive in some areas and not so impressive in others. Where it was strong was in the area of device drivers and ease of setup. You literally have nothing to do except sit back and watch it install itself. Video, sound, printers, scanners, everything comes online automatically. And the graphics are stunning. (my clock is better than any of theirs though, imho.) Where it was not so enjoyable was the speed, which was extremely poor (although it may have been busy indexing my drive or something like that) and the frigging thing asks for authorization to do EVERYTHING. Jeez. Is there some way you can turn the paranoia down? I wasn't happy with the 32-bit version, so I'm downloading the 64-bit and gonna give that one a try. Might be faster and it should run OK on my AMD 64 3000+, shouldn't it?

[u9]

It's the same with XP SP2. It asks "are you sure? this is dangerous blah blah blah" when ever you want to do anything. EVERY file downloaded/received over the internet is marked as "unsafe" and a requester pops up when ever you want to edit/view/execute that file.

It only happens if the files are downloaded with IE. Files downloaded by other means (Firefox, FlashGet, etc...) are executing normally without annoying confirmation window.
...

Ah! this is true. Basically all MS programs mark the files (IE, Messenger etc.). Outlook is even so protected that you have to edit the registry to be able to open some attachments. I hadn't noticed that the requester hasn't shown its ugly face ever since I installed Firefox. Shame on me for neglecting such an excellent non-MS side-effect.

u9 - regarding dual boot. Vista installs it's own boot manager but from there you can get to the "boot.ini" boot and select any operating systems known to it. Haven't tried it with unix.
...

Yeah, but you need to run some special program as root for it right? I think it is part of their security thingy, where only administrators can change settings meaning that the boot.ini (if it still exists) is encrypted or something. Vista not only does not recognize that a Linux distro is installed. It actually insisted on being installed on the very same partition over the Linux installation. It probably just wants to be on the first partition on the hard disk.

But of course it is still beta, so one can't really draw any conclusions yet, but I am worried that they will absolutely not have Vista recognize a previously installed Linux. It's not their style.