Windows Vista Beta 2 Plagued by Bugs

[Renew Deal]

Here's a little food for the Microsoft haters. This article has quotes from credible Micro$oft people. Personally, I do not hate MS.

What began as a murmur a few months back is turning into an audible grumble, as beta testers and experts question the stability of the latest Windows Vista beta and Microsoft itself hints at yet another release delay.
Testers and pundits alike say Vista Beta 2, released publicly in June, is plagued by bugs and blue screens. Some testers are saying a Beta 3 cycle, which is not planned, may be needed and that the software isn't ready for final testing before shipment, which Microsoft calls Release Candidate 1 (RC1).

Microsoft said two weeks ago that RC1 of Vista would ship before the end of September.

The final release of Vista for corporate customers now is targeted for November. Microsoft's Kevin Johnson, the co-president of the platform and services division, told financial analysts in late July, however, that while Vista is on schedule the code would not ship until it was ready.

With the current timeline, Microsoft would have a bit more than a month to collect and incorporate testers' feedback from RC1 and finalize the code before shipment.
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http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1110083YRM69

[stepnw1f]

1. Where's Ben Burch When You Want to Ask a Question....

The system looks like Apple's old system.... Same thing with XP. It's amazing this operating system is so predominant. I'd rather use Linux if only more companies created software for it. I love OS X.....

[w13rd0]

2. It is VERY...

..."gnomish"...the Windows OS evolutionary cycle has been catching up to innovations made in the open source community since '96...the thing they have going for them is $$$$$, money to get schools and companies to adopt it as standard, and then subsequently, the developer base that then just chokes down the bitter pill and develops their software platform for the most widespread OS deployed...

[Renew Deal]

16. Microsoft has one big problem.

People are paying a ton of money for Software Assurance. There hasn't been a new desktop product in 5 years. Some people are going to get screwed.

[Vidar]

22. Screwed over--what Microsoft does best.

[jayfish]

19. What, Like 3D Graphics, Or USB Or, Application...

installers? Innovations? ..you gotta be kidding. I've been playing with just about every linux distro in existence (I'm posting this from ubuntu) for the last six months and I gotta say it just ain't ready for prime time. That's not to say that there aren't some nice things about it, but I'll take a good XP Pro or 2000 Pro install any day of the week. I don't plan on getting Vita anytime soon either.

Jay

[Nomad559]

14. Where's Ben Burch When ...

Don't look for him here, He was Banned about three weeks ago.

[Rosco T.]

3. Vista B2 should come with a can of Raid and a Roach Motel...

.. from what a coupla of friends tell me, and they are in a position to know.

[Jim Sagle]

4. And your point is?

:D

[sendero]

5. MS has never had..

... an OS release that wasn't buggy. No company IT manager worth his job will adopt it any time soon. Best to leave it to the geekazoids that understand and don't mind that it's not ready for prime time.

If history is a guide, it will be at least a year until it is actually ready for widespread deployment.

[Renew Deal]

17. A major problem with Microsoft

Is they have these great ambitious plans, then they start cutting features like crazy to make deadlines. A lot has been cut out of Vista already including WinFS and IE features. They recently did this with the Xbox as well. Microsoft is willing to do a half assed job just to meet a deadline. In this case, they have delayed around a year. And it looks like it might get worse.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. And I should be surprised?

I run OSX and I love it. There's no point in having a buggy ripoff of OSX. I have Ubuntu and Lynx on my iBook too, but I just play around with them for fun. I still prefer OSX.

[walldude]

7. Won't be using Vista until the hackers

defeat all the spyware MS is cramming in there. If they don't then I'll be using XP for a long while..

[Pavulon]

8. Hence Beta..

[conflictgirl]

9. Glad my new Mac is supposed to arrive tomorrow!

I'm not a regular Mac user yet so it's too early for me to be a snob about it, but I am really hoping to avoid yet another problematic Microsoft OS.

[niceypoo]

10. New Macs run on unix with a Mac interface...

so they are hella stable. Only problem I have with macs is that most software will not run on it. As for vista, yeah its hecka buggy. We are playing with it at work and barely anything runs on it. Most of our network software wont even begin to work with it. We have over 6000 PCs but it will be a long time before my boss decides to go with vista if this beta is any measure of whats to come. Of course it will eventually work after a few "service packs". It's slow as hell also, resource hog.

[wakeme2008]

11. I love OSX... I am a Linux programmer ( C, C++) at work and I wanted a bug

free (as near as any software can) platform for Internet, Photos and my personal life...

It just works....

[Nomad559]

12. It's a "Beta"

Windows Vista (Build 5472) Runs very well on my system.

Here Are Some Screen Captures Of Windows Vista (Build 5505.6)

http://www.top-free-forums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=104&mforum=hornyheathen

:)

[Richard Steele]

20. Sounds like you must be SPECIAL...

...as everyone else seems to have some MAJOR difficulties with it.

What's your secret?

[Nomad559]

23. No secret here

Just lucky with most of the builds I've used.

Everyone else seems to have some MAJOR difficulties with it

Where are these people you speak of?

From what I've read on the Beta forums, most of the Beta testers are not having MAJOR difficulties with it.

I hated Vista (Build 5384.4) on my system, It was slow and crashed often.

?click

:)

[Renew Deal]

25. I don't have major difficulties.

But I am running it in a VM on a machine with 3GB of memory and dual 64 bit processors. ;)

[Richard Steele]

26. Sweet! I imagine a LOT of things are easier with a box like that.

Do you suppose the AVERAGE user just doesn't have the
kind of system muscle this new OS needs as baseline?

[Nomad559]

27. I Dual Boot

XP Pro and Windows Vista (Build 5472) on a P4 (2.8 GHZ) with 1.25 of Memory.

:)

[high density]

13. Windows ME part 2?

I like Windows XP. I just wonder what they're adding to Vista that's so groundbreaking (i.e. why would I want to buy it?) They've already dropped a ton of features and basically just deemed them as "too hard" until after Vista. What's left seems to be mostly a prettier UI and a lot of new bugs.

[Renew Deal]

15. There's a lot of usability features

The new toolbars, gadgets, etc. The mac people will say they're already in the mac. That's not the point. They have also added some neat collaboration tools, made RSS a higher priority, simplified how networking works, tightened user security. It also has a slick interface. It's definitely better than ME. XP has been very good, even with the patches. Right now, I wouldn't upgrade based on what I have seen in the beta. It's fat and slow. I don't even think my laptop can handle it. XP flies on my machine.

[Massacure]

18. 95 was a good OS and 98 and XP great for their time.

I have a feeling that Vista is going to go the way of Windows ME. Microsoft just set the bar too damn high and this pole vaulter is going to get beamed.

[high density]

21. I tried beta 2 and found that...

some of the new security features were way out of whack. Under the default settings, it seemed like every action I took required a confirmation... It could easily lead to an overload where a user would just be blindly clicking "allow" all of the time since so many mundane tasks require confirmation. I was running Vista as a virtual machine and it was painfully slow, but I did stick with it long enough to get annoyed by the "security" features that were evidently doubting that I could operate a computer properly.

Another thing that bugs me is that they destroyed the Display control panel that has been around since Windows 95. There was nothing wrong with it unless you don't like tab controls, but MS decided to reinvent the wheel and changed it all around.

[Renew Deal]

24. I agree about the security warnings.

It becomes easy to just click the same button every time.

[zulchzulu]

28. IT people I know will not touch Vista for at least a year or more...

Maybe have a development sandbox far away from whre it matters...but that's it...