Discussion
I've run it as a fresh install on VMWare for a couple of weeks but hadn't really done much with it. Upgraded my laptop last night and it seems to run OK so far, although I've not really tried much other than Office and VB6. It's given me an additional boot option of 'Earlier version of Windows' which I didn't expect and was pleased to see, but it just seems to hang if I try it.
My laptop is at the lower end of the recommended hardware, though, and it does seem pretty slow.
At first glance, the jump from XP and Office 2003 to Vista and Office 2007 is much bigger in terms of UI than the the jump from 95 to 2000, or 2000 to XP. Not saying that's a bad thing, but it'll take a bit of getting used to for me.
My laptop is at the lower end of the recommended hardware, though, and it does seem pretty slow.
At first glance, the jump from XP and Office 2003 to Vista and Office 2007 is much bigger in terms of UI than the the jump from 95 to 2000, or 2000 to XP. Not saying that's a bad thing, but it'll take a bit of getting used to for me.
I would avoid upgrading a machine which you need to use day to day. There's no uninstall, and Beta 2 is *very* flakey in places. Definitely install on a VM, or on to a spare blank partition if you have one.
I've seen it run quite stably on a VM, but on an IBM Thinkpad T42 it was incredibly unstable, blue screening on a regular basis, especially relating to USB devices. I'd avoid running it on anything with non-standard hardware.
In terms of performance, the UI was very sluggish, but that really just reflects the rich new UI look and feel (even without the Aero 3D and transparency effects). You'll need a shed load of RAM and a fast graphics card to get it to feel even remotely responsive, although that might get better by the time it goes RTM.
Office 2007 on the other hand is a dream. No problems at all running it under XP sp2, no real performance issues on a 1.7GHz Pentium M with 1GB RAM, so well worth a look so you can get used to the new UI paradigm.
Pete
I've seen it run quite stably on a VM, but on an IBM Thinkpad T42 it was incredibly unstable, blue screening on a regular basis, especially relating to USB devices. I'd avoid running it on anything with non-standard hardware.
In terms of performance, the UI was very sluggish, but that really just reflects the rich new UI look and feel (even without the Aero 3D and transparency effects). You'll need a shed load of RAM and a fast graphics card to get it to feel even remotely responsive, although that might get better by the time it goes RTM.
Office 2007 on the other hand is a dream. No problems at all running it under XP sp2, no real performance issues on a 1.7GHz Pentium M with 1GB RAM, so well worth a look so you can get used to the new UI paradigm.
Pete
My experiences of it made me glad I'd switched to MacOS to be honest. I run a fair size windows network at work and can't see anything that Vista will offer us that we haven't got now. It's just bloatware that turns a perfectly well performing machine under XP to a dog with Vista. Sure, you can switch off Aero / Glass, but what is it then? - the familiar old XP interface. I've tried it on a few machines, from mid-spec Dells through high end Dell workstations and on an Intel Mac Mini. To get any decent level of performance you need at least 1gb of memory and a fast hard disk with a nice video card thrown in too. I think Microsoft have made a big mistake and should have spent the time leaning out the bloat and making a *really* fast nice looking OS rather than what they've come up with.
Phil.
Phil.
Looking at the screen shots and the reports from other people running the betas of it; it's acting pretty much like a beta. So it's kinda slow, kinda flaky and randomly goes bang... or is rock solid depending on how good the drivers for your hardware is and what software your running on it.
I'm not overly impressed with the Aqua interface; it looks well. I dunno it looks kind of like someone tarted up XP made it run the KDE Plastic-Thin theme and then stuck Desktop Sidebar on it with the same tweaks. The interface itself is apparently being back ported to XP so just upgrading for the eye candy isn't necessary; same story with IE7.
My personal opinion is don't bother touching Vista until it's released to the public and/or SP1 is released, apparently from a few sites I've read Microsoft have their backs against the wall with this one due to the contractual commitments with the early adopters to Licensing v6 being up for renewal at the end of the year. So I'm affraid Vista might well be pushed out the door ASAP to save face and garantee they don't get sued and the corporates sign up again.
I did read a strange article a while back that Halo 2 will be a Windows Vista only game. Due to Vista supporting 'hard disk streaming' which apparently XP and any other computer can't do (hmm... read data from the HDD constantly... erm... ok whatever).
I'm not overly impressed with the Aqua interface; it looks well. I dunno it looks kind of like someone tarted up XP made it run the KDE Plastic-Thin theme and then stuck Desktop Sidebar on it with the same tweaks. The interface itself is apparently being back ported to XP so just upgrading for the eye candy isn't necessary; same story with IE7.
My personal opinion is don't bother touching Vista until it's released to the public and/or SP1 is released, apparently from a few sites I've read Microsoft have their backs against the wall with this one due to the contractual commitments with the early adopters to Licensing v6 being up for renewal at the end of the year. So I'm affraid Vista might well be pushed out the door ASAP to save face and garantee they don't get sued and the corporates sign up again.
I did read a strange article a while back that Halo 2 will be a Windows Vista only game. Due to Vista supporting 'hard disk streaming' which apparently XP and any other computer can't do (hmm... read data from the HDD constantly... erm... ok whatever).
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