Vistaaaaaaa

I know I've left the Office 2K7 review at about 5%. There's so much left to say about it. I am planning on making it into episodes and concentrating on each component (word, Excel, Outlook..). I guess that would be taking a bit of time, now that I've got my hands on "Vista Beta 2".

I havent still completed my own download of it. Its about 30% done. One of my friends got it and passed it on. Well.. so I went ahead and installed on my laptop (Acer 3002NLC - AMD Sempron, 512MB RAM, 40GBHDD). I didnt want to disturb the XP partition, so, I installed it onto a different partition.

I've installed about 3 previous builds of Vista on the same laptop..and..I was kinda heartbroken after the last build - it was really slow and crashed quite a lot. Ofcourse, it was much stabler than the ones before. Anyhow, the beta 2 seemed a lot better with its cleaner installers. It took me about 90mins to install it.

Once it was done, my heart almost stopped working. It wasnt taking my display driver (SiS760GX) as plug n'play..so I had no display. I had to just switch off the whole thing and head to bed! I dont have a monitor with me to plug it in and check..so I had to wait till morning!

The morning came..and I took the laptop to the office. Plugged it into the IBM monitor I have at my desk.. whaddaya know? Vista booted up nicely! It all looked quite good..but..my Laptop's monitor was still..Lifeless!

Determined to make it work, I tried installing the drivers in various ways..nothing seemed to work. Finally, I got the idea to run the Driver installer in WinXP compatibilty mode. The installer ran once again..and it kinda looked as if it was unsure about installing the stuff. But, then, it did..very luckily and that still runs after 3-4 reboots. I'm smiling again!

What I thought would be a sticky issue once again..with Vista booting slowly and crashing would all disappear soon! I found it to be very stable and much much much faster. Not many big changes interface wise. There are a few things I have noticed so far..and..here's a list of them:
1. Nutty Defender popup : The previous builds had a nutty popup every time you ran..anything almost! If you have the UAC turned OFF, pop goes the weasel! You wont be asked questions anymore!

2. UAC : This was something that played a major role in breaking my heart in the previous build. I wasnt even able to run my Net Dialer Client. So, my activation ran out! When I learnt of that there was an option in the User Account Management Console to turn it off..I was happy to turn it off. Well, its useful for sure, but, I am not on a network and I am the only person who uses my Laptop!

3. Cleaner install : Well, the installer is the first thing you notice! It has improved quite a lot in all sorts of ways. More detailed info is available on whats happening - Copying files, expanding files..etc.. Thats nice!

4. Bootscreen : It still doesnt have a Vista logo..just the little progress bar. Looks silly!

5. Bootup time : The previous build took so much time, that, I could make a cup of tea. Beta 2 is much faster booting up..BIG STEP in the right direction!

6. The experience : Performance improvements are something you'd really notice from the earlier builds. Its much faster and smoother. Finally, we get to see atleast some of those transistions! I dont really have a "Vista compatible" PC, so, I guess I am lucky enough to be able to see atleast some effects/transistions etc..

7. Installing Updates : I dont know if this is new..but..like the windows update window. Its neat and has quite a lot of details like Update History etc. Very handy for someone like me who doesnt update too often.
Once the updates were installed, the box to restart the machine came up and I found another kewl addition. You can now set the time for the reminder..so..it doesnt popup every few seconds saying that the machine needs to be restarted! The maximum time is 4hrs.

Well, this is what I've got so far! I'll update the review as I discover stuff - good or bad!