[review] Windows Vista RC1

[Brian M. Veteran]

Right, well almost every review of Vista that comes onto Neowin comes from Paul Thurrot - and i know some people find his reviews contoversial, so i had a go myself :)

Its short, and probably misses a few points, but gives you an idea of what to expect from RC1. Permalink at my blog: http://www.bma-uk.co.uk/blog/p=33

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Microsoft have released Windows Vista RC1? but is it really ready?b>

Well, after getting someone to do the download it for me, I finally had my hands on RC1 ? and what?s the verdict? Not too good.

For those who remember (well how can you forget), exactly what a shambles Beta 2 was, and it should NEVER have been released to the public. Microsoft plans to release RC1 to the public soon, but is it really ready forInstallationon

The installation has improved slightly in this release, but it?s nothing to really write home about. Beta 2 installation was extremely long, and some of the interim builds weren?t much better, however, this was sorted out in some of the last builds. It has been improved slightly, and on my test machine (a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz (ht), with 1GB of Ram), RC1 knocked about 5 minutes from the installation time. An improvement, I suppose, but nothing to really excite anybody. I still prefer the Vista installation over the previous (and extremely hard work) XP installation though, and gone are the days of sitting in front of a computer for an hour waiting for it to ask you a question at any given moment First Boott Boot

The first boot time, just like every other build, is terrible. First of all, you have that unnecessary ?welcome screen?. Okay, it looks pretty, but do you really need wavy lines moving all over the screen when you want to log into Windows? I said this about the new welcome screen in XP, and to this day, I still refuse to use it, and use the so called ?classic logon?.

Once you?ve finally got past the welcome screen, you see the desktop. But it?s still unusable. You have to wait for the sidebar to load, along side UAC (User Account Control), and a whole load of other processes.

On a clean boot (after me not installing anything), memory usage was 673mb ? which is dreadful. Considering you can still buy systems which have 256mb of RAM, using this much on start-up is terrible, and no doubt, will cause a lot of disk and page file usage.

This memory usage is defiantly a problem which needs to be fixed before it makes it to RTM.

One other thing I think is really strange ? is the use of two clocks? Is there really any need to have both an analogue (sidebar) and digital (taskbar) clock when you first log in? I know it?s changeable, but it?s yet again, something else tClean Performanceo use.

Clean Performance

There is obviously a huge performance increase from the last public release, beta 2, which should have never been released to the public, however, performance on my system was less that satisfactory. With Windows XP, this machine flies (even with my customised UI with transparency effects). With Windows Vista, it crawls. I have an NVIDIA 5500 256mb graphics card, which I know isn?t top of the line ? but it certainly isn?t a low end card ? and should be able to cope with Aero perfectly. But it is still buggy. Turning off all of the eye candy does help performance, but what is the point of creating new effects if most users have to turn them off anyway!

What?s strange about Aero is, that turning it off, actually decreases performance. I?ve never seen an effect that increases performance before, and this should be a compliment, but of course, it?s not good news for those who have bog-standard graphics cards who cannot handle Aero.

Just to do a test, I installed an MP3 encoder. Encoding an entire CD-Album from WAV to MP3 took 113 seconds on XP (using high setting). On Vista, it failed the first time, took 405 seconds the second, and took 348 seconds the third. Not great, but then again, this was a ?designed for Windows XP? application, and therefore could have been a compatibility problem.

When it comes to base performance, there has been a definite improvement, which does come out and smack you in the face. The last build I tried booted in 2:15. This has been reduced to 1:40 with this build. Opening programs like notepad takes about 2 seconds, compared to about 7 on previous builds. This is still a bit down on XP, which boots in 34 seconds on the same machine, but with all the extra stuff in Vista, that?s to be expected, and to be honest, does waiting an extra 60 seconds before you use your computer actually matter that much (I?m a Linux user, so I?m used to fairly long boot times), although generally in the past, Microsoft has increased boot times with previous operating systems (Windows 98 booted quicker than 95, Windows 2000 booteGamingn 98, Me that 2000? you get the message).

Gaming

Performance does seem to have greatly increased while gaming. As a comparison, I play the same games in every build (and the same ones in XP), mainly because I like playing them, but also so I can get a comparative point of view.

In beta 2, gaming was impossible. WoW managed about 4 FPS, while Flight Simulator managed 7. This was with every bit of eye candy off, and graphics al a very low quality ? not a very enjoyable experience.

This has greatly improved in RC1, and with the same settings as beta 2, WoW hits 24 FPS, and Flight Simulator Manages about 26. With eye candy on, lower them by about 3 FPS.

What does this mean to the general gamer? Well, it means games are less choppy, and are actually playable, and verging on enjoyable. If this improvement continues to RTM ? then we could have a very nice gaming system on our hands. It?s still not up to the quality of XP, which manages a flat out 31FPS in both games, but it is liveable, and considering the OS isn?t final yet, I can sure live with those results.

The final test is a small game called QuickSnooker (available at www.quicksnooker.com). I spend hours playing this, and it just wouldn?t run on beta 2. Nothing at all, which considering it works on everything from a 486 Windows 98 machine to the latest and greatest XP machine, is pretty bad. However, it now runs, and runs smoothly. Not once did I encounter a ball going in the opposite direction to which I aimed (which happens a lot in XP), nor did I encounter any ?jittering?. And consideringBluetoothme is, its great news for Vista?s compatibility stuff.

Bluetooth

I?m not going to go into this into much detail, but let?s just say it was less than successful. Vista didn?t have the drivers for my Belkin Radio, Neither did Windows Update. This wouldn?t have been a problem is Belkin?sOther Hardwareess they haven?t been working on the Drivers for it. Oh well.

Other Hardware

This is where Vista really surprised me. It still has the driver for my HP LaserJet 4L (about 10 years old ? and still kicking!), but it doesn?t have standard drivers for things like a Belkin Bluetooth module which is 3 years old.

Yet again, things have improved drastically from beta 2 and the interim builds, and everything except my sound card was detected correctly and installed. Windows update had the sound driver, and I now have a completely working system. Compare thatInternet and Networkdrivers it loaded were my printer, graphics card, and modem.

Internet and Network

I didn?t have any problems connecting to the network this time (except an abnormally long time to get an address from the DCHP server), but due to a slight problem with my internet, I wasn?t able to do much testing. I got windows update working after setting up a proxy server and dial up connection on my Laptop and sending it through there, but downloading etc was just too slow.

I did however download a couple of small files, and browsed local pages, and there are a few quirks I have with Internet Explorer.

Whenever I typed \\fs (the name of another computer) into it, it crashed. It didn?t freeze, it just closed. I assume it was supposed to open Windows Explorer to browse the network, but it failed. Doing the same thing directly in Explorer worked perfectly.

Also, what?s with the ?Downloads? folder? Was the desktop to handy and easy? I?ve been looking, but still haven?t found a way to change the default location back to the desktop. This isn?t so bad for people like me, because I know how to go to the home folder and go into the downloads folder ? but shouldn?t it be opened automatically, or at least tell the user where they can find the file they?ve just downloaded?

There is another bug I?ve found in Internet Explorer, where if you type a JavaScript command into the address bar, it freezes for a few moments. Not that much of a bigger deal, but I, as a web designer, like to hide scripts in a web page withoThe Sidebarnd I run them manually when needed from the address bar, which is very annoying when it freezes.

The Sidebar

First of all, I?m going to say, that I thought this was a bad idea when it first started, and I still do now.

Paul Thurrot went through this on his review, and I?m not going to repeat it, but for those of us who do not want to have the sidebar there, there are about 7 stages to its removal, which is worse than the UAC from beta 2.

The sidebar slows down the boot time drastically, and in my humble opinion, is a waste of time. It provides you with some RSS feeds (which can be done via external, lighter programs), another clock (which can already be found in the taskbar), and some widgets (gadgets), like a CPU monitor, RAM monitor? etc. The problem with these being, is that if you are doing a CPU intensive task that requires to be monitored, chances are you won?t be on the desktop, so 99% of the time you see it, its when your computer?s idling, or some background process is using 2-3% CPU. The RAM monitor is handy however, because it reminds you exactly how much of your precious DDR2 is being used by Vista.

Closing the Sidebar, does give you some performance increase, because it?s less transparency for the graphics card to work with, which lets it focus its attention more towards Aero.

Closing it also gives you back the desktop real estate that it stole from you. I, myself, prefer to have a full sized desktop, rather than a short one, with a couple of fancy clouds telling me it?s raining outside. If you have a widescreen monitor with a huge resolution, it may be okay, bWindows Media Player has a 15? TFT with 1024x768 resolution, desktop space is like gold-dust ? blink, and you?ll miss it.

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player looks exceedingly good in this release, and not only does it look good, it outperforms the previous versions.

In my little time playing around with it, it worked, worked, and didn?t stop working. Previously, 2 songs with WMP in Vista without crashing would have been a record, but I managed to play 3 MP3 albums, and a whole DVD without crashing ? although it did bug me about the region of the DVD ? which is a bit worrying, but I checked and it is definitely region 2, so maybe it?s just a glitch which needs to be sorted.

I don?t know why, because I haven?t heard of any changes in this department, but Windows Media Player does seem to look better in this build. It may be because of the new Aero colouring, but it?s looking better, which is a good sign ? now, if only everything else would look like this.

The library correctly detected all 40-ish GB of my music collection, and was extremely streamlined in doing so. Now,Windows Security Centreount of attention to detail into other aspects of Vista ? such as the Sidebar ? which could have been a useful tool!

Windows Security Centre

As with everything since XP SP2, the Security Centre popped up saying that no antivirus was installed, Windows was out of date, and that the firewall wasn?t activated properly. Great. A brand new installation of a brand new build of a brand new OS, and it?s already out of date.

Running Windows update and downloading the sound driver sorted one of the 3 out, and activating the firewall solved 2 (although this should really have been switched on by default).

As usual, un-ticking the boxes in ?Change the Way Windows SecuUser Account Control (UAC), abolishing the alerts and that silly little shield in the system tray. This is a computer, not a battle field ? no shields!

User Account Control (UAC)

This has been the worst part of the Vista experience, and has been the fly in Microsoft?s soup for a while now. Thankfully, it?s been calmed down, but not enough.

It still pops up far too much, but it has a new technique, called ?hiding?. This means that if you?re not using the program requesting access, it won?t steal focus. Which is OK, unless you click ?go? on an installation program, quickly turn back to Microsoft Word, and half an hour later, go back to find ?User Account Control? A Program Needs Your Permission To Continue??. How about something more useful, like, displaying a pop up balloon ? like the ones you get for the XP Tour when you first installed Windows XP. They?re noticeable, but not in your face. Just a little note like ?Program X requires your attention?.

It still, however pops up way too much, and for minor things. The whole point of an administrator account is to administrate things ? which you can?t do without UAC giving you the all clear. ?Are you sure you want to turn on the firewall?, ?no, I?d rather stay unprotected?. This really needs some fine tuning. How about some different levels of user account, such as:

- Administrator

- Power User

- General User

- Limited Account

- Guest Account

Having different levels of User Account Control for each user grouStabilitye so much easier, and would provide more control over who can do what exactly. Until then? it remains disabled ? meaning that all of that hard work from Microsoft goes un-noticed, and un-used.

Stability

RC1 is a fair bit more stable that beta 2, and is really on a par with other builds ? which is only to be expected.

When I talk stability, I talk stability as in Windows, not as in Media Centre a day or so in Windows would be good news for me, and when Vista went for 3 hours without one crash, that?s good enough for me.

I will however leave it on for a while, and will see how it goes.

Media Centre

This was the one aspect of RC1 that I was extremely pleased with. Setup was a breeze ? and it seems to be extremely stable.

My tuner card, which is an MCE compatible one, wasn?t detected automatically, but the XP Drivers did work perfectly ? although, not a long term solution I hope!

It did crash once, but that was slightly my fault, because I was trying to plug in a USB Flash drive and managed to unplug the remote receiver ? causing a whole lot of confusion within the program, and eventually, a crash ? maybe this is a bug in the program, or it may have just been a circumstantial error, which wasn?t helped by me ? although it should be able to cope with the removal of the remote control ? but hey, unlike beta 2, the remote control works this time!

Anyhow, the Media Centre is the one part of Vista that I feel shouts ?completeness?, and like anything new, just needs the odd lick of paint to finish it. Either way, it?s thousands of times beWindows Live Messenger MCE ? which in my opinion, is a shambles.

Put it this way ? there?s differences between everything ? and XP MCE versus Vista MCE is like driving a Ford Fiesta, or a Ferrari F360 ? there?s no comparison!

Windows Live Messenger

Let?s be honest. Windows Live Messenger isn?t all it cracked up to be. However, it could be.

There?s a skin available on NeoThe User Interface (UI)ive Messenger, which gives Windows Live Messenger the Vista look and feel. With this skin, it looks in place, and looks so much better. Why can?t Microsoft do this? Why can?t we have a UI which is just the same ? and just works?

The User Interface (UI)

There?s been a few changes to the UI ? some I like, some I can honestly say I hate, and there?s some things I, personally, would like done.

The new blue-ish shade of Aero looks good, and it shows that Microsoft is actually taking notice of what people (including myself) are saying about the fine tuning, and minor details of things. Microsoft have never been consistent with things, and that is something which needs to change.

Why do some programs use a new Vista UI, and some don?t? How come some Microsoft Office 2007 programs use the ?ribbon?, but not others (that?s a separate matter, but I thought I?d mention it). How come Windows Media Player fits in perfectly with Vista, but Windows Live Messenger don?t?

This is the one thing I despise Consistency? why they can?t just have one design, and stick with it. Microsoft. Take my advice, and design a Windows Live Messenger build which blends in with Vista. The one which is currently available looks great, and is a couple of notches better than Microsoft?s attempt.

Consistency

While I?m on the subject of consistency, the search is my last rant. The new search in Vista is great, but why doesn?t everything have it. How come some programs use the new things, and some use the old. This is what I just don?t get. Why design something great, and then only implement it into half of what?s there?

So, in the end, is it ready for RC? No. In my opinion, this should really be beta 3. The idea of a release candidate is something which is a candidate for the final release, and should be more polished and finalised than this.

All be it a great operating system ? and better than XP ? that?s all it is. Slightly better. And the way I?ve looked on it is: better = beta, ready = RC. I just hope that a build like this doesn?t make it to RTM, and doesn?t get released, because if it does, I can see another Windows ME coming. If it gets cleaned up, with a bit of spit and polish, this could be another Windows 95 ? a revolution. Okay, maybe that?s a bit far, but this could be great, Microsoft work on their consistency and just clean it up!

Anyway... that's my view of things - hope i didnt bore you too much - its my first real review - so be nice :) any pointers for other reviews would be nice :) There aren't any screenshots on here - and that's been done on purpose - because I'm on dial up at the moment, so i could only upload low res and low quality images, which would be unfair as they wouldnt do it justice.

Edited September 5, 2006 by bmaher

[BoDEAN]

They still haven't improved BLUETOOTH support in RC1? What the he||. I have a built in Toshiba BT-143 and it didn't have drivers or install correctly in past builds. Thought maybe MS would have drivers from the manufacturer or their own by now. What a let down.

[EcPercy]

I am already back to XP for now. RC1 is giving random BSOD's on my system. Didn't have this problem with other builds. I will stick with my previous statement. I will run Vista on another drive for testing, but I will run XP until I am forced to get Vista for the DX10 games that, will eventually, start coming down the pipe. I am sure that it will be awhile before that happens though.

[Unimatrix Xero]

you didnt include Media Center!! :( i was hoping for a 3rd party view on this

[Brian M. Veteran]

What's dissapointing is that Windows XP SP2 is perfectly capable of handling this bluetooth stick perfectly without any additional drivers - but vista isnt.

[BoDEAN]

What's dissapointing is that Windows XP SP2 is perfectly capable of handling this bluetooth stick perfectly without any additional drivers - but vista isnt.

Agree'd. They always seem to break something while improving something else.

[»X«]

Talking about media center, Ive got some gripes with it. Maybe some of you can solve.

My main annoyance is when playing songs, movies or dvds i cant find a seek bar. I have to fast forward, which on some movies, it doenst like and just restarts the movie.

It also doesnt really do a good job in adding files. I asked it to search a directory which i KNOW contains movies but they never appeared. Odd.

MC is pretty, but i dont think its practical just yet. One thing I must add, is there is a few cheesy tutorial vids with MC to help calibrate your sound and picture. These make me cringe but I guess they serve a purpose.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Right - Ive Updated the review with Media Centre - i had wrote it - but did it in a seperate document and forgot to include it :D

For some reason, Neowin's "EDIT" thing, has edited all of the 's in the review and turned them into boxed - i will repost it though

edit: it has been reposted

[Omega Prime]

Not a bad review, although I did notice this:

On a clean boot (after me not installing anything), memory usage was 673mb ? which is dreadful. Considering you can still buy systems which have 256mb of RAM, using this much on start-up is terrible, and no doubt, will cause a lot of disk and page file usage.

Vista caches everything to Windows when you first boot up and then releases the RAM when you open up other programs. With XP, I recall seeing something like "2GB RAM, 1.6GB available". What's the point in having extra RAM when it's not being fully utilized? I'm not sure yet if more RAM = better performance, but things have been running great on both my laptop and PC (I installed WoW on them recently and things ran smooth with both of them).

[Ambroos]

Since build 5538 Vista won't install anymore on pc's with less than 512MB RAM memory. Please update your review!

[Brian M. Veteran]

What's the point in having extra RAM when it's not being fully utilized? I'm not sure yet if more RAM = better performance, but things have been running great on both my laptop and PC (I installed WoW on them recently and things ran smooth with both of them).

Cool - all comments welcome ;)

Well i just added another 1gb stick to the Vista machine - and there is a slight performance increase - nothing worth writing home about though.

Memory usage at boot with 2gb was 588mb - seems to fluctuate a bit though :D

[CoLdFuSi0n]

Installation a slight inmprovemnt? No a major improvment, beta 2 took over 1 hour on my computers to install and RC1 took 15 - 20 mins to install and my computers aren't high end what so ever.

Gameing performane also has to do with your drivers, untill nvidia and ati put out proper drivers not beta ones of course performance in games are going to suck.

[Lexcyn]

I actually just switched back to XP on my laptop due to horrible driver support. I know it's just a beta but I mean cmon. My gameport (yes, GAMEPORT) generic driver would not install for some reason. :|

[S.MULLA]

any machine thats gonna run vista- you wouldnt want less than 2gb to be honest. i mean memory is soo cheap these days. i dont know why you complain about memory usage when requirements say 1gb at least. even with macs- i had 256mb in my mini- tried 512mb, still slow- so put in a 1gb chip- and much better. i've 2gb on my main pc for over 2 years. and never ever considered memory usage on any app i use- isnt higher memory usage good? by that i mean its being occupied by the service properly.

memory leaks like in very early builds was rediculous- but im sure MS with optimise vista much more for RTM release. once vista is mainstream- i might be looking at 3gb or 4gb memory as standard on my home pc. :/

good review btw.

[marc2003]

my biggest gripe with vista so far is the lack of visual customisation options. sure the default theme is horrible (much like xp) but there are very few options to change the overall appearance or even simple things like colours. i hope some 3rd party stuff comes on the scene soon. :yes:

on a sidenote, my belkin bluetooth adapter works perfectly..... :p

[Xab]

With Windows Vista, it crawls. I have an NVIDIA 5500 256mb graphics card, which I know isn?t top of the line ? but it certainly isn?t a low end card ? and should be able to cope with Aero perfectly. But it is still buggy. Turning off all of the eye candy does help performance, but what is the point of creating new effects if most users have to turn them off anyway!

Today your 5500 pretty much is a low end card. And your attitude is exactly the reason we have had operating systems that look virtually the same as 10 years ago. There are people out there other than you that have decent hardware and would like to see nice effects. Aero works great for me and plenty of others - don't go calling for Microsoft to tone things down because your system can't handle it.

[+Elі Subscriber²]

Thoguh I don't agree with some of your points, I think it's a honest good review.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Thanks :) - Everyone has different views on things - thats just my view, and i thought it'd make a change than having pretty much one view and one view only.

Anyway - just an update - My Installation of vista has gone completely now.... it gets to the welcome/login screen, and reboots.

Im having a look into it - ive filed a bug report for it - but i'll try to find out exactly whats causing it - at the moment its not giving me enough time to see the cause.

Today your 5500 pretty much is a low end card. And your attitude is exactly the reason we have had operating systems that look virtually the same as 10 years ago. There are people out there other than you that have decent hardware and would like to see nice effects. Aero works great for me and plenty of others - don't go calling for Microsoft to tone things down because your system can't handle it.

Yes, i know my 5500 isnt "top of the line", and i believe i said that, but my point is, that you are probably 0.1% of people. Its not only people like you who want to upgrade to vista - normal people do too. I happen to know several non tech savvy people who are actually looking forward to using Vista after seeing screenshots etc, and I've even had someone ask me to upgrade their XP computer to Vista.

Most normal people dont have great graphics cards, because most buy OEM computers, which have low end cards, or at worst, on board graphics, and the average joe user wouldnt understand (and yes, i guess that sometimes, the average user will see that a new version has been released, and will want to upgrade).

So, what you're saying is that only people with extremely great computers should be able to receive the benefits of Vista?

Oh, and os's have looked the same for 10 years? Windows 3.11 vs Windows XP (about 10 years difference). They look the same, right? And if i remember, people were doing exactly the same thing over XP's "Luna" interface, because, afterall, that was a major overhaul of the OS.

Edited September 6, 2006 by bmaher

[XPero]

Today your 5500 pretty much is a low end card. And your attitude is exactly the reason we have had operating systems that look virtually the same as 10 years ago. There are people out there other than you that have decent hardware and would like to see nice effects. Aero works great for me and plenty of others - don't go calling for Microsoft to tone things down because your system can't handle it.

Linux XGL wipe Aero Glass out and does not need a high end card. Aero works right for you? nice, but you must know that your card is capable of much much more than Aero Glass. If only MS do the things right...Oh, and you probably haven't noticed that not everybody can afford the best computer with the best components. And most of us will not buy a new graphic card just to say "Hey Aero, here's your food, I wasted all my budget, so eat it well".

That said, and sticking to topic, I must congratulate bmaher for his good review :)

[Brody McKee]

Bluetooth works fine for me (even in beta 2).... D-Link adapter. Works 100%

As for Vistas effects eating up to much RAM/GPU power - I run it on two machines, both have ATi 9600XT's 256MB (not fantastic cards) and one has 512MB RAM and the other runs 1GB. NO HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM! BOTH RUN AERO 100%

[XPero]

Bluetooth works fine for me (even in beta 2).... D-Link adapter. Works 100%

As for Vistas effects eating up to much RAM/GPU power - I run it on two machines, both have ATi 9600XT's 256MB (not fantastic cards) and one has 512MB RAM and the other runs 1GB. NO HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM! BOTH RUN AERO 100%

I have ATI 9800 Pro 256MB ans Aero runs well, but we must not fall in the fact that companies push us into buying new components instead of squeezing the capabilities of current ones (again, look at XGL). That's my point and I hope I get understood. :)

[chconline Veteran]

The FX5500 was a low end card when it was released, and now, no offence, but it's just... a junk card. :p

It's basically an overclocked FX5200, nothing else. :)

[BoDEAN]

Bluetooth works fine for me (even in beta 2).... D-Link adapter. Works 100%

As for Vistas effects eating up to much RAM/GPU power - I run it on two machines, both have ATi 9600XT's 256MB (not fantastic cards) and one has 512MB RAM and the other runs 1GB. NO HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM! BOTH RUN AERO 100%

Actually the BT works on mine too. Its great to see Toshiba drivers. Running great, RC1 on my ASUS V6J Laptop

[Ebi]

is anyone having issues with java in vista rc1?

[Brian M. Veteran]

Linux XGL wipe Aero Glass out and does not need a high end card. Aero works right for you? nice, but you must know that your card is capable of much much more than Aero Glass. If only MS do the things right...Oh, and you probably haven't noticed that not everybody can afford the best computer with the best components. And most of us will not buy a new graphic card just to say "Hey Aero, here's your food, I wasted all my budget, so eat it well".

That said, and sticking to topic, I must congratulate bmaher for his good review :)

Minus the linux stuff (yes i do use Linux as well (my avatar gives it away)), thats the point i was trying to make.

Not everybody has high end hardware - nor would they want to upgrade - and even if they did, it raises the cost of upgrading - as i wouldnt want to spend under ?100 on a card, if not more.

As i said in a PM - i will be testing on a new system with 4GB of ram and a top notch gfx card when my new hard drive arrives - and i'll post the results soon:))

Oh, and thanks for the compliment;))

is anyone having issues with java in vista rc1?

I havent noticed any problems - but im going to reinstall Vista completely tomorow, as it still isnt bootable. I've reburned the ISO, and double checked everything, so hopefully you'll get an update tomorow.

Vista at the moment = non functional;)) Im also going to add a bit about Hard Drive usage (both pagefile/swap and actual space used).:DD