On Friday Microsoft released Windows Vista build 5536. This is a pre-RC1 build. On Monday, Microsoft expects to release build 5552 which many anticipate to be the official first release candidate of Windows Vista.
The last mile stone build, 5472, was considered by many to demonstrate that Windows Vista is not on track. Specifically, Longhorn Blogs and developer Stardock believed that a beta 3 was in order. Paul Thurrott of WinSuperSite was disappointed in the status but felt that Microsoft would not likely alter its ship date.
So what's the view now? Robert McLaws of Longhorn Blogs is escatic about the new build and thinks RC1 is back on track. Paul sees great improvement as well and says it's "wonderful". Laurance Parry, head of Stardock's Vista lab, sees improvement but feels it is still being rushed.
I haven't gotten to play with it yet but from talking to some of the people using it there is a definite consensus that it's a big improvement. The question is whether it's a big enough improvement. And being better than previous betas of Vista isn't the question, the question is how much better is it than Windows XP? The clean boot memory use is apparently over 500 megabytes -- twice that of XP. That's not surprising given that XP was designed 6 years ago. But does Vista return enough back to justify requiring a 1 gigabyte memory system (minimum)? That is the question many are waiting to see.
Neowin will be taking a close look at the release candidates and giving a guided tour of the system both good and bad. Based on what we've seen, we're cautiously optimistic that Microsoft is indeed going to pull it together in time. We also think that a couple thousand 20-something year old developers living in Redmond Washington are going to need to take a serious vacation when this is all over.
View: JoeUser.com 5536 Review View: WinSuperSite 5536 Review
Also, I'm not a journalist. I am posting news about 3 reviews.
What's Brad Wardell's opinion of Vista, or is the staff at neowin unable to have an opinion of their own?
Il'm surprised they even wasted bandwidth linking to the stardock guy, after he bitched and whinged that Microsoft was going to make it next to impossible for his hackware to work properly in Windows.
To Stardock, Symantec, McAfee and so forth; take your crashware prone software elseware, some of us actually want to use our computers and know that everything works nicely rather than having it loaded to the gills with your crap.
Stardock's "crashware" works fine on Vista incidentally. Vista doesn't break any of Stardock's programs nor obsolete them. I think Vista has the most potential of any Microsoft OS yet. But I worry they are rushing it.
But I'm curious, you think a software developer's indepth look at a Vista build is less valid than "some guy" on the net or some end user?
What's Brad Wardell's opinion of Vista, or is the staff at neowin unable to have an opinion of their own?
Il'm surprised they even wasted bandwidth linking to the stardock guy, after he bitched and whinged that Microsoft was going to make it next to impossible for his hackware to work properly in Windows.
To Stardock, Symantec, McAfee and so forth; take your crashware prone software elseware, some of us actually want to use our computers and know that everything works nicely rather than having it loaded to the gills with your crap.
Stardock's "crashware" works fine on Vista incidentally. Vista doesn't break any of Stardock's programs nor obsolete them. I think Vista has the most potential of any Microsoft OS yet. But I worry they are rushing it.
But I'm curious, you think a software developer's indepth look at a Vista build is less valid than "some guy" on the net or some end user?
Sorry, its the guy's reputation as a whiner; when most developers I know, look at the changes in Windows Vista, and the comments range from "thats damn awsome" to "its about bloody time they corrected those problems", one really has to ask about this guys vested interests.
Like I said, given that he whined for 6months that his software might no longer with with Longhorn (code name back then), he then complained that he was deliberately getting shut out of the 'Windows customisation marketplace'.
When this furore erupted, do you know what I said? how about developing some NEW software that takes advantage of the new features in Windows Longhorn, how about a good USENET client for instance.
ps. When one door closes, another door opens; this guy seems to be more interested in trying to jemmy the door open that just closed.
I don't know what you're talking about. Stardock has never complained that its software wouldn't work on Vista. Stardock's apps have been working throughout the Longhorn process. I think you are thinking of a different company.
Vista, in my eyes, is a major and awesome upgrade. People need to get rid of the idea of measuring how efficient the OS is through RAM usage. The more RAM Vista uses to cache the better.
True, and lets also remember, that is how MacOS X, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD etc. all operate; the unused portion of memory is dedicated to buffers; and the operating system dynamically adjusts the memory is allocated as required.
The reviewers were not counting cachign or swapping. Just the memory used by resident programs.
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