OFFICIAL MS VISTA BETA DOWNLOAD

richardj · Post by **richardj** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:11 am

CLICK

Unfortunatley-it expires in 1 year

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:51 pm

Time to tripple the ram in my test server, change the mobo with a quad xeon one, get dual core 64 bit xeons, a RAID NAS array, and upgrade to gigabit for the NAS, and install it.

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:36 pm

YEAh--AND acording to below--you'll need it!

Vista - RAM Guzzler

In 1985, I remember fondly opening the box to my first PC. It had 768K of memory, a 6 Mhz processor, and a 10 MB hard drive. It was a state of the art, technological marvel. I wrote my master's thesis in a program called EZ Writer, and I planned my life and balanced my books in Lotus 123. It did everything I wanted it and more. I never thought it was slow, except when I saved to the 5.25 inch floppy.

Today, over 20 years later, I am writing this article on my new Winbook portable. It has 512MB of memory, a 1.6 Ghz CPU, and an 80 GB hard drive. I still pretty much do the same things - word processing, email, spreadsheets, and the occasional PowerPoint presentation. The funny thing is that my computer is not noticeably faster than my first PC, and in some ways it seems a little pokey.

So what's the deal? I have 200 times the processor, 600 times as much memory, and 8000 times the hard drive space. Is it unreasonable to think that we should be getting our work done faster? And if not, why the heck not?

Of course, I am over simplifying. My PC today can do things that I could never have imagined 20 years ago. From manipulating digital photos, to wireless networking; it is a vastly more powerful device. But all other things being equal, I still feel short changed in all of these advances in hardware technology. It's like there's a black hole that eats up hard drive space, free memory and cpu cycles.

If I were to give the black hole a name, I would name it Microsoft. Even more frightening is that there is a Super Nova on the horizon called Vista. In one swoop, it will eat up all the disk space, free memory, and cpu cycles in our PC's.
Over 70% of PC's tested at Pitstop in April do not meet Vista's recommended specs. Learn more in our research section.

Last week, Microsoft announced their recommended specifications for Vista PC's, and frankly I was floored. A Vista PC should have a DVD-ROM, 1 GB of memory, a 1 GHZ CPU, and a 40GB hard drive with 15GB of available space. Of the PC's that tested at PC Pitstop in April, over 70% do not meet Vista's bloated specification. Worse yet, over 80% of portables and 80% of business PC's do not meet the spec. Note: our analysis does not include Vista's video memory requirement of 256MB. So our statistics are best case.
Is your system ready for Microsoft Vista? Find out in our all new Vista Readiness Test.

Why in the world does Vista make such strenuous demands on the hardware? There is one simple answer - Eye Candy. Before the introduction of XP, one was hard pressed to tell if someone was running Windows ME, Windows 98, or Windows 2000. Though the internals were different, the user experience was the same. This all changed with XP. Microsoft created a whole new look and feel for XP, with new rounded corners and visual effects.

Microsoft hopes to continue this tradition with Vista. Vista will change the way that Windows are displayed on our screens. In particular, Vista will incorporate smooth transitional effects when we change from one window to another. Despite the wow factor, this approach is extremely memory intensive. Worse yet, is what happens when Vista runs out of memory. The computer will start thrashing.

Let's suppose Vista has enough memory to open five windows, and you open a sixth one. Since your memory is full, the computer will start thrashing. (Your system is thrashing if your hard drive light is illuminated for extended periods of time.) Windows will attempt to move things that it thinks it does not need out of memory in order to make room for the new window. If you have not experienced this problem, it is not pretty. Depending on the size of your windows, you could leave the room, take a shower, and it might still have not changed windows.

What's Microsoft's solution to this mess since so many systems might simultaneously start thrashing? Vista has a special feature that allows you to expand memory using a thumb drive - those little flash hard drives that plug into a USB port. I have a better solution. Don't upgrade to Vista.

Do you have two monitors connected to your computer? Are you running at 1280 or higher resolution? Or do you like to have 50 windows open at the same time? These problems just get worse for you guys.

Certainly, there aren't a lot of people that will upgrade to Vista just for eye candy. Not much I am afraid. Most of the really useful features like improved security and intuitive search have already been pulled. Unbelievable as it sounds, Microsoft plans to include a calendar in Vista. Now that's worth upgrading to 1GB of memory!

I bought Microsoft stock in 1997 when I was still at Gateway at $10. I have ridden it up and I've ridden it down. I don't like to sell my stocks, but in this case, I have to make an exception. Vista is a pig that doesn't deliver the pork.

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:29 pm

HERE'S A VISTA REDINESS TEST

You must use IExplorer for this test

After I posted this I found out that MS has an official 'is my pc flucked up enough to run Vista" test.

They suggest you have a video card with 256mb of onboard memory--LOL

The Vista download is 3 GB

Hell-It's starting to look like you'll need DEEP BLUE to run it

IBM's Deep Blue

Height: 6' 5"
Weight: 1.4 tons
Age: 4 years

No. of Processors 32 PSSC

Deep Blue, an RS/6000 based supercomputer, was the first computer system to win a chess game against a reigning world champion (Garry Kasparov) under regular time controls. It is a massively parallel, 30-node, RS/6000, SP-based computer system enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess processors. Its chess playing program is written in the C programming language and runs under the AIX operating system. It was capable of evaluating 100,000,000 positions per second.

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:03 am

SIGH

When does learning stop already??

Hello Richard,

Welcome to The Vista Minute.

Your subscription will start with the next issue.

I hope you enjoy the e-zine as much as I do writing it.

Wishing you all the best,
Marc Liron
http://www.thevistaminute.com

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sintekk · Post by **sintekk** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:32 am

How eerie... http://www.instantvista.com/ and http://www.thevistaminute.com/ look nearly identical!

Three cheers for lazy webmasters!

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:49 am

sintekk wrote: How eerie... http://www.instantvista.com/ and http://www.thevistaminute.com/ look nearly identical!

Three cheers for lazy webmasters!

WELL----

These are all run by THIS GUY

and as he's doing all this on his free time (as I asume as a MS-MVP he's gainfully employed)

and he gives out a ton of usefull info & e-letters & stuff

He probably took the easy route.

Other Websites By Marc Liron - Microsoft MVP

News and Articles on Windows Vista:

www.instantvista.com

Windows Vista Weekly Topics Via Video:

www.thevistaminute.com

Web hosting Weekly Video Thoughts:

www.thesbiminute.com

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sintekk · Post by **sintekk** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 1:56 am

While the similar designs is odd to me (web design intern), I'm also interested in why he has two very similar Vista sites. Perhaps it's just a ploy for the search engines to sweep in as many people as possible.

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manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:12 am

That and how he sells himself as a "Microsoft MVP!" Sounds flakey to me.

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:18 am

sintekk wrote: While the similar designs is odd to me (web design intern), I'm also interested in why he has two very similar Vista sites. Perhaps it's just a ploy for the search engines to sweep in as many people as possible.

CUS-one is:

News and Articles on Windows Vista:

www.instantvista.com

And the other is:

Windows Vista Weekly Topics Via Video:

www.thevistaminute.com

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sintekk · Post by **sintekk** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:22 am

Touche.

Although I'm still thinking dividing that up into two sites is a ploy for search engines

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Wren · Post by **Wren** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 9:47 pm

I know my video card won't handle it.

Most people are already tweaking XP to get rid of excess bloat...Vista seems to have even more. So why buy an OS just to disable half the features?

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:08 pm

Wren wrote: I know my video card won't handle it. Most people are already tweaking XP to get rid of excess bloat...Vista seems to have even more. So why buy an OS just to disable half the features?

Yes-Cus I downloaded the MS readiness program & checked it off to install all bells & whistles.

There is an install which isn't so vid heavy, but even then it showed a whole bunch of stuff deficient on my pc as far as driver compatibility.

And it's solution was --'contact your manufacturer"

Ever try to contact a rep for driver support? HHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:56 pm

46% done downloading.

My test server will barely run it, specially to consider it will be in a VM over terminal services, but we'll see what happends.

Think that server only has like a 32MB video card. LOL

MS said they are having issues due to all the downloads, but yet i'm downloading at a record breaking 300KB/sec... I cant remember last time I downloaded something that fast..

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Wren · Post by **Wren** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 11:54 am

Maybe MS did some tweaking of their own.

Whatever happened to Longhorn, BTW?

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 1:24 pm

I think longhorn will be their server version of vista. But if its as bloated as vista, I dont recomend upgrading from windows 2003.

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manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:25 pm

geez, all that sign up, sign in, verify, and personal info just to download.

You'll may still have to 'sign up' to get a serial, but here are the links:

http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/previe...CFRE_EN_DVD.iso
http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/previe...xFRE_EN_DVD.iso

w00t. 620kB/s, what was that about heavy server load?

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:09 pm

Wow no kidding lol.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:55 pm

It's instaling right now. I allowcated 500GB, hopefully that will be enough.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:03 pm

Check out the CPU usage while it's sitting idle.

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:05 am

manadren wrote: geez, all that sign up, sign in, verify, and personal info just to download.

You'll may still have to 'sign up' to get a serial, but here are the links:

http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/previe...CFRE_EN_DVD.iso
http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/previe...xFRE_EN_DVD.iso

w00t. 620kB/s, what was that about heavy server load?

Thank you for your interest in Windows Vista Beta 2.

We are currently experiencing a high level of demand and cannot process your request at this time.

Please check back later for availability. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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richardj · Post by **richardj** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:08 am

Red Squirrel wrote: Check out the CPU usage while it's sitting idle.

I told you----you need DEEP BLUE!

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO INSTALL?

DID ALL YOUR DRIVERS WORK?

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:17 am

The install was pretty quick, I'd say maybe like 30 minutes, but it was from an ISO and not a physical CD ROM drive so that would make it much faster.

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Death · Post by **Death** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 6:19 pm

Wren wrote: Maybe MS did some tweaking of their own.

Whatever happened to Longhorn, BTW?

Thought Longhorn was the codename from Windows Vista before they sent out the official name (Kind of like Nintendo Revolution turned into Nintendo Wii). "Longhorn" is a city if memory serves me right.

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Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:57 pm

Furball wrote: "Longhorn" is a city if memory serves me right.

Actually, it’s a Canadian saloon.

http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/longhorn.asp wrote:
Q: What's up with the name Longhorn?

A: As I first revealed, the Longhorn name wasn't chosen randomly. Remember that Windows XP was code-named Whistler and the next version of Windows, at the time, was code-named Blackcomb. Both of these names come from ski areas in British Columbia, close to Microsoft's headquarters. At the foot of Whistler Mountain, there is a saloon named Longhorn that serves the local skiing population. So if you're ever in the area and want to take in some local color, Longhorn is a nice stop… after you're done with Whistler.

It has a Web site.

Furball wrote: Kind of like Nintendo Revolution turned into Nintendo Wii

Yes, the only difference being that Microsoft decided not to use such a silly name.

I’m honestly not that excited about Windows Vista. I don’t see any compelling reason to upgrade. What about you, Red? Were you blown away?

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