Windows Vista Beta (Build 5308) on m68xx????

im not sure which one 5308 is, but i had the latest version at the time on there at the end of February... got it in 1280x800 with no problem (and it worked with my card reader with better success than XP did... ive got a stupid SD card that works off and on in several chipsets of readers, but fine in others... i was trying to download my pictures that day from Disneyland before going back over there, and couldnt get it to read in XP but it read fine in Vista)

Have toyed with a later version (5365?) and all seems well. 1280x800 works fine.

Windows..You know there is nothing like getting a recompiled kernel once every 6 years! It might just run a whole lot better.

any way to get a copy of this w/o being a MSDN subscriber?

cheers ...

i tried it for awhile but 5308 was still too slow on an m680x with a gig of ram - i went back to xp pro.

found it (5384) - man 3 hrs+ for download - ouch!
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail...t/1149728719/1
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...y/preview.mspx

cheers ...

Yeah same here, I used the 32bit version, It was SLOW, X64bit Windows OS was also SLOW on my 7405GX, I went back to XP PRO w/ SP2 as well.......looks like I'm gonna have to buy a New Lappy That Ships with Windows Vista OS

I'm posting this from a 32 bit Vista Beta 2 build 5384 install on an eMachines m6805. So far, so good. It installed in a little less than an hour including installing drivers from the CD that came with the computer, and setting up the wireless network.

First the things that don't work include Hibernate and Sleep in ACPI. They lock the machine up every time. It seems to have something to do with the video drivers (even after downloading and installing the latest from ati). So I have set the power switch and lid closing to just shut down Windows. Also Flash player and Java will not install automatically, but you can just Google for them and install them manually. Contrary to what I was led to expect, you still have to restart Windows every time you install a driver, antivirus software, change network workgroup name, or change fonts in Windows. Windows is slower starting and also seems to run slower after finishing startup, but that may just be because of all the eye candy hogging the resources. It is not unbearably slow, just not as peppy as XP was. The "blue screen of death" seems to have changed to black, (I've seen it about 5 times so far because of trying out ACPI settings for Hibernate and Sleep as mentioned above) although Windows reports it as a "blue screen". The following screenshot shows a little problem with Internet Explorer, but I think it has more to do with the Sun Java plugin:

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...a_IE_error.jpg

Now for the good stuff (in no particular order). Windows is now beautiful! No more "Fisher-Price" desktop theme. The Aero-glass and semi-transparent window frames along with the variety of subtle color schemes looks very stylish, finally catching up to the classy looks of Apple's OSX. CSS encrypted (commercial movie) DVDs play without installing any extra software. I was able to burn a CD of programs that I downloaded for Vista (Anti-virus, ATI drivers, Mozilla, and internet plugins). Vista offered to burn the CD as either UDF or Mastered ISO format. I chose Mastered ISO to be able to look at the CD in any other computer. The CD was easily readable on another computer. Windows Defender is installed by default, and keeps a lookout for Spyware. Of course Windows Firewall is there too, and seems improved. It offers to poke holes in your firewall when you try to use an internet enabled program instead of just blocking it. Internet Explorer now sports a tab bar, and time will tell if it is more secure. Windows was able to detect and setup my laptop's default screen resolution (1280 x 800) without any help. When you connect to a WEP enabled or WPA enabled access point, you can select to see what you type in for that big long encryption key. This is very nice because if you only typed one character wrong, you can see the error and correct it without retyping the whole key. Windows resize and drag smoothly without window corruption. USB is working (at least my USB wireless mouse is) as are the SD and CF card readers. The Synaptics touchpad also works as it should, including scrolling. I have not yet tested the firewire port, but Vista shows it as installed and working.

I installed the Windows Vista Beta 2 on my Gateway M505XL (~3hrs to download). It has a very nice stylish view to it. The Sidebar isn't as great as the bar from http://www.desktopsidebar.com/. Its still somewhat slow, and still many software remains incompatible. All the drivers seems to exist except for my Intel Centrino wireless card. The 1280 x 800 resolution was recognized after installing the Vista (no need to install the driver).

My only complaints are:

- Lack of Software compatiblities
- Lack of Drivers.

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the Operating System. Maybe the lack of drivers and softwares compatibilities may be the cause of the system slowdown.

P.S. Anyone can download the Vista Beta 2 from Microsoft. No need to look elsewhere since Microsoft has released this version for customers to test it out.

VISTA on Lappy BLOG

I am doing an install of the 32 and 64 bit versions and blogging my findings. So far it is slow. I just completed the 32 bit version on a Dell D810 and the install was very long.

Eunix

It has been about a week on the Dell machine and I have been impressed on the surface. Of course I have had to snatch the test drive out to do some real work from time to time but I should get around to the 64 bit install before the week is out. I really need to peel back the covers and let her rip.

It is a bit on the sluggish side but that is probably all of the graphics processing that is going on behind the scenes.

Eunix

I have not felt the sluggishness of Vista on my 7405gx. I am running it on it's default drivers and it has been running great. The only thing that I am not liking is the 2-3 minute boot times. I was extremely happy with how well the install went, only took about 40 minutes. I am about to install the 64 bit version as well. The only thing that I have done was removed some of the visual effects ( I am not a fan of animation, when I close something i want it done when I click it)

Actually, there is one thing that annoys me about vista, the "User Account Control," that damn thing pops up anytime I want to delete something, or install something.

3 hrs+ download for vista??? Wow, that's a dream for me and my country.
My average download speed is 3 - 4 kb/sec and yet my provider already advertised it as high speed broadband internet connection

3-4 kb/sec!!! That is what I got on dial-up. Where do you live. It took me a little over 12 hrs to download both versions of Vista. I was limited to 100 kb/s, I have a slow cable connection (386/128).