for those of you who havent heard, The next version of Windows, codename Longhorn, is now called Windows Vista.

Now i got a hold of a beta version and i installed it on one of my spare drives. I'm actually using it right now, and i must say, i am impressed with it as a whole, although there are several things i do not like about it.

First off let me point out some good things. I love the fact that the OS has a new graphical layer. Meaning windows can have transparency, they can have drop shadows that are awsome looking, and can do some sweet screen effects.



I also like the Alt+Tab feature which shows you a cool "preview" of an application before you go to it. This particularly helps when you have multiple applications of the same time open, like web applications for example.

This preview function is also used when you hover over a program in the task bar.



I also really like the new windows media player, The album sort feature just looks amazing with cd covers and i think the sorting features on this OS for documents just kicks butt. Too bad the version i have does not have WinFS on it becuase that would make it ALOT faster.

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I like the dark colors of the task bar as well, its just easier to read!

Some things i have noticed about this OS is that it takes ALOT of memory. I have 2 gigs in my system and right now with Firefox & Windows Media Player open i'm using 844 mb of memory... this is just insane in itself. But its probably going to decrease significantly when its out of BETA, or in BETA2 .... who knows.

Now I was able to install ANY program that does not check the OS version and was designed for windows. Meaning most of my stuff works fine and I didnt have to tweak it, which is a huge plus.

Ill Get some screen shots for you guys in a bit, I still have to install photoshop and some other programs before i do that.

So i have high hopes for VISTA, it looks good, and if it doesnt have some INSANE DRM on it I will probably upgrade my XP.

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Sounds pretty good, nice to get a first hand review of it.

Couple things though.
1.) deleted this one cuz i just found it on micr0$ofts site. i'm dumb!
2.) it's been said to take alot of system power, and actually runs relatively slow on a 128 mb vid card, regardless of the core.(i.e. it runs slow on a 128mb 7800GTX when running high intensity stuff) 256 mb is recommended for it.

can't wait for the screenshots man!

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I put up a couple, the quality is bad because photoshop wouldnt install... lame. Anyway, i am back on Xp for the time being. Ill probably install beta 2 when thats released and do a follow up. Overall though I really liked Vista, it just needed a bunch of updates, which will come in beta 2 so hopefully that will work alot better.

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sounds awesome, my XP has started to self destruct, every day a new feature stops working >_> so vista seems awesome right about now.
also nice shots

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so... I can just reinstall Microsoft Vista over my XP when it comes out?

hrm.. sounds interesting, butI might stick with XP.

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My Deviant

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the massive memory requirement is a definite downside

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Yeah the memory consumption is huge right now... im sure they can bring it down though. Remember its only beta and i think they rewrote a bunch of it for beta 2... which comes in dec.

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