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Windows Vista RC2 has been released

I've been running RC1 for a little while now and I have been converted to Vista! It is very nice. RC2 has just been released and has some minor improvements and bug fixes. I'm downloading and installing it now. You can download it from https://download.windowsvista.com/preview/rc2/en/download.htm if you're interested in being on the bleeding edge.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2006
    The link just redirects me to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/ which links me to RC1. I also cannot find RC2 on MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2006
    I saw the RC2 download page earlier today but the URL doesn't work anymore. Now it forwards to the official Vista page. What's going on? Alex

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2006
    I can still get to the page, but perhaps we've taken down the link. I'm not sure. The web page does say, "We are making this release available for a limited time only (and only by download) in order to get broad distribution and testing in a variety of PC configurations," so maybe the limited time is up.

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2006
    If they only left it up for two days, that's a bummer. RC1 doesn't cut it, and I need to know I'm getting a solid product before I spend my money on RTM.

  • Anonymous
    October 10, 2006
    I hear ya', Gary. I'm not sure why the link is down (I can still get to it, but maybe that's because I originate from a Microsoft IP address). Just out of curiosity, what didn't you like about RC1? Were there just too many bugs, or did you find some of the features lacking? I must admit that I've had limited exposure to RC1. I only ran it for a few days before upgrading to RC2.

  • Anonymous
    October 12, 2006
    It's a little of both. Here's what I have so far. Issues: The entire screen goes black then comes back randomly. If I only keep one window open at a time or sometimes two, it doesn't happen as often. I have a 256MB PCI-E 16x video card and 2GB of system RAM. The built-in driver for my network card is busted. I can only connect to a few web sites, yet I can ping whoever I want. The funny thing is, the XP drivers work perfectly in Vista. Why don't they just use those? Games are way too slow. On the same machine in XP, they are very smooth. Is Aero not being as friendly with other D3D apps as promised? When I go in or out of fullscreen mode in Media Center while watching a DVD, there is a pause of at least 15 seconds before playback resumes. Clicking "back" after watching a video from Photo Gallery, the app freezes for several seconds. The UI is inconsistent. Below is an article with some examples. This is less of an issue, but why has the "release candidate" not addressed them yet? http://hive.net/Member/blogs/the_insider/archive/2006/07/18/Latest-in-UI-Inconsistencies-in-Windows-Vista.aspx Why is the default user account STILL setup as an administrator? Why not walk the user through creating both an admin and user account during installation? Notepad and textboxes in general are still buggy in "Word Wrap" mode. Not as big of an issue, but it's irritating. It's even more irritating it still hasn't been fixed. Yes, I do use Notepad. Problems with new "features": "Folder Options" is only available via the Control Panel. I spent a good few minutes looking in Explorer for it. The "File Types" tab in "Folder Options" is gone. It was replaced by a Control Panel applet which only contains a fraction of the functionality. This means I get to spend more time in regedit. For some reason, the IE7 team seems to think putting "Close Tab" at the TOP of a tab's context menu and "New Tab" at the bottom is intuitive. Not only is this the reverse of what every other tabbed browser does, "Close" has appeared at the bottom of every system menu since I can remember. I have closed dozens of tabs accidently. IE7 is also just as slow as IE6 and still lacks a decent download manager. I guess this isn't really a big deal for me since Firefox 2.0 appears to run fine on Vista. Even though I told Media Player I didn't want to setup any online stores, I have yet to find a way to get rid of the "URGE" button at the top. The Photo Gallery will permanently modify files as soon as you click "Rotate Image." It will even re-encode if it has to. I don't feel to comfortable using this app anymore. The new Start Menu requires way too much scrolling. It's much less intuitive than XP. Speaking of which, the "All Programs" folder is filled up with "Windows *" software shortcuts. Where's the organization? The new wizards are very counter-intuitive. Why are the back and next buttons so different and far away from each other? I'm not using a web browser. Please stop putting that IE back button everywhere. :) I still have been unable to understand how a hard-coded login sound will improve my "experience." Luckily, I've been told this will be fixed before RTM. There are a lot of breaking changes. It's going to be years before we even think about deploying Vista at work. I tried setting up my environment on a test machine with Vista. I did not get far. I just heard recently Visual Studio 2003 will not be supported on Vista. Even Visual Studio 2005 has compatibility issues. I'm use to getting to my network connections very quickly through Start Menu -> Settings -> Network Connections. I have it configured as a menu, so I only have to click twice. Now, I have to open "Control Panel" -> "Network and Sharing Center" to launch a dialog, click on the "Manage Network Connections" link, then close "Netword and Sharing Center," which I didn't care about. I thought having a virtual path for each Control Panel applet was a neat feature, so I tried to take advantage of it as a workaround. It seems I can only create shortcuts to every applet but the one I want. Vista does have some cool features, mainly under the hood. As a programmer, I'm very excited about them. Unfortunately, I don't see myself using any of them for a long time. I'm just not confident enough to call it an XP replacement. I'd really like Vista to succeed as an OS, but RTM is just around the corner and Microsoft doesn't want another delay. I'm the "computer guy" in my family, and I will not be recommending this OS to anyone.

  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2006
    Gary, thanks for your helpful comments. I can say that a lot of these issues have been fixed in RC2, but some of them will just require a change in how you work I'm afraid. I had similar sentiments when I was using Beta2 because I hated that I had to change how I liked to work in XP so dramatically. I can say that I think we've made some vast improvements since then and that Vista is really starting to grow on me. I've forwarded your comments on to the Vista team, so thanks again for your input.