5384 (beta 2) first impressions

[Pierre Szwarc]

Test machine is home-built. MSI KT6-Delta motherboard, 1GB (2x512) PC2700
SDRAM, MSI GeForce FX 5200 video card with 128MB RAM. Primary disk has one
1GB primary partition (boot) and four 30GB logical partitions. XP installed
on 1st logical partition (D, Vista on 2nd one(E.

Beta 2 installs much faster than 5308 (under one hour instead of over 2
hours). It finds the SATA disk without any problem, but I don't know if it's
native or it got the driver from XP when I started the install.

The numlock state is sticky under the login screen, which is a good thing
for someone using the French keyboard (which I do). I hope this remains the
case by the time RTM rolls out.

Explorer no longer uses up 100% CPU and is now reasonably responsive.
However, the standard menus have disappeared and I can find no way to invoke
them.

The Windows sidebar no longer has auto-hide ablility, and this is a bad
thing if you don't have a 20" or bigger hi-res monitor. Especially as the
"gadgets" don't get transparent when the cursor leaves the sidebar.

Networking works a lot better. The MCE component detected the multimedia
server on my Sony VAIO without any problem (in fact, it surprised me <g>). I
can use Remote Desktop from the VAIO (under XP), which wasn't possible with
5308. Glass doesn't operate with RD; with a 100Mbps LAN connection, it
should be possible to activate it.

More later on.

 

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

I don't remember the Sidebar ever having Auto hide capabilities.

 

[Zack Whittaker]

Sure it did, didn't it? Certainly did with the leaked Sidebar for XP - the
one that was in 4053.

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--

I don't remember the Sidebar ever having Auto hide capabilities.

 

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

I thought he was referring to beta builds 5112 and up, not the alphas.
--
Andre
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

Sure it did, didn't it? Certainly did with the leaked Sidebar for XP - the
one that was in 4053.

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and
not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--

 

[Slugsie]

Press and Release ALT, just like IE 7. You can also permanently display it
by Tools/Options/View, tick Always Show Classic Menus.

 

[Lang Murphy]

Have you tried setting the opacity on the gadgets? I have the clock opacity
set to 20% and it becomes transparent when the mouse isn't hovering over
it...

 

[Jason]

In Vista Build 5308, it kind of does have an hide feature but not auto hide
from what I see. When the side bar is open and you right click on a empty
space on it it will give you a menu. One of the choices that you can
select is Hide Sidebar. Granted, to have it show again, you will have to
either double click on the icon in the tray that looks like a white life
saver's candy or right click on it and choose Show Sidebar.

--
Jason
Windows Vista, Build 5308

I don't remember the Sidebar ever having Auto hide capabilities.

 

[Zack Whittaker]

Yeh - this is great for when you disband the Sidebar and have all the
Gadgets running on the desktop - so you can work on Word and have the clock
there but nearly transparent, hover over it and there is the time )

Very cool )

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--

 

[Lang Murphy]

Yeah... if I could only get the Office Beta 2 to install... it's saying I
don't have admin rights, which I do... must've turned on/off the wrong thing
in gpedit... sigh...

 

[Lang Murphy]

Ha! Weird! I just added myself to the users group and the Office install
kicked off... ooo-eeeee-ooooo

 

[The Dude]

Installed on my machine.
ASUS A8N mobo
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200
2GB PC3200 DDR RAM
2 250GB Seagate Drives RAID

Runs like a dream. I was not going to update to final Vista because there
were so many things I didn't like about older builds, but they are getting
better as they go along.

 

[AMDX2]

Installed on my machine.
ASUS A8N mobo
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200
2GB PC3200 DDR RAM
2 250GB Seagate Drives RAID

Runs like a dream. I was not going to update to final Vista because there
were so many things I didn't like about older builds, but they are getting
better as they go along.

How did you get it to install on the Raid? Is it using promise fasttrak 378
or sil? I've got the Asus A8V Deluxe and no idea how to install it on my
Raid FastTrak 378 when I've not found any drivers for putting on floppy and
using durring the install.

 

[Frank]

How did you get it to install on the Raid? Is it using promise fasttrak 378
or sil? I've got the Asus A8V Deluxe and no idea how to install it on my
Raid FastTrak 378 when I've not found any drivers for putting on floppy and
using durring the install.

My xp 378 drivers work just fine for me.
Frank

 

[Pierre Szwarc]

I haven't tried that yet, but thanks for reminding me
--
Pierre Szwarc
Paris, France
PGP key ID 0x75B5779B
------------------------------------------------
Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom !
------------------------------------------------

"Lang Murphy" <[email protected]> a écrit dans le message de (e-mail address removed)...
| Have you tried setting the opacity on the gadgets? I have the clock
opacity
| set to 20% and it becomes transparent when the mouse isn't hovering over
| it...

 

[Pierre Szwarc]

I may have used the wrong word. In 5308 it would become almost totally
transparent when the mouse was away from it.

 

[AMDX2]

I may have used the wrong word. In 5308 it would become almost totally
transparent when the mouse was away from it.
--
Pierre Szwarc
Paris, France
PGP key ID 0x75B5779B
------------------------------------------------
Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom !
------------------------------------------------

"Andre Da Costa [Extended64]" <[email protected]> a écrit dans le
message
de news: (e-mail address removed)...
|I don't remember the Sidebar ever having Auto hide capabilities.

Ya, the sidebar in 5381 is totally transparent with the mouse not on it
which I thought looked kinda cool. The left side of it where the border line
is would disappear and I thought that was kinda cool. When I move the mouse
over it then it would slowly fade in like. Come to front like. I think
that's kind of neat.

 

[AMDX2]

My xp 378 drivers work just fine for me.
Frank

I might not be using my correct disk, but I think I am. I don't know, I'll
have to look. My board is the Asus A8V deluxe on my ABS Ultimate M5-64 pc
which I bought from ABS a year and a half ago Oct 2004 I think. Still a
great powerfull pc. I was using a floppy that said raid drivers, but I
forget if it's the one that came with this pc or not. I guess I'll have to
download the xp drivers from the promise or asus web site and try that, but
i do think vista will give a message saying they're not made for vista and
won't work.

 

[Pierre Szwarc]

It still does this in Beta2, but the "gadgets" remain opaque by default.
--
Pierre Szwarc
Paris, France
PGP key ID 0x75B5779B
------------------------------------------------
Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom !
------------------------------------------------

"AMDX2" <[email protected]> a écrit dans le message de (e-mail address removed)...
|
| Ya, the sidebar in 5381 is totally transparent with the mouse not on it
| which I thought looked kinda cool. The left side of it where the border
line
| is would disappear and I thought that was kinda cool. When I move the
mouse
| over it then it would slowly fade in like. Come to front like. I think
| that's kind of neat.
|
|