It was not complete; I didn't do much due to night
I won't be posting screenshot of bundled application like Photo Gallery etc, because they are already available all over the net. Just check those
Vista has improved a lot; the speed is commendable over Beta 2, just as fast as XP itself. I downloaded & installed the Intel Chipset Software installation utility which has official support for Windows Vista from Intel 848 chipset & above, users of 845 chipset have to live with the inbuilt drivers. Other users must download these new Intel chipset drivers or drivers corresponding to their chipset
Intel has also released updated WDDM Drivers for their GMA950 & above onboard IGP, now Aero is supported on Intel 945G chipset.
Every user must download Vistabootpro 2.1, a great app to configure the boot loader of Windows Vista
Now to the UI Part. Right now it's not ready & it's inconsistent, the colours are not equal all over. I guess either this will be fixed in final version or MS is leaving that to 3rd party developers such as Stardock. The UI is more productive then XP, & took 5 mins only for me to get used to it. Vista enables Clear type all over the screen fonts by default, something which looks very blurred on CRT monitors, so better if u disable it
Flip3D has full anti-aliasing now, no more zaggies
First time users will be delighted to see how much the integrated search helps, u can find not only files, but also apps etc. If the indexing is turned on, it will run a service by the name Searchindexer.exe & U will get instant searches; however it does slows down the system no matter what Microsoft says. Since I don't use searching that much I disabled it & searching speed became same as Windows XP. Here is a screenshot of Control Panel, when I was searching to post error reports to Microsoft
*img103.imageshack.us/img103/2383/controlpanelsearchlg8.th.jpg
I changed the my documents folder location to my XP My documents folder, & it is likes shared all over
I just miss the Office 2007 beta 2 version of Segoe UI font, it was so better for the UI fonts all over, don’t know why MS changed it in RC1. Right now I m using the Office 2007 Beta 2 & waiting for the Technical refresh soon
Network centre has to change, my airtel connection works as a LAN & it wasn’t showing it anywhere, I had to search for LAN in control panel to get it
Windows now has a much better Program Error diagnostic service, I tried installing Zone Alarm & it said itself, that” Zonealarm 6 has known problems with this version of Windows, check for solutions online”. U can also check for solutions online later on. This also happened when I tried to install Diskeeper 8, which isn’t compatible
*img103.imageshack.us/img103/7104/problemserrorsyn7.th.jpg
The default mode of shutdown in Vista is kind of like a hybrid between Hibernation & Sleep, but don't know why, nothing like that is happening here. When I shut down, hibernate or sleep the computer, it restarts. I m going back to Windows XP to shut down the computer every time, I will be posting this problem to MS. On the start menu U won't find any Shut down icons, you have to go to the Power configuration panel & there select which icon u want to show there.
Add remove programs is much like beta 2
*img103.imageshack.us/img103/2634/addremoveprogramsew2.th.jpg
About the app compatibility
Most of the apps I was able to run directly from my Windows XP partition such as Winamp, Roboform & Ad muncher, some I had to install in Vista too.
Acdsee 8 works fine, just that the menu doesn’t show shadow properly, maybe because they use hard coded tga images as the shadow instead of using inbuilt shadow mechanism of Vista
*img174.imageshack.us/img174/3120/acdseemenudp6.jpg
Yahoo Messenger 8 had UI problems with Vista beta 2, now it all works fine. WLM 8 can be downloaded from a link given in the start menu or just download it yourself, however when I installed WLM myself, because I use it on XP, it did not remove the link from start menu, this is UI inconsistency
The first thing to do, after installing Vista is to install JAVA runtime 1.5_8
Yahoo Widget engine ran directly from Windows XP partition in beta 2, but this time I had to install it, works fine, with no crashes etc
DivX 6.3 works fine here. QuickTime 7.1 can play audio but no video; better wait for a new version. I m going to try QuickTime alternative right now, because Real Alternative works fine. Power DVD 7 works fine, even the codec get loaded in WMP11
Firefox 1.5.6 takes 10 seconds to load, haven’t tried firefox 2.0 yet, & Finally Internet Download accelerator works fine, I m running it directly from XP partition.
Going to check the workstation apps now, hope 3Ds Max works this time. Here are few screenshots. I don't think it's good t upgrade to Vista anytime before May 2007, cos only by then we will have most of our application relesed in Vista compatible forms .
