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In a move that caught most Beta Testers by surprise, Microsoft released Windows Vista RC1 Build 5600 to TAP and Tech Beta testers via Microsoft Connect earlier today (for details, see HERE), with promises for the public release to follow soon. I just installed this latest build on 2 of my home systems, and both installations went easily, and quickly. One at 21 minutes, the other at 24 minutes. With the exception of a Creative Audigy 2 ZS card, and an eHome Wonder TV tuner, all drivers installed during setup.
After downloading the latest Creative Vista Beta drivers, I was pleased to find that my Audigy 2 card works well, without the crackling and hissing found in some earlier builds (although this may not be the case for everyone - see Answers: Creative Drivers & Vista). My TV card also installed, and the Media Center setup was much easier and quicker than in Beta 2. The first thing I noticed once Vista had assessed my system performance (after giving me a much better rating than in Beta 2) was a better responsiveness in the Start Menu and Windows Explorer as compared to earlier builds. The user interface has undergone a number of changes since Beta 2, and there are many new icons and graphics.
Although Windows Vista Build 5536 was just released a week ago, there are a number of bug fixes apparent in this build, most noticeably for me was that my RAID drivers loaded properly. This is looking more like a build that I can easily run as a main OS, with full media capabilities, and much less intrusive UAC prompts. Many of the features which were not fully working in Beta 2 have been completed, and I really like the new UDF support which allows you to easily drag and drop files onto a writeable DVD, or even save files directly to DVD R/Rw's from any program within Vista.
With the most recent Beta release of Virtual Server (see Download Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 - Beta 2), users now have the ability to mount the VHD images which are created by Windows Vista CompletePC Backup utility. All in all, Vista RC1 seems to be the best release of Windows Vista by far, and although there are sure to still be some bugs to find, it looks as if Microsoft has been listening and working hard to iron out all the bugs submitted by Beta Testers.
Posted by jrfree1 at September 1, 2006 08:36 PM
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