October 2006 Vista Release. Yes or no?

http://www.msbetas.org/

According to a document on msbetas.org vist is planned for release this year in October (For the RTM).

There will be a public release on September 4th 2006 which I think will be RC1.

What do you guys'n'gals think?

Didn't they put it back to 2007 already?

September, October, 2007, 2008? Who cares, it'll be slow and shit whenever it's released :) Why worry.

If it is released in October I'll be buying it. Full retail this time and not an OEM.

The reason I'm interested in Vista is because the last public beta release ran like a dream on my system. It was fast and looked good.

The beta is not available anymore from the Microsoft website so I'm scouring the P2P sites to find it. I still have my activation key from the last build but can't find the install DVD I downloaded.

i really am not tht interested in it... i'll probably get it with my next eMachines...

--Mike

supposed to be out just after xmas.

I'll probably get it if my nVidia problem was solved in the RC1 release.

RC1 is supposed to be the first build that has speed optimisations in and not full of debug stuff. Supposed to be a lot better than the previous builds performance and resource wise.

I'll buy it when it comes out cause I like the smell of new software.

I'm with Red October, I get new Operating Systems with the new machines.

Yep - Microsoft appear to be really pushing hard to get this out for volumne users in October. It's certainly improved with the July CTP over Beta 2 - would imagine RC1 will be pretty stable.

Yeah, think I may dual boot Vista with SuSE or Ubuntu when I build my next desktop, which won't be until late 2007 - early 2008 anyway. By then, it'll definitely be a standard OS, and more support will be added to that by then... Too early to grab the OS right when it's released, and not too many third-party applications being supported for it.

M3 b3 g3tting it THE mom3nt it b3 availabl3, ME luv Microshaft v3ry much.....

p.s m3 is mad

Am I the only one here waiting for SP1 or 2 to come out before making the jump?

I found XP RC1 extremely stable so long as you had decent hardware, in my case Nforce 1, athlon 1200. It was already better than Win2k for running both 3dsmax and photoshop so I picked it up from launch and never regretted it.

I'll probably try the RC1 of vista and judge whether I want to wait for a SP or not before purchasing an OEM version.

:)

Jokes aside - In my experience Windows is usally pretty nippy after a fresh install, and on reasonable hardware. By 'reasonable' I mean 2-4 years old, and more importantly a set of hardware without any slow links in the chain.

The grating performance I witness on friends' PCs is usually down to all the random 3rd party apps they have running.

I have Windows Vista Beta 2 running on oe of my desktops. It does contain a lot of improvements over XP. Nothing spectacular enough to make me switch from the Ubuntu desktop I use for most day-to-day work though.

Care to elaborate? I personally don't see any real improvements at all. I'm interested to hear your point of view.

Massive improvement to the driver model, installationless gaming and other changes to how games are installed and run, DirectX10, changes to the security model, network stack improvements, Live Anywhere, XNA/.Net CF 2.0 support as standard. Those are the biggest changes that affect gaming on Vista I think. As far as PC gaming is concerned it's quite a big jump, although we probably won't see the results for a year or two.

The other major change that will benefit end users is that Vista is based on Windows Server instead of the 2K/XP core. That means added security and stabilty, an improved storage IO model and it also uses high-end hardware more efficiently. XP Pro x64 Edition users have that already.

Apart from DX10, I really havn't noticed, or care to understand what any of that other stuff is ;]

That's probably why you don't see any real improvements then. ;)

Put it this way: Microsoft want to turn Vista into a proper gaming platform, much moreso than XP or any previous version of Windows ever was. If you buy a game for a console, you stick it in the drive, wait for it to load. If you buy a PC game you stick the DVD in the drive, read the EULA, wait for it to install for 15 minutes, install the latest DirectX, the latest graphics drivers, reboot (maybe twice), then when you get in to the game the first thing you do is go straight for the system config options. Compare Xbox Halo to PC Halo - they both use the hard disc for performance reasons, but Xbox Halo doesn't need to be installed or configured. Vista provides the infrastructure PC for games to work like that too.

That's my favourite. :)

It's already 2 years late, and doesn't offer anything over XP except an even more Fisher Price looking GUI. Since we haven't seen any Vista ads yet, I'd go for an October release being unrealistic.

Care to put a bit of money down on that wild assumption?

No ir doesn't, and more importantly, even if it did, it wouldn't make a lick of difference, because nobody is going to use it.

Heh. Actually you might be right - it looks like it's an XNA technology which means that it could probably exist on XP and 2K as well (unless it specifically needs DirectX10).

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/directx9_c/Install_on_Demand_for_Games.asp

As to whether people will use it, of course they will. It's better for the gamer, so it would be a bit spiteful to deliberately ignore it.

More cool details about gaming with XNA and Vista in that conference too.

being able to run off the DVD with minimal install and saved data on the HD would be fantastic, It's crazy when your average game takes up 4.5GB of HD space, all of which is already stored on the DVD.

These days game demo's are 1.5gb. Having it all on DVD might even hold back piracy somewhat.

Why? Developers constantly and deliberately add things that are not better for the gamer (like increasingly draconian copy protection schemes for example). Why should this be any different?

Oh and for the record, having to use the disc every time you want to play the game is not a good idea for all PC gamers.

On my recent stay in New Zealand for example it would have been significantly better if it had not been nessecary for me to drag my entire bloody CD collection half way across the world.

How does Vista enable this to happen? That has been perfectly possible since the DOS days... the 'copy all to hard drive' installer systems are a product of sheer laziness, not any OS set backs.

The link details it. The difference is that the hard drive can be used effectively as an efficient cache, installing the game on the fly, just like on the 360. It also allows for download play - transparently downloading, installing and autopatching parts of the game on demand.


Irrelevant - this system doesn't prevent a game from being run entirely from the hard drive, in fact it fully supports it. As before, the use of silly disc-based copy protection mechanisms is entirely up to the publisher.

Regarding games....does Vista actually have some control over itself in the process of a game running?

I hate it when a game locks up, or a game likes to draw itself over everything, including the OS itself, in the case the game gets stuck in a loop, or locks up or something....I either am forced to reset the PC, or try and close said app via task manager blind-folded.
(that or games that think they are god and lock out all window key combos that either minimize the game, or allow you to access windows while it's still running)

No more than Windows 2000 did. At least not for games older than DX10... Kind of similarly to how Windows 2000 operated - when you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del a screen comes up giving you options to boot up task manager, log out, shut down, etc... this screen looks more like the welcome screen than Windows 2000s dialog box however. Unlike Windows 2000 however, it's a bit of a hit and miss affair whether it can force itself to be shown in front of a game screen... generally if a game hasn't locked up it will work. If a game has locked up, it usually won't work. Although in my experience bringing up the taskbar in front of the game screen has more often been successful, but any average user wouldn't have a clue what to do, except hit the reset button.


I can't view it at the moemnt because my ISPs net link has been dodgy dave for the last two weeks...

So if you actually need it, it doesn't work? Brilliant that.

Well, I'm hoping that's improved by RC1 =]