Microsoft Vista for FREE

[ShiningDragon]

Off topic: why?

2 big things:

1. The Software Support is very low, there is not really much Software or good Games available. System Updates and Upgrades are combined to compilations. It isn't really comfortable and because my work, i have absolutely no time to "play" with an OS, which should work from the beginning.

2. The Drivers for Hardware are often really bad..., not many hardware is *really* good supported. In Windows i plug in a hardware, install the driver and all is working fine (normally). This point Linux is far away from.

Perhaps i'll try again if i should be someday umeployed to have enough time for configuration, but for now i am enjoying the situation, if my friend comes to me and cry that this, this, and this isn't good working with his Linux

[daphatty]

I'll just wait until the company I work for purchases a VLE of Vista. Did the same thing for W2K and XP.

[Jim_]

I wonder if people will have to buy a mac if they want to keep using windows software in a few years.... Not me, their deceptive ads are just too annoying.
I can tolerate XP, but would prefer 2k until the end of time.

[reboot]

They can have my XP when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

[reven]

sounds like im the only one who is looking forward to vista (xp is too bugging for me, 2000 is too old).

[ejeffers]

I also pleased by the Beta/ Beta 2, Ive tried out the beta before, as it was available to MSDN members, and I think it is a sign of great thigns to come. It is certainly not in any stable, reliable, usable form, but i for one, look forward to the final release of Vista and will most likely be purchasing Ultimate edition, regardless of the price.

oh, and i would never use Linux for any sort of real production. The only reason i dual boot with linux on my laptop, is for netowrk auditing and security tests (read: hacking).

[pcostanza]

It's nto a guarantee but if I'm fortunate enough to get a copy of Vista for my meager testing of it, I'll use it. Just hope it's the Premium version.

[stu8080]

I installed Beta 2 last night without a problem at all.

In fact i had a problem with my wireless, which i thought was a faulty router. After installing Vista all of a sudden i have a wireless connection again!

Its taking a bit of getting used to the new Windows explorer page, but everything else is still familiar territory.

The coolest thing is the 'Windows key - Enter' combo which gives you your tasks in a Picassa timeline style which then smoothly scrolls with the mousewheel.

I also didnt have any slowness problems others have mentioned here and at work.

[bgowland]

Its taking a bit of getting used to the new Windows explorer page, but everything else is still familiar territory.

Can it be switched to a 'Windows Classic' environment? If not, I'm sticking with XP.

I used the analyser last night (even though I don't intend putting the Beta on this machine). It told me I didn't have enough RAM (only 256MB - it wants 512MB) or HD space (it wants 15GB free. Huh?).

I remember the first time I installed NT v3.1 preliminary release back in 1992. They said a minimum spec. of 386DX33 with 16MB RAM and 100MB HD space. I managed to shoehorn it onto an 80MB drive on a 386DX25 with 8MB of RAM. When I got to the office each morning, I switched it on then had time to go grab a cup of coffee before it was ready for me to logon. Oh what fun!

Cheers,
Brian

[Torque]

Installed Vista B2 on a 3ghz P4 with 512MB of RAM at work. Talk about slowwwww, it was painful watching it boot and trying to do things in the OS. I'm wondering if extra RAM would help out all that much becase even when I didn't see the disk thrashing it was still slow to do things. I had read that the OS is more comfortable on a dual core system with atleast 1.5GB RAM :eek:

Tried downloading the 64bit version to try on a Sempron64 with 1GB RAM but the download was only 14MB vs the 3.5GB download for the 32bit version.