Windows Vista Beta 2 (x64)

Windows Vista Beta 2(x64)
Office 2007 Beta 2

Anybody who wants to try Beta 2 for free and get a key (and links to d/l the iso):
http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/default.aspx

Full aero glass enabled.

desktop with word and ie7:


Guild Wars runs just fine:


Flip 3D (those windows are live and moving like guild wars with an mpeg2 playing in media player behind it):


Notice the glass border that is translucent around the windows:


media center:


media center playing a video:


- Installation is 100% graphical now.
- Installation is kind of a pain. If you have a raid setup it won't even recognize other drives that are connected (I had a stand alone 120gb on sata that I use for experimental os'es). It halts installation even before you can insert a sata driver disk. Disabling the raid in the bios doesn't help. The only work around was to go in and unplug the sata cables from the raid drives. After that I was able to continue installing. Once vista was installed I could plug back in my raid though vista still won't see it and still won't install raid drivers.
- The latest vista nvidia gfx drivers seem to work ok.
- Audigy 2zs is a bitch to get working. First, ignore their latest vista beta drivers since they don't work for this build of vista. Instead, go d/l the latest win xp pro x64 drivers. Install them (it will uninstall existing drivers, reboot, then install the xp pro x64 drivers). At this point install them AGAIN. It didn't make any sense to me but installing it twice in a row got sound working though only in stereo (no 5.1).
- no matter what I tried I could not get the nforce4 network adapter to work. It just won't get an IP through DHCP. I switched to the Marvell based gigabit ethernet port and that one worked just fine.
- mpeg2 codec is preinstalled so I was able to playback mpeg2 recordings from the pvr250 in media player 11.
- access flip 3d by hitting window key + tab. It definitely looks cool but I'm not sure how really useful it is.
- to get your run menu item back right click start, properties, customize
- menus are hidden by default. hit alt to bring them back up.
- I like the new checkbox option you can turn on in file explorer. To multi select items you can still use ctrl/shift but now you can also check/uncheck checkboxes next to each item.
- firefox still blows away ie7
- The built in slideshow mode has the same pan/zoom effects as the xbox 360 and media center.

I'll try it with the xbox 360 next.

UPDATE: 9/27/06
I just installed rc1 x64. I actually did an upgrade to a beta 2 installation. It does seem faster than beta 2 but the driver situation is still a mess. Sound is dead yet again on the audigy 2zs. No matter what I do it can't get it to work. The rc1 august drivers don't work. What I had to do in beta 2 was install th xp 64 bit drivers but they just crash on install in rc1. I hear b/c I upgraded instead of clean install rc1 that I'm basically hosed.
I tried the whole f8 turn off digitally signed driver crap but it still didn't help.

So yeah vista is great unless you need sound or printing.

On the upside my built in nf4 network port now works.

They NEED to delay vista another year. Right now it's making linux driver support look great.

Another odd problem.

Firefox won't accept any settings changes. The OK button doesn't work on any of it's dialogs. I've tried x64 builds, firefox 2 beta 2, 1.5.0.7. Nothing helps.