It was another wonderful Vista weekend. On Saturday, I loaded Vista Build 5365.8. Based upon all the information I can assemble, this build will become the next EDW (i.e., externally available) build of the product. And it merits that distinction. It is a generally stable and feature-complete build. Here is a brief list of the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good

• Everything that worked before is still working now. I am glad. Regression errors are pretty darned pesky. So ensuring that fixes remain fixed is pretty pivotal.
• M4 hardware detection and driver installation is getting very close to flawless. The video drivers installed flawlessly. I don’t have any Bluetooth devices. Consequently, I can’t give you any feedback on whether the BT issues have been resolved. There are a couple of unknown devices that still remain, but things are now very usable (w/o intervention).
• Windows Mobile connections (and ActiveSync) all appear to be working nominally.
• Once I joined the domain, I did receive the appropriate digital certificates. That means that wireless connections to our corporate LAN now operate w/o any additional action. Yippee!! My previous problems were almost certainly related to being on an interim and/or less stable build.
• IT Communications Manager (our VPN into the corporate network) works with this build. This is fabulous. I can now connect from at home w/o booting to XP.

The Bad

• I’m still having trouble with the audio drivers. But, as noted before, you can simply load the XP drivers as they work without a problem.

The Ugly

• When I swap video modes, I run into all sorts of video problems. The screen does not render images properly and I generally need to switch users or logoff and log back on in order to resolve the display issues that arise.

So what am I going to do? Well, I think I’m going to run on this build as my default build – at least, for now. All of the standard apps (Office, Groove, OneNote, Office Communicator, and the IE applets I use) seem to work. I still have to try Siebel (our corporate CRM). But beyond that, things are looking pretty darned good for a Beta 2 in a couple of weeks.
-CyclingRoo-

I’ve been using the February Vista CTP for a couple of weeks. And I’m loving it. But I’ve stumbled through a numberr of minor annoyances caused by my tablet. In particular, I’ve had to cobble together beta and legacy drivers to get the device to its full utilty. And that has been a challenge – mostly because of the configuration I’m running.
I am currently using a dual-boot configuration. Why? That’s simple. I have to give presentations to clients. And so I need a system that can demonstrate our current product suite. At the same time, I need to demo Vista and the new Office 2007 system to other customers. So the solution was to build a dual-boot configuration. But that poses one key problem: the Toshiba M4 tablet I use requires different firmware for XP and Vista.
Does the system work with only one firmware load? Yes, and no. Apparently, if I use the Vista firmware with XP, I lose the ability to display my monitor to an external source (like an LCD projector). And if I use the XP firmware for Vista, I cannot enable Aero Glass. So I’ve had to cobble together a process whereby I boot to a CD that selects the right firmware to flash before I boot to the OS I want to run. Yuck!
But I heard rumors that more recent Vista builds would ease some of my hardware-related challenges. So I started to shop around for which build to exploit. Then I learned that build 5342 would meet my needs – and it might well be a publicly-available build (see Paul Thurrott’s recent article). So I grabbed 5342 from the nightly build servers. I just finished loading it up on my tablet – and I like what I’m seeing. 🙂
First, the install process is even easier than before. I’m still having driver challenges. But it seems easier to resolve them this time around. [Of course, that’s because I know what I’m doing this time.] Second, I’m seeing a lot of fit and finish improvements. And while I do have Aero Glass running, I haven’t gotten around to turning on transparent/transluscent effects. Everything else looks great. Now I just have to re-install my apps in the fresh partition. I’ll post some more info about the refresh for Office 2007 System sometime later this weekend. But for now, I’m trimming the sails and heading out!
-CyclingRoo-

There are an amazing number of Windows Vista (February CTP) reviews available on the net. I won’t try and cover as much ground as everyone else has done. So if you want a good review, just on over to Paul Thurott’s SuperSite. And if you want some great screenshots, PC Mag has a slew of snapshots. And there are hundreds more.
So I will tell you what I’ve seen and found.
1. My pragma on interim builds is simple. I don’t have mulitple machines. So I have multiple primary partiitons (thanks to Symantec’s Partition Magic). I installed 5308 in my second partition. I’ll try the “upgrade” from an existing partition at a later date.
2. I installed from my running WinXP SP2 system. The install routine loaded many gigabytes from the DVD before rebooting and installing. But the install process was simple and fairly automatic. I love that. I still remember when I installed systems from mag tapes. But the worst installs took several dozen 3.5″ disks. I remember my first OS/2 Warp install. It took forever because I had to sit there the entire time while the install program greddily demanded more disks. One DVD sure beats feeding disks. But I will say that the progress bar moved very slowly. And there were a couple of points where I thought the install was hung. It wasn’t. And the install was relatively seamless.
3. On my first official reboot after install, I was expecting a beautiful display highlighting Aero Glass. Nope. My video wasn’t supported with the drivers from the DVD. Fortunately, nVidia released drivers on Friday. So once I downloaded and installed them, I had a beautiful display featuring full transparency. It is very cool indeed!
4. I still have to download the audio drivers for my Toshiba. And the rumor has it that we might even see some functioning Bluetooth drivers at any time. But for now, I’m connected via WiFi, And my new laser mouse worked from its initial installation. My fancy new phone connects w/o a single problem. I will need to install Office in order to have full synchronization. But for now, my phone doesn’t mind the new system one bit. Too bad the Bluetooth drivers aren’t available for the M4. It would be nice to sync w/o wires.
5. I really like the sidebar. The widgets seem to work very well. And I can’t wait for the client community to develop a library as rich as the Yahoo! Widgets library.
6. I am finally getting used to the features in IE7. I use IE7 in WinXP. But one of the key featurs wasn’t really visible until this build. The new IE uses a completely new RSS feed store. And there are many other applications [in Vista] that now use the consolidated feed store. I think I relly like the RSS sidebar widget. I was able to spin through all the feeds that I had previously subscribed to within IE7. Oh well. I guess I’m a sucker for gizmos.
There is a whole lot more that I need to explore – including all of the features that will excite the enterprise security and management crowd. And I really want to dig into the multimedia experience (ala, Media Center capabilites). But for now, you can color me impressed.
-CyclingRoo-

How many of you were wondering if I’d ever post stuff again? Well, I started wondering the same thing and realized that I was the only one who could do something about it. So here it is [drumroll, please].
We’ve been really busy rolling out all sorts of new trinkets. Some of it is beta software. Some of it is beta in name only. All of these things are part of the massive wave of change that Microsoft is going to deliver to its customers.
Here is the quick list, for now:
MSN Messenger 8.0 (aka, Live Messenger): I got my hands on this one yesterday. Its a great next step in communications. I love the fact that our clients now interact with IM tools from most other services. For example, I seamlessly communicate with AIM users, Yahoo! users and even ICQ users. You may be saying that this is not new. Well, you’re right about that. You could have used Gaim or Trillian and accomplished the same thing for over a year. But this is the first client from a service provider. No, it’s not Microsoft’s first universal client. If you’ve used the Office Communicator, you’ve been able to work with other service providers for quite some time. But this is the first time a service provider is offering gateway capabilities. [Note: In this version of the beta, I’m having some trouble with external providers. But I expect these minor challenges to be resolved shortly.] At the same time, the new Messenger featurs VOIP integration – including the ability to launch a SIP connection from the IM client. Will we offer a connection to the PSTN? I don’t know. It sure would be nice. But I do know that such connections are technically possible. We just need to decide if we will do that or leave it to VoIP services (like Skype) or the telcos. Wow! It won’t be long until the time when we can seamlessly communicate between traditional phones, computers and wireless phones. And that communciations will be via both text and audio. And with Apple beating the video drum, maybe we will start to see point-to-point video communications start to emerge. Boy, I love technology!
Windows Defender: I’ve been using the Microsoft Anti-Spyware tool since it was first released in beta form. And for those who didn’t know it, this is the product that MSFT bought from Giant. So it’s been a beta product and freely avaialble for quite some time. And now the product is in its second version. I can’t say how much longer the beta program will last. But I expect that we will continue to offer this as a core component of our Windows offering. After all, security is a key component in availability and manageability. The new version has some excellent visual touches. But even more important are the management and security aspects of the tool. The tool has additional feautres to secure against rootkits (like the Sony XCP exploit). In addition, Windows Defender is now a full-fledged service (including WMI capabilities). The tool does not yet include an anti-virus capability. But Microsoft will be offering a fee-based product/service that includes anti-virus defense as well. The first version of this will come in the Windows One Care Live offering. And a comprehenisve, enterprise version will be released as Microsoft Client Protection. But for now, the Windows Defender is one of the best products around – and it’s available in beta form today.
-CyclingRoo-