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-
