It certainly is going to be a bumpy ride for Microsoft. I just installed Build 5456 and I can still sum it up in one word: crap. It is unbelievable but still I get a nice blue screen when I reboot. Still it doesn’t recognize hardware like my webcam and scanner. Performance did improve (my swapfile isn’t that huge anymore) a bit. The UAC (User Account Control) still bugs you every 2 clicks you make. Jeezzz guys. This is just…. unbelievable. According to some information it should run better etc. but so far I haven’t seen *any* proof of that. In fact I got dozens of weird errors back this time. Just check out the screenshot on the left here. Suddenly my DVD’s stopped working: first they worked and then suddenly they stopped. Also, for whatever reason my networkcard stopped and then was recognized as new hardware (duh!) and popped up as network connection #2 and had to be completely re-configured again. WTF?
Also Paul Thurott must be paid by Microsoft to write his positive crap. I mean, come on:
But what we get in build 5456 is dramatic improvement in reliability, usability, performance, and fit and finish.
How come I didn’t see any of that?
Dramatically improved Setup speed. Long ago, Microsoft promised that Windows Vista would install in about 20 minutes, but we’ve seen nothing even close to that throughout the beta. While Windows Vista build 5456 doesn’t quite achieve the 20 minute mark, it did install in just 30 minutes on my primary desktop, which is quite a bit better than before.
Well, my install clocked in over 1 hour and 10 minutes. I wonder what friggin system he uses?
Performance improvements. Throughout the system, Windows Vista is much speedier than was Beta 2.
Yeah I noticed a slightly improved performance, but to call it “much speedier” is calling a turtle with a severe case of asthma fast (ok, I admit a turtle is faster than a snail – what I called the previous build – but still).
Thurott continues to say:
Indeed, it’s hard not to view this build and not believe that Microsoft is absolutely back on track.
Yeah, well back on track into a big abyss I guess.
Oh, on the positive side: they did fix the media center installation procedure. By default it does not longer start up in a whopping 720i HD format, but just uses the monitors default setting. Great. But it still turns on the sound of my friggin TV-card (loud static!) and then tells me it didn’t recognize my TV-card: how the hell did it manage to turn on it’s friggin’ sound then?
No, guys and girls, this is *not* the way Microsoft is going to prevail.
Right now I think I will delete the whole crappy beta and wait till there is a *proper* release candidate out there… This crap is just a little too much sado-masochistic for my taste…
Probably to be continued in a couple of months (maybe)…