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Vista Beta 2 has Major Problems
WebHostingGuy writes "In a review by Gary Krackow from MSNBC who reviewed Vista Beta 2 over the last week he had very disappointing problems. "for me [it] was one of the worst operating system experiences that I've ever encountered." Built-in audio and wireless didn't work on his Levono laptop. It took four days to get the first installation."
That it is Linux that is hard to install. Windows just works out of the box.
Boy, Microsoft sure has gotten great publicity by having the 'oil and water' comment posted on (their own ) MSNBC ! Perhaps the term "like Microsoft and Open-Source" would've looked better (worse?). By the way- isnt this experience pointing to a flaw in Vista? Isnt it supposed to be compatible with present day hardware? It IS windows after all, right?
really?
Dell computers doesn't have drivers for a BETA OS? I'm shocked SHOCKED! How dare they not support something that isn't widely avalible for the public and could change at the drop of a hate for any reason!
Well that's it, I'll never buy a dell till that start supporting unreleased OS' that the public can't buy or use for another 7+ months!
This is what passes for news? Someone should clue this retard in that it is a g*dd*mn beta product. As in, it hasn't been released yet. F*cking idiot!
We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas. - Ned's Mom
Nah, he's just going to keep running his pirated version of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 because none of the new-fangled operating systems have enough new things...
I've been using what was described to me as a "very near Beta 2."
Is that by chance build 5342? That's not Beta 2. I thought this was about Beta 2.....
after four hours of churning away the laptop shut down and wouldn't reboot.
I'll give him that one. Vista takes several hours to install even on GOOD hardware, and the "wouldn't reboot" comment creates the possbility of a problem. That's the last statement that even makes sense.
I tried again on the ThinkPad as a clean install, which meant wiping out everything on the hard drive and starting from scratch.
Last I checked, there is no "upgrade" option in the beta, so how else would you have installed it?
That took about an hour to complete. It also removed every device driver that I needed to run the laptop.
Clicking "remove partition" in the Vista installer took an hour? My guess is you found some elaborate way to remove the OS, that may not have been successful. The comment about removing device drivers? Not sure how to parse that one. Last I checked, drivers are part of the OS, so removing the OS removes the drivers. This is normal behavior. Have you done this before?
Downloading the drivers from the Lenovo Web site took a long time
Lenovo has Vista drivers?
Unfortunately, not everything I downloaded is Vista-ready so rebooting had to occur after every 10 minutes of computer use.
That's what I thought. How did you install a driver that forced you to reboot every 10 minutes?
Also, the built-in audio and wireless connectivity devices don't work. I do have an 802.11b/g PC card that was recognized by the system.
What didn't work about it? I had a problem with the audio drivers on my bleeding edge Gateway M460, but that chipset is well documented in the Vista beta forums as being problematic. "Built in wireless" is probably an IPW-2200, flawless under Vista on my M460. Not sure what problem you had there.
I did try installing Vista on two other laptops. One, it turns out, needs a new Real Time Clock battery (a trip to the manufacturer is needed) and another which had a massive hard drive failure at the beginning of the installation process.
Well, that clinches it. Now not only is Vista the worst experience ever, it DETECTS BAD HARDWARE AND REFUSES TO INSTALL!! Are you LISTENING people????? Seriously, have you ever done this sort of thing before?
I did not try to install the Vista Beta on the computer I'm using to write this. I'll bet you can figure out why.
Either you're too dumb to figure it out, or that it would ruin your perfectly crafted article on why Vista sucks. Please advise.
After a weekend of frustration -- more than 30 hours of my time -- and some help from Microsoft -- I have Vista almost Beta 2 running (somewhat) on a laptop.
You got MS support on a pre-beta release?
I will admit that Vista has some issues. I wouldn't chalk those issues up to anything outside of a normal "beta" process. The worst I've had is hardware not being detected correctly. Since manufacturers aren't releasing Vista drivers, it's kind of expected that beta OS + bleeding edge hardware means that you may have to wait for good hardware support. In the case of my M460, I waited for the next build and what do you know, my driver was fixed. What I've found is that if you install the latest build, you need to run automatic updates. Microsoft is packaging drivers in thsoe updates, and for once Windows Update is actually making things run better. Since you mentioned that you have a somewhat working install, I would suggest running Windows Update for awhile. You may see those issues slowly disappear.
In the meantime, before writing a tech article, please have it proofread by someone other than a 3rd grader.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I guess this means we should redefine the term "ready for the desktop". It is no wonder why linux cannot get there, they don't know were the finish line is.
I wasn't aware that this was a "standard" computer. I didn't know that a "standardized" desktop even existed.
If the specs you posted are considered "standard", then when MS ships a Beta OS to a major news organization to be widely reviewed and reported, MS should clearly state "This OS is only to be tested on an Asus NForce board with a NVidia video card, SATA HDDs, and an IDE DVD"
Make a couple hundred stickers and put them right on the Beta CD itself. Wouldn't cost more than 20 bucks or so to make the stickers. Then the Beta OS would run as MS expected, and everyone would be happy. Seems like a good investment for 20 bucks.
Microsoft should have copied Apple by using UNIX, then we wouldn't have these issues, except now SCO will be out to sue Microsoft.
Blame the user, not the software.