Windows Vista 'DreamScene' Available
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Microsoft on Wednesday made available a beta of the second "Ultimate Extra" for Windows Vista, which is available for download free of charge for those who purchased the Ultimate Edition of the new operating system. Called DreamScene, the extra lets users put videos as their desktop background.
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(InfoWorld) - As Microsoftâs five-year-long development effort slouches toward completion, details began to emerge last week that showed the company is (finally) gearing up to release Windows Vista after the new year, as promised. Pricing information popped up on a Canadian Web site, and Amazon.com told visitors that the new OS would be going out on Jan. 30, only to replace that date with a squishier âEarly 2007.â Finally, by the time you read this, Microsoft has promised to release the penultimate test version of its Vista operating system, dubbed âRelease Candidate 1â to an army of testers around the world. Are anticipatory chills running down your spine? They shouldnât be. Because a Release Candidate must be stable enough to allow corporate buyers to evaluate the product for deployment, Microsoft will have done quite a bit of work to RC1 over Vistaâs previous beta incarnations; so get set for a number of improvements. On the other hand, because of this concentration on stability, donât look for any noteworthy new features. Hereâs what Vista RC1 will likely have to offer: Installation: A late beta release dubbed âPre RC1â received kudos from more than one online reviewer for the improvements in this area, and rumors out of Microsoft say RC1 is the first version of Vista (or any Windows version) that has seamlessly installed on a variety of new notebooks and desktops â no muss, no fuss, and with full detection of PC Card and USB peripherals. Graphical interface: Aero has reportedly given Microsoft quite a few Advil moments, and even Beta 2 users were reporting intermittent difficulties. Look for this to be smoothed out in anything that receives RC status. That doesnât mean, however, that you should try to run it on your anemic graphics subsystem from 2003. Microsoft recommends at least 32-bit-per-pixel graphics capability. To you and me that means that for really smooth Aero-nautics, you should have a DirectX 9-capable 3-D accelerator card with 128MB of dedicated video RAM. If your test box lacks this video muscle, RC1 will support a non-Aero interface for weaker or older PCs. Audio: Microsoft has been having trouble with audio in even its most recent Vista Beta release. Toolsmixer controls are intermittently absent, and audio playback is often interrupted or missing. This should be solved in an RC1 release. If youâre a systems or network administrator, RC1 wonât be much different from Beta 2. The new release will ship with Internet Explorer RC1 installed, but even that has few differences from IE7 Beta 2. There will be a new, easier-to-use integrated backup tool, but itâs of little interest to corporate users whoâll most likely be using a centralized third-party app or Windows Shadow Copy. The pricing and availability info â coupled with the OSâs slow march toward âgold,â aka a finished version of Windows Vista ready for manufacturing â shows that Microsoft is serious about meeting its ship date. However, the key criterion for Vista RC1 will be stability. If it installs smoothly, runs smoothly, and gives us the full Vista experience that Microsoftâs been promising, consider it a success. If not, itâs back to the drawing board.
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Microsoft has launched the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment public beta.
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Get a sneak peak at many of the key aspects of Vista, as it looks today. Though not vastly changed, there are several new looks in Release Candidate 1.
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Tycho:  It's floating around now, out there on the Wub, and it calls to you.  Or maybe it does, I don't actually know.  In any case, it can be got from 3D Downloads, the Fileplanets, GamersHell, or WorthDownloading.  Download it from mulltiple sites simultaneously for a naughty thrill.  God only knows how this would run on my Vista rig at home, but it's a Vista rig, so you can probably guess.  (CW)TB
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REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft's coming-out party for Windows Vista, its long-anticipated operating system, has a Cecil B. DeMille feel. The new Windows is the product of a cast of literally millions: more than 2 million consumers and businesses who tested it and offered their advice; tens of thousands of hardware and software partners who have helped mold the visually gripping operating system; and thousands of Microsoft employees who have sweated out the details.
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Software giant Microsoft confirmed Monday that the first update to its Windows Vista operating system will be available as an official download in mid-March. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will address various performance and stability issues and improve the desktop OS's hardware support.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has clarified the identity of the mysterious trio on the installation disks for the business version of Windows Vista. And no, you can't play the installation DVDs backwards and hear the devil talking, either. The tiny photo of three grinning men -- less that 1 mm in size -- is one of several images incorporated into the hologram's design intended to make it harder to replicate a Vista DVD, according to Nick White on Microsoft's Vista team blog. The men in the photo worked on the team that designed the hologram. The disks also have images of art works now in the public domain. Magnification is required to see the images. "The real story is interesting, but conspiracy theorists will be disappointed to learn that it is not the result of a deliberate attempt to deceive," White wrote. Microsoft never intended to make the images impossible to find, White said. Holograms are hard to reproduce, he wrote, but the inclusion of photos adds another level of complexity to thwart piracy. Various blog postings speculated the image was the work of a rogue trio, reminiscent of when Microsoft and other software vendors used to plant images or games within other programs, a practice known as adding an "Easter egg." Nonetheless, pundits couldn't pass up the opportunity for a bit of humor at Microsoft's expense. "Apparently a blogger named Kwisatz has uncovered a 'secret' photo embedded into the hologram that encompasses the Windows Vista Business DVD," wrote Paul Miller on the tech blog Engadget. "This being Microsoft, the photo naturally depicts three total nerds grinning excessively at their own cleverness."ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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The long awaited âService Pack 2â for Windows XP has finally been released, not without problems though. If youâve got a good bit of computer experience, then installing
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Microsoft on Friday made available the first post-RC1 build of Windows Vista to technical beta testers, which is numbered 5728. The interim update is most notable because the 5700 range has been allocated for the final Vista build, indicating RTM could arrive as scheduled next month.
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Microsoft announced today that it will soon release -- to a limited number of testers -- a beta version of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Here's what we know so far.
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By Tamara Chuang, The Orange County Register, Calif.  Jan. 30--The anticipation is over. Windows Vista is finally here.
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The final, final test build Microsoft today made available a new test build for Windows Vista, the mythical desktop operating system of legend. It's called RC2, or Release Candidate 2 (build number 5744), and it really is only for diehard Vista testaholics. And the stupid.â¦
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Microsoft Corp.  said on Tuesday  that is has begun widespread testing of Windows Vista, the  long-awaited new version of the operating system that sits on  more than 90 percent of the world's PCs.
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As Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich demonstrated during one of his more popular talks at TechEd, one of Vista's many internal kernel changes includes a special prioritization feature especially for multimedia and Media Player.  You might be surprised to learn what priorities get sacrificed just to make sure MP11 doesn't skip a beat.
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An early version of the first significant Vista update is released to about 12,000 testers. Meanwhile, a near-final "release candidate" version of Windows Server 2008 is set to be available for download within 24 hours.
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The first Vista service pack will address performance and reliability while adding support for new types of hardware and some emerging standards. Also on tap: a beta of the third and final service pack for Windows XP.