After a couple of frankly flaky betas and widespread speculation that it's "early 2007" release date carried more than a whiff of bovine faecal matter, Microsoft has cooly presented it's finger to the haters.
The more stable Windows Vista Beta 2 is now public - and free, complete with product key, to anyone who wants it. It'll time out after a year, which is a decent clue as to when the final version will go on sale. PCF's impressions? There's no new functionality to speak of (though DirectX10 is included, but it's shininess can't be gauged until we have DX10 graphics cards too), but it's a better performer than the last beta we looked at (see PCF 188). Heck, we even won a round of Quake4 using it, though the framerate remained messy. But laden with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and The GIMP (compatibility problems with the AVGFree barring our holy quintuplet of essential free software), it's a comfortable experience.
Want to try it? Head over to
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/default.mpsx - you have the choice of either 32- or 64-bit versions, and to pay for a copy to be shipped to you on disc if you can't stomach a [free] 3.5GB download. Driver support is patchy - ATI and NVIDIA provide 'em, but unless you have a progressive motherboard manufacturer, don't be surprised if you end up with no sound or complaints about unknown storage controllers. Maybe just pop it onto your spare PC for now...
What do you guys think?
