I just thought I would throw up some initial thoughts and impressions about the latest build released to us beta testers. All I have to say so far is - fantastic! I had read some posts that we would be wow'd by this build and RC1 and so far, I am! Performance is about 3x better so far on my Dell Inspiron 9300, and driver support is phenominal! I didn't have a single device that didn't come through setup installed except for the sound card which hit Windows Update and immideately downloaded and installed the driver, and did NOT require a reboot before it began to function! Amazing! I think that is the first time I have ever seen a sound card driver install without requiring a reboot. Windows sidebar is less resource intensive, and the current gadgets, while still limited (still missing that elusive Windows Media Player gadget) are much more refined and nice to look at. I am still not a huge fan of the concept design of the cpu meter gadget, but it does look a lot better than it used to.
And, it's a first. I actually downloaded and installed a toolbar app. Normally I hate, hate HATE any kind of additional toolbar for IE, but I thought for this build I would give the Windows Live toolbar a chance. So far it hasn't caused me any issues and for that alone I like it, so far. I am part of the Windows Live One Care continuing beta and so I will see if I can get that to install and run on Vista and I'll let you know in my official review.
Anyhow, I am posting some screenshots that I took real quick. I will provide much more, hopefully this weekend and let you know!

Posted
Aug 25 2006, 12:16 AM
by
Matt Freestone

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