Microsoft Vista Release Candidate 1 Now Available for Download

[Marcia]

Just rebooted and was redirected to the Microsoft Vista [microsoft.com] page:

Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1)—the final major pre-release of Windows Vista—is now available through the Customer Preview Program.

There's a small download to test compatibility with the current system:

Run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor RC to help get your PC ready for Windows Vista.

[microsoft.com...]

Exciting, and the full release is now only a few months off.

[bill]

Is that new for a lot of people? I haven't tracked that page. For a short while they were offering Release Candidate 2 [webmasterworld.com] from that page, but they stopped downloads and reverted to RC1 after they reached their quota of beta testers.

Beta testing an OS isn't for everyone. Take the precaution of having a complete system backup that you know you can restore.

[Marcia]

I'm not sure they're actually calling it beta testing Bill, because it's available to everyone, which I don't believe it was before. But while I find it very exciting it's not for me at this time for hardware reasons. This is a brand new computer and the analysis software I downloaded showed that the 2Wire used for my DSL connection isn't compatible with Vista and I'm not about to change that.

The computer that died last week is still under warranty, if they replace it (and don't try to welch on coverage), I'll check for compatibility because a second one could be run on dialup and I wouldn't run into that, so I would give it a try.

[GaryK]

A recent article on Wired also mentions that most PCs with a built-in graphics card will probably not be able to run Vista with Aero enabled. Without Aero, Vista looks awful. I'm not sure if I can link to the article so I won't. :)

[bill]

I'm not sure they're actually calling it beta testing Bill, because it's available to everyone, which I don't believe it was before.

A-ha. They call it Customer Preview Program and get around that nasty 'beta' term. ;) I've been in the beta loop since it was called Longhorn, so I haven't watched the public side. I wonder how successful this will be for them in terms of generating public interest. Will this re-direct get more people active in trying this out?

Be wary of trying Release Candidate software unless you know what you're doing. I would never put that on my main production machines. Try it on a spare machine or run it in a Virtual PC. I do almost all of my OS and software testing in a virtual environment nowadays (VMware).

A recent article on Wired...

We've allowed links to Wired articles before...I think they're on the acceptable side of things. Go ahead.

[Marcia]

>>Be wary of trying Release Candidate software unless you know what you're doing.

I've also been told never to get an operating system with its first release because there are always problems, to wait for the full version of the second release.

How true that can be. I went through it with the last Win98 computer I had; even though their upgrade patch was installed, it was always buggy and troublesome and never would shut down without killing the power until I switched to DSL. The bug was in the dialup networking but apparently didn't get identified to be able to find out. I was first told the only remedy was to buy the full version of Win98 SR2 and do a reinstall, but no way with a computer that comes loaded with an OS, it isn't fair.

Prices of XP computers are coming way down now, and the guy at Staples Saturday said it's been happening for a couple weeks. I guess the manufacturers are gearing up to sell off stock to start selling new ones with Vista installed.

[bill]

You're referring to the Service Pack or Service Release of a fully released OS. That's been sound advice in the past. If you were to do that with this upcoming OS, the Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), is scheduled for release in late 2007.

In this case we're looking at a Release Candidate (RC), which is a step in the beta testing process prior to the code's Release to Manufacturing (RTM). It gets confusing.