vista public beta 2 feedback ms

I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which marred the experience:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time?
5. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
6. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
7. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
8. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on?
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but possibly this is a good thing.
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http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx?mid=531de47f-3453-4f62-9d03-f85bd5b65de5&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.general

I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which marred the experience:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time? The UI is still too verbose and is constantly assaulting the user with dialogs ("Did you notice the Information Bar!!!!", etc.).
6. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
7. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
8. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
9. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on? The borders on the edges of windows are too narrow and when one window is overlaid on another, it is hard to distinguise where one window ends and the other begins (not helped by the "Aero Glass" opacity effect).
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of overused flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but this is probably a good thing.
---------------- This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx?mid=05abe7eb-240a-4809-add1-0e0f68cd7968&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.general

Concerning your remark(9) about the alt-tab 3D view: Press windows key plus tab, not alt-tab...
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote:

I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which marred the experience:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time? The UI is still too verbose and is constantly assaulting the user with dialogs ("Did you notice the Information Bar!!!!", etc.).
6. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
7. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
8. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
9. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on? The borders on the edges of windows are too narrow and when one window is overlaid on another, it is hard to distinguise where one window ends and the other begins (not helped by the "Aero Glass" opacity effect).
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of overused flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but this is probably a good thing.
---------------- This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx?mid=05abe7eb-240a-4809-add1-0e0f68cd7968&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.general

Yep - as I've been told several times now :-) It does indeed work when I use the correct keyboard combination.
"Engelbrekt76" wrote:

Concerning your remark(9) about the alt-tab 3D view: Press windows key plus tab, not alt-tab...
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote:
I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which marred the experience:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time? The UI is still too verbose and is constantly assaulting the user with dialogs ("Did you notice the Information Bar!!!!", etc.).
6. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
7. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
8. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
9. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on? The borders on the edges of windows are too narrow and when one window is overlaid on another, it is hard to distinguise where one window ends and the other begins (not helped by the "Aero Glass" opacity effect).
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of overused flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but this is probably a good thing.
---------------- This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx?mid=05abe7eb-240a-4809-add1-0e0f68cd7968&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.general

My apologies...I did not realize that your question had been answered other threads. Nice to hear that at least something works out as intended on your system :-)
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote:

Yep - as I've been told several times now :-) It does indeed work when I use the correct keyboard combination.