What a POS.

The entire industry should be fired. Complete rubbish. Why do we need bloatware and huge power sucking boxes that double as space heaters is beyond me.

It's criminal, and a complete waste. Instead they should be moving to shrink everything, including the OS and its requirements.

This is one user who will not, for a long time, be upgrading to this POS.

God what are you doing! RC1 is out! Why the hell are you doing a review of beta2??!?!?!

Wow Microsoft, another power hungry piece of crap with no real tangible benefits. Since Windows 98, nothing has really changed that much, same GUI, same basic functionality, but a large increase in overhead and of course pricetag...*gasp* WHAT A FUCKING LOAD OF SHIT! YOU MS BASTARDS SHOULD BURN IN HELL YOU CORPORATE EXPLOITERS! CHURNING OUT PURE, UNADULTERATED SHIT! DIE DIE DIE

Long live Linux and open source 4 ever!

RC1 is streets ahead of Beta 2 in terms of performance and drivers... why is this article using Beta 2 when RC1 is available?

I got news for ya... EVERY version of any MICROSUCKS product is still Beta no matter how much hype they use to sell it to naive consumers.

No one with a clue would touch Vista as all online reviews confirm it is a POS.

wow you guys are a bunch of animals. I'm sure they are aware RC1 is out. Its possible this review was done before RC1 was available and they just decided to post it anyways. And whats with all the childish swearing in all the posts!

My magic 8 balll says they will post an article on RC1 soon enough...

Have some patience u junkies!

It's amazing that this was even considered as an option or an article.

The entire tone of the article puts Vista in a very negative light, even though it does mention that it is beta software.

One thing that I didn't see mentioned in this article - particularly where it is relevant in installation and gaming - is that Vista beta 2 had most of its files compiled in debug mode (including the window manager). This meant giant file sizes with debugging info, as well as slow code because of less compiler optimising. Why did Microsoft do this? Because when a bug was found, it enabled people to give them useful information on the problem.

Releasing this article after RC1 has been publically available is a mistake. Yes, people should realise that it is beta 2, and yes, people should realise that beta software doesn’t reflect the final product... But Xbit labs attracts hobbyist users who aren't all software developers or experts. It is this crowd of people who will misinterpret what is being said in this review (mostly thanks to the poor quality of the article and its timing) and join the OMG MICROSOFT IS CRAP crowd.

I have been running vista beta 2 and now RC1 since they day they were available. Beta 2 was buggy, yes, but if you saw the amount of improvement from beta 1 then you would have had faith in the product still. RC1 confirmed my hopes, as it is starting to look like a great operating system. RC1 has much less code compiled in debugging mode, which equates to a huge speedup (even on my old socket A system). The graphics card drivers and other system driver affecting performance have greatly matured to be stable and pretty fast too.

I really hope Xbit labs can make it more obvious that this article is very outdated and should not be taken seriously at all. An RC1 update is needed, but even then the fact that it is still in development and that you are testing DX9 cards on a beta of DX10 should be emphasised.

Very disappointed.

I think Microsoft MUST fix this-if they want their new OS to be MORE popular than Win XP.

I find this kinda funny for two reasons.

(1) There's a build later than RC1 available now!

(2) You need a DirectX 9 class video solution for 3D desktop eyecandy!

On Mac, you can do the same job with an onboard Intel IGP solution! On Linux, you can get similar eyecandy with just the same OR even something as old as a GF2 MX!

It speaks much inefficiencies with Vista.

Its a very sad attempt to get people to upgrade their hardware. (No doubt 99% of you folks that hang around here will upgrade without thinking).