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The software maker said that the Release Candidate 1 version offered up earlier this month is now being opened up to consumers who were not already testing the new operating system.
Microsoft is looking for more testers, as it works to iron out the bugs in Vista. After several delays, the company hopes to release Vista to large business customers in November and start selling it broadly in January.
"RC1 represents a significant industry milestone on the road to delivering Windows Vista, and customer participation and feedback are integral parts of the development process," Microsoft said in a statement. "The feedback received thus far from testers has been extremely valuable, and Microsoft expects that by expanding the (customer preview program) with RC1, the Windows Vista team will gather even more worthwhile input."
In all, Microsoft expects to make the latest test version available to about 5 million people.
See more CNET content tagged:
tester,
Microsoft Windows Vista,
Microsoft Corp.,
Microsoft Windows
Then I re-installed Office 2003 Pro from scratch.
Never doing that Beta crap again, waste of time, but there are people who like to test, so go for it.
And those of us who have actually used the product can tell you that it is fairly stable. Not bug free, but quite useable.
Vista testers. That's way down the alphabit.
Sorry folk's, but if I'm going to spend my time with a very buggy
application, let alone operating system, as one of the previous
poster mentioned, I need a way out of it beside recreating and
reloading backup files.
Can I get a Free Tee - Shirt for being a tester?
Anything but Microsoft
MS software.
Why should I screw with Vista now for free, when people will be
paying me good money to help them with Vista after it is
released?
I love MS. Every time they change something, it's like Christmas
for those of us that support their products.
With all due respect, asking for a paycheck comes across to me as a tad whiney... if you get paid to do this then go do that instead.
Blood money.
It would (I never ordered) cost me real cash to get a M$ beta product plus shipping.
On the other hand I've got 10 copies of Ubuntu Linux for free and they even paid the shipping for me all the way from Netherlands to Mexico.
Your choice.
It is what I thought!
As proof of this, computers designed and sold as servers can be purchased with or without your choice of operating system. Why? Because there is an appreciable market share for many operating systems when they are used as servers.
You have an uphill battle because you are trying to convince people to "drive their cars without airconditioning".
the bugs in Vista."
Yea right.. like they've finally worked out the BUGS in XP so lets
move on to Vista.
Har Har Har..
Roberto
Does anyone know? Please reply to my comment>>
thanks
AC is still an option on many cars but 100% want it (unless they live in northern Alaska?)
If I want Windows to look and act like a Mac, then I'll get a Mac.
When XP is out of support then Microsoft will be out of my systems.
It is looking more and more like I will be buying Macs and that is saying a lot because I build all my own PCs and support Windows in my job but Vista is .... I wish I had a better word for it but when you have a synergy between two things and can call it Value-Add, Vista is Value-Subtract.
As it stands now, Vista Beta is all inclusive of all versions which will be released, this is also true of MS Office Beta 2007 (v.12), since the updates, things are running very much smoother. We need more Testers to try and prevent Service Packs early on.
Personally I would rather have Win 3.0 than go to a MAC which is nothing more that AOL on Steroids... In fact if Mac was the ONLY PC available, I would rather be without a computer all together.
http://www.teckmagazine.com/content/view/631/43/
you know M$ is going to release this programming mess regardless of how bug-infested it is. The sad part is that corporate America will lap it up like the failed idiots that they are.
No bugs or hickups, BUT....It works VERY slowly !
My real time flight simulation that completes 50 ms cycle on XP during 10 ms top, requires 70 ms
on the Vista machine. I warned my customers not even consider Vista until MS changes it's basic performance characteristics.
If you plan to do the change, be ready to replace all of your computing hardware to the latest Core Duo (or AMD equivalent). Pentium 4 computers will not handle the new OS !
If you think OSX can't be hacked because Apple knows how to make secure software, you don't have a clue about life. People do things for a purpose. In the computing world, people write virii to infect as many computers as possible. Who would bother to engineer a biological weapon of mass destruction that only infects people who are over 110 years old?
And while Windows has never been an amazing OS, it does work. If it doesn't, you've been downloading too much crap off the internet. Yes, Windows virii vastly outnumber OSX. But they only affect users who are dumb enough to go to web sites that host that kind of stuff, and don't protect themselves with a firewall.
I've worked on Unix, Linux (double ugh), CP/M, QNX, MSDos, DRDos, Win 95 - 98 - 2000 - XP - XP64. If I install anything else it will be a UNIX variant. But to do that the software I use in my work will have to be ported to UNIX, which isn't likely to happen soon, and nVidia graphics drivers still don't work on Solaris or FreeBsd - at least that I can find. As for the software, I can do the same thing on a UNIX or Linux box for approximately 20 times the price of the Windows based software.
Then there are those who tout Open Office as a MS Office replacement. I've tried it and "It ain't that great" and will take a long time to catch up with MS Office. All I use is Excel and Word, and Excel still lacks one thing from the Dos version of Lotus 123 that I miss.
I tire of the constant belittling of an OS that is responsible for many of the innovations in hardware and software we see today (improvements in graphics hardware and processors especially, no matter how poor some of the security is. These would have come eventually, but at a much slower pace.
As far as I'm concerned many of the security problems are uneducated users who do stupid things (like open email attachements because they promise a picture of some female star naked). Or those who use parts of the Microsoft package that all really riddled with holes like IE and Outlook.
I would also like to take the position that some of the flaws we see being exploited are in legacy portions of the software that no one dreamed would be used or exploited in the way they are.
And quite frankly "MAC is dead" now that you can run Windows on it "What's it good for". Everyone touts the great video capabilties etc. I don't play with my computer, I use it for work.
I'm not a flag waving Microsoft tattoo bearing fanatic, just stating my viewpoint. However it does seem to me that if all the nay sayers want everyone to use something else they should expend their energy helping develop products and drivers for Linux and Unix to fill the gaps in applications that exist instead of raving about Microsoft all the time.
- If MS *really* wanted more Vista guinea pigs
-
by rshew
October 13, 2006 5:12 PM PDT
- they should have created a hardware evaluation tool which works at the very least with Windows 2000 as well as XP.
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Reply to this comment
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(53 Comments)The failure to include 2000 shows again the short-sighted viewpoint so characteristic of MS. They should make it easy for people willing to test Vista on older versions of the OS if only to be prepared for issues which will arise under those circumstances.
Chalk up another one for MS consciously deciding to engineer conditions which will cause unnecessary grief to people who will purchase and use their products.
Sigh.