Vista Sunsets and Sunrises

I don't post very much about Vista as I am not yet running it full time on any of my systems.

I do have Vista installed in several virtual machine sessions.

These I find helpful for testing, just picking around, and trying to get and idea if it is worth the while to do an eventual upgrade. Messing with Lavie when I run Vista virtually on her laptop in full screen mode so she can't tell it is a virtual session and she thinks I upgraded her laptop to Vista without getting her permission first...(hehehe)!

Honestly, I'm still very undecided on the whole prospect of upgrading to Vista at the moment.

Vista Sunset

Today the Windows Vista Team Blog reminded Vista Beta users that life was coming to a close for their release versions:

Windows Vista Beta 2, RC1 and RC2 set to expire

So, if you snagged one of the early release versions of Vista and have been using it as your primary operating systems, time to begin making some decisions before May 31 and August 28th of 2007.

1. Purchase an Upgrade version of a Vista edition and (mostly) perform a clean install. Back up your data as this will erase your installed partition.

2. Live in denial and buy a 2-hour timer. After May 31, 20007 your Beta/RC versions of Vista will work for 2 hour sessions (ostensibly to allow you sufficient time to retrieve data). When you hit that 2 hour limit the system will reboot without notice or data saving.

3. Reinstall XP. Do this after backing up your data as you cannot "rollback" to XP from Vista. Your installation partition will be overwritten.

4. Toss up your hands and move on to Linux: say PCLinuxOS 2007 or SAM Linux 2007?

5. Get a Mac. Enough said.

One interesting observation on that Vista Team blog post was that only Windows Vista RC1 combo'ed with Windows Vista Ultimate RTM will allow users to perform an "In-Place" upgrade. All other combinations of Vista Beta/RC2 and Vista RTMs require "Clean installs." I wonder what makes RC1 so special?

Me?

Well as I only installed Vista in Microsoft Virtual PC sessions I'm not too concerned. Nor (I imagine) are those users who may also have installed RC versions of Vista in dual boot configurations.

Considering my needs and uses for Vista RC's that I have, the two-hour limit isn't any big deal. I don't think I keep any of my virtual Vista sessions open for more than an hour tops anyway when I am checking out hacks/tweaks/settings or new freeware reported to be compatible with Vista.

After August I will most likely have to dump the Vista virtual hard drive files (and free up some drive space) from my XP systems and then decide if I am going to go ahead and install a final build of Vista on Lavie's laptop....

We will see....

Vista Sunrise

Microsoft has announced the April 2007 Cumulative Update is now available for Media Center for Windows Vista. It rolls together a number of fixes for some Media Center specific problems,

Per Microsoft KB932818

Issues that are resolved by this update

In addition to the fixes that are contained in the updates that are listed in the "Hotfix replacement information" section, the April 2007 Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista resolves the following issues:

• The video may appear to freeze when the movie begins in some DVDs.

• When you rotate a picture during a slide show in Windows Media Center, the wrong photo may be rotated.

• The cover art for recorded TV movies may not appear in the DVD library view.

• When you delete a picture in Windows Media Center, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:

AUDIO ERROR
The Url contains one or more invalid characters.

• When you try to play a DVD by using Autoplay, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:

Tuner not installed

Improvements that are in this update

The update also provides the following improvements:

• Online Media support has been added for Windows Media Center on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate.

• Video Playlist support has been added for Windows Media Center Extenders.

• Improvements have been made to Online Media caching.

Be aware, Ed Bott links to Robert McLaws report of experiencing issues with IE7 and Outlook 2007 after installation on one of his systems.

Thanks for the Memories, Vista

So as dawn breaks on cumulative patch releases (with more to come I have no doubt), sun sets on the RC builds of Vista that many, many early Vista explorers adopted to bug test, flight test, and ultimately loose their Vista virginity on.

I'm sure I'll look back on my heady early experiences with Vista fondly one day...

--Claus