I didn’t even expect this! First I get invited to the beta testing from a complete chance draw, and now this! I had a couple of bug reports, not that many really since work didn’t quite allow me to debug Vista to the fullest. And the stupid X-Fi drivers kept me away for a good bit. But now that the Vista is final, Microsoft is actually giving away feed back to all those beta testers who provided at least one bug report. And not just any Vista. It’s the Business or Ultimate edition!! Boo yeah! $500 value!

Remember that I said that Windows Vista is pretty? Yes it was. Just like Windows XP was before it became XP from Codename Whistler. I don't get why Microsoft does this always. Granted that it is not as ugly as the every so popular blue Luna (yuk!), but still. Just look at it.

Look at what the basic used to look like and what it looks like now (via LonghornBlogs.com). Apparently their reason for changing was that there is too much grey. Not to mention that Aero is only available to people with a version beyond Windows Vista Basic and with a good graphics card. I guess they really wanted to move away from the grey as Mac OS X is just so huge on it.

On a better note, however, the new build 5472 is apparently faster and they finally fixed the problems with video playback. Some even say that it works better with the new nVidia drivers and that some games are actually running at reasonable speeds again.

As you lot may or may not know, the new Vista is out in the beta testing community, which I'm gladly part of. For the last few builds I have actually been installing the builds in virtualized platforms and just tackling thru the problems. However, when I toyed with this build, I realized that it's more proper. It's behaved.

Since it looked like it had some big jumps I started to read around about it. The one article that caught my eye was at LonghornBlogs.com. They mentioned how Build 5456 was not a direct decendent of Beta 2 that is publicly available. I have been personally using Build 5456 natively for the last 2 days. Granted most of those two days I was at work, but I did get to use quite a bit. It's better than Beta 2 people! We still have hope! Well for a Fall release that is

What was amazing about this build was that due to my delay I could just use AnyDVD 2.0.6.2 beta which works with Vista. Also I use the SoundBlaster X-Fi beta drivers for XP x64; works like a charm! Now if only I could get 5.1 sound instead of Stereo. Not to mention that my Avast! installed without a hitch and so did RemotelyAnywhere demo. However, I couldn't even get to the license page of RemotelyAnywhere, so that didn't really work. Acrobat installed without any problems and so did Firefox.

It's looking great! And it's sooooo pretty!