Windows Vista Beta 1 Review & Screenshots

[Imran Siddiqui]

By the time this hunk of crap comes out, Apple will be leaps and bounds ahead again with its next operating system.

Leaps and bounds over Win3.1? Probably. Over XP? Naw, they don't even match it yet. Vista? Gotta be dreaming.

Gotta love how you have to pay $100+ for less of an upgrade than the free SP2 for XP.

Unfortunetly for Mac fanboys, Macs suck. That's why they have trouble even getting to 5% marketshare.

[lord of the mark]

Nostromo, interesting piece. I wonder though, if that figure on 2 billion in online sales of PC games, subscriptions, etc is really from MS. Its the first real quantification of that piece of the market Ive seen.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Wiglaf

http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/over200.html

Beats hi-res minesweeper and 115% startup times anyday. No wonder nobody buys Windows off the shelf.

Funny, I wasn't aware that people bought OS X off the shelf, either.

Oh, wait, that's right. They buy OS X Service Packs off the shelf. Never mind~Windows gives them away for free.

[Asher]

Virtual Folders showcase: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...ualfolders.asp

Some screenshots:



Saving a search as a virtual folder...

[Nostromo]

Virtual folders look useful

[Atahualpa]

Virtual Folders are useful! I am already using some sort of this in XP where I dump all the data (e.g. research papers) in a certain place and then create folders to seperate them based on their content and place a link of the paper in the folder. I might have the same paper referenced in several folders because it may fit more topics.

I had hoped something like this would be part of the next Windows.

[Timexwatch]

I'm a bit dense, but are virtual folders like the Gmail's "label" system?

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Timexwatch
I'm a bit dense, but are virtual folders like the Gmail's "label" system?

As with XP, all of these folders are "real" folders. That is, they exist at a discrete place in the shell hierarchy and can contain real files and folders. They are literally identical to folders in XP. However, Windows Vista, as you may know, also introduces the concept of Virtual Folders. These are not "real" folders but are instead XML-based containers for links to other files and folders. Virtual Folders do not "contain" anything. Instead, Virtual Folders point to lists of other files and aggregate data in meaningful ways.

Think back to when Windows 95 first shipped. Windows 95 let you create shortcuts to documents and folders in more easily accessible places (typically the desktop). In the same vein, Virtual Folders let you round up related files and folders in more easily accessible places as well. But Virtual Folders are far more powerful than simple shortcuts. That's because Virtual Folders are smart--that is, they update dynamically--and because they make it easier for you to organize your data in ways that make sense to you.

Windows Vista Beta 1 ships with a number of canned Virtual Folders that address obvious needs, and some of them are available right from the Start Menu. Stupidly, some of them are named the same as "real" folders, which is where some of the confusion sets in. So when you click on the Documents link in the Start menu, for example, that opens C:\Users\Paul\Virtual Folders\All Documents and not C:\Users\Paul\Documents as you might expect (Figure). The former (All Documents) is a Virtual Folder that automatically aggregates all of the documents on your hard drive, regardless of their location, while the latter (Documents) is the modern day equivalent of My Documents: It's just a regular folder, and when you save document files from an application like Microsoft Word, that's where they'll go by default.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Timexwatch
I'm a bit dense, but are virtual folders like the Gmail's "label" system?

No, not really. But sorta.

Think of them like virtual folders in Outlook 2003, or "Saved Searches" in Mozilla Thunderbird...but systemwide.

You enter in query information -- like all files containing references to "mastercard" or "visa" and dated within the past month, and that folder will contain all documents that match that query.

Another example is you can have it show only Word Documents that are authored by you.

Pretty powerful.

[Timexwatch]

Oh, so more like Google Desktop Search only more integrated into Windows Explorer? If so

That would be useful for me professionally. I have database/spreadsheet overload issues.

[Datajack Franit]

If only Windows' "opponents" weren't that pathetic..

[Asher]

Originally posted by Timexwatch
Oh, so more like Google Desktop Search only more integrated into Windows Explorer? If so

That would be useful for me professionally. I have database/spreadsheet overload issues.

Kind of...but they're persistent searches that act like folders.

[Adagio]

But the important question about this new Windows is have they finally gotten rid of Windows Messenger?
I'm soo tired of each time I start Windows MSN Messenger says I have been logged in on another computer, but I've been logged into Windows Messenger instead
I have tried 100+ times to uncheck it's startup in msconfig, but it doesn't make any difference

[Nikolai]

nostromo: That article sure was interesting!

[Adrian Hon]

Er, I already have 'Virtual Folders' on OS X... they're saved Spotlight searches, and they work exactly in the same way as Vista ones do, as described above.