I was wondering what you all thought about the new beta software microsoft is sending out, specifically Windows Media Player 11 and Office 2007.

I think its ****ing sweet.

I've got the beta of Media Player 11 myself, and I love it. Its easy to use, really customisable, and it just looks cool.

I haven't got Offcier 2007. First i've heard about it to be honest. I wondered what the latest version would be...

All windows software is evil. Mac is even worse.

Plus I dont have service pack 2 so I cant download windows media player beta 11.

Evil evil evil.

Quit hating on M-Dollar, Stumpy. Maybe you'd have fewer problems if you actually installed Service Pack 2 .

Windows Vista looks to be quite revolutionary, though most people won't realize the extent of it, as the most important advancements are "under the hood". Office 2007 is pretty slick, too. I've got the new Office 2007 Beta loaded on my MacBook Pro , and I think it's only real step forward in about 10 years. The Office suite had gotten WAY too bloated with toolbars and menus. The new context-sensitive toolbars are infinitely superior. I don't care what anyone else says, this blows every other Office suite out of the water, including all prior versions of MS Office, iWork, and (God help us) OpenOffice.

i have tried installing service pack 2 before but its always screwed up my computer for some reason. Just not compatible.

Seen media player 11 on MOE's computer, and it does look cool. one thing ive always hated about media player tho is that you can only have it open once. i like to have multiple files running at once. never used any version of office past the 2000 version either.

I love office 2007, and WMP11. Ive just spent the last ten minutes putting a couple hundred video files into my library, and now its easy to get to too!

MOE, heres a pic of Office 2007. Theres also a blueish office skin, but I prefer the black vista skin. Im assumuing I'll have vista beta 2 in a few days.

looks cool. anyone got any download links or where to d/l? Also does anyone know if there's a vista beta out?

EDIT: Found both, but is there a way so you don't have to fill in all that crap?

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

To my knowledge, the Vista beta is only available to MSDN subscribers.

MSDN? Micro Soft Download News?

Microsoft Developer Network (I think)

Im too poor to be a member, but that doesnt mean I cant get a copy

does vista install allow you to install raid drivers from cd, that allways annoyed me having to connect a floopy disk drive to computer just to install raid drivers in windows xp, also does it allow you to have multiple operating systems, cause i dought there be drivers for my wireless network connection.

cant help you with that, but probably.



yes - if you know what your doing. There is always a way to install two or more OSes on the same computer. Windows XP actually has a built in boot chooser thing, its just hidden

You can install Vista alongside Windows XP, though I recommend using a separate partition or drive. A new bootloader will be installed that will allow you to select whether to boot into Vista or Legacy Windows.

I'm signed up to receive the Microsoft Download Notifications. I had one today, in fact.



So yeah, it's for MSDN people, guys.

Vista Beta 2
Office 2007 Beta
Media Player 11 Beta

...

Screeny looks nice, General. I'm like Stumpy though - I haven't bothered with any Office incarnations greater than Office 2000. I haven't really felt any need to upgrade. Office 2000 does everyhing that I ask of it, and from what i've seen in Uni, newer versions aren't all that wonderful.

So i'm happy enough as I am.

...

Has anyone noticed how the new Black interfaces make it look like Microsoft are trying to make their products look like Ipods?

It looks like they've made it just different enough to avoid criticism, (Ie. Black instead of White) but it looks like there's a definite influence there to me...

well, for all you crazy people who like to read long, boring reviews, heres a 40 page one. God knows I just went through all 40 pages (they're all pictures), gaping at how good it looks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vista/

and I personally really like the black - it looks futuristic.

speaking of the future, im currently downloading a copy of vista, and plan to convert my entire network (2 servers and 6 client computers) to IP v.6!

also, for all you dont know which version to get, heres a tool microsoft released for you to check:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid= ... lcid=0x409

i'm using office 2k7 atm - it's brilliant. love it.

outlook especially has been improved immensely.

all microsoft software is beta.

and how come a mediaplayer needs to look cool ? i have VCL for videos, winamp for music. did i forget anything ?

I just ran the tool, and as I expected, it told me to upgrade my graphics card.



It also said that if I upgraded to Vista, I would need to contact the manufacturers of my modem, webcam, printer, audio devices, and TV Tuner for new drivers coz Vista does not currently support them.

...It'll be easier to stick with XP then...

They often try to make a piece of software that can do everything. The more features you implement, the more things that can go wrong. Visual Studio 2005 is an absolutely brilliant piece of software, but a few bugs made it into the RTM that should have been showstoppers.

The sad truth is, nobody else's software is much better in terms of stability. Apple software is marginally better. Some Linux/OpenSource software is slightly better, others are even worse. As they say, if you can't deal with the heat, get out of the kitchen .

well i'll try it when it becomes retail vista, no problem with installing on different hdd, got 4, 2 ide and 2 sata with the sata hdd's in a raid array for fast loading games

I once had 2x 15,000rpm Seagate Cheetah drives in a RAID-0 configuration. You've never seen games load so quickly . Now I have a 74gb WD Raptor as my primary Windows drive, a 36gb WD Raptor for my Vista beta drive, and 4x 250gb Hitachi Deskstars holding my TV shows and other random crap. All SATA.

If your motherboard supports SATA-II then i'd enable that to get a massive performance boost especially on the Hitachi's and probably the Raptor's

MY raid controller was not supported.

but hey... Vista installed great, until I tried to use my wireless card. Damn vista.... wouldnt work with my already partially broke card. THEN screwed up my OS, and wont dual boot. NOW I install XP again, after backing up 120gb of movies/music/files, and my wireless card is entirely dead.

im not happy. Good news though, it was AWESOME otherwise.

While I understand what you're trying to say, I couldn't help but laugh at the last line.

Same here.

Ye it's crap but i'd recommend it to anyone

VISTA RULES (So does Office 2007 Pro and MSN Live!)

I'm anxious to see how my new ST:Supremacy game will run on Vista. I'm downloading Beta 2 at home right now so I can give it a go.

The release date for Office 2007 has slipped back. There isn't even a definitive date anymore. Trust Microsoft to be slow with things...

PCPro News

ive the new office been using it bfor a month doing a project. its simple to use but there are a ferw bugs with pasting pics into it and then it changing there format and placement issues. also the activation period ran out and now i cant open the files to save them in to a normal (pre-2007_ format, so ive lost my work (all 87 pages)

I've just installed Windows Live! Messenger and Internet Explorer Beta 3.

Windows Live! Messenger is pretty good. It's got a prettier interface than MSN, and it automatically copies all your contacts, emoticons, and whatever from MSN, before it gets rid of MSN. You'll have to manually get rid of the MSN icon if you have it on your desktop though.

As for Internet Explorer 7...meh. It has some good points, but i'd make some changes if I were Microsoft. At least it's still beta.

First and foremost, i'd get rid of tabbed browsing, or at least have an option to do so. I honestly can't see why anyone would want tabbed browsing! I prefer to keep my webpages separate by opening the browser multiple times. It was exactly this reason why I hated Firefox as well.

The second thing, is the fact that they've moved stuff around. The "stop" and "refresh" buttons are on the right of the screen, whilst the "forward" and "back" buttons are separate on the left! Stupid system.

Thirdly, the taskbar buttons - IF you want them (Which I would imagine everyone would) are below the url box! The number of times i've clicked the buttons when I wanted to type in a new url already...




Fourthly, is that Internet Explorer had a problem with my connection settings when I first opened it. It simply wasn't able to connect because it didn't know my username or password - but it still wouldnt stop trying to connect! Eventually it crashed on me, and it was only thanks to the crash that I was allowed to actually enter the information manually.

And finally, is the colour settings. It's probably my screen or I need a new prescription or something, but everything looks like it is ever-so-slightly-blurred or coloured wrongly. I've tried adjusting the phase settings on my monitor, and this did help, but it isn't perfect. I notice the problem the most when I read white text, like the posts on the forums.


Anyways, there ARE some good points to Internet Explorer 7. There are more security options in Internet Explorer 6, and as well as the old pop-up blocker, it now includes a tool that automatically searches for phishing attacks as you load up each individual webpage. You can turn this system off though if you want.

When it first loads up, it asks you to manually check your own security settings - and if it thinks that a particular option is insecure, it will highlight it in red to show you.



I also haven't had any problems with my existing toolbars either. This was one of the first things that I expected to go wrong. I have the Google Toolbar, and it works fine. I also have the Yahoo toolbar, (Only for its Antispyware program) but I usually keep it hidden. I can't find any problems with it though, and the antispyware scan works fine.

Ah well, that's the end of my rant. I'm gonna leave feedback for Microsoft now.