Jay P. Kapur of the Media Center TV Team confirmed at AVS Forum that Vista will not need an NTSC Tuner!  This means you can use ATSC Tuners and/or CableCARD’s without needing a separate NTSC Tuner installed.  Vista Beta 2 still needs the NTSC Tuner, but the final will not.  Previously, Media Center has keyed the ATSC EPG Data off of the selected NTSC Lineup.

News Source: AVS Forum/ Vista Discussion

I’ve got a few pointers for anyone who can’t find where the simple link to the Online Spotlight went in Vista Media Center.

You can go to….

TV + Movies | More TV

or

Music | More Music

or

Pictures+Video | More Pictures (What no More Video?)

or

Online Media | What’s New

or

Online Media | Browse Categories

or

Tasks | More Tasks

So, if you find yourself without quick access to the Online Spotlight in Media Center 2005 you will want Vista for sure.  I think you have like a 75% chance of being on a tile that brings you to the Online Spotlight at all times.

Thoughts?  Clearly this is overdone and needs reconsideration.  I’m sure that the Online Spotlight will be redesigned for Vista, but it better be a huge redesign to warrant all of those access methods.

News Source: Chris Lanier’s Blog

Microsoft plans to make the final public test build of Office 2007 available on September 14 to the more than 3.5 million testers who were part of the company’s Beta 2 test program.

Microsoft will allow Office Beta 2 testers to download for free the Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (TR) from the Microsoft Office Preview site, starting at 9:00 a.m. PST on Thursday.

The new build includes better product integration, improved collaboration tools and “some general fit and finish changes,” according to a Microsoft spokeswoman.

Microsoft is not making a CD or DVD version of the Office 2007 Beta 2 TR available, the spokeswoman confirmed.

Office 2007 Beta 2 TR is the test build of the next major version of Office that is optimized to work with Windows Vista Release Candidate (RC) 1, which Microsoft began rolling out to testers at the beginning of September.

Microsoft may still provide select testers with one or more private test builds of Office 2007 before the product is completed. Microsoft still anticipates being able to release Office 2007 to manufacturing before the end of calendar 2006, and make the product available to business users with volume license agreements before year-end, officials reconfirmed on September 13. The worldwide launch of Office 2007 is expected to coincide with the Windows Vista launch at the end of January 2007.

Some testers have said they are expecting Microsoft to release Office 2007 to manufacturing in October.

That timetable doesn’t leave Microsoft with much wiggle room, said Peter O’Kelly, an analyst with the Burton Group.

“With Office 2007 (client and server, e.g., Windows SharePoint Services v3), as with Windows Vista, Microsoft is rapidly running out of testing time,” O’Kelly said. “If they’re going to hit their release date targets.

” I’m impressed with Office 2007, including recent enhancements such as the Quick Customize Menu,” O’Kelly added. but Microsoft needs to wrap up testing and tweaking soon, if it’s going to hit its target deadlines.”

The Office 2007 Quick Customize Menu – detailed by Jensen Harris, a manager on Microsoft’s Office user experience team on his blog this week – is a new feature that is part of Office 2007 Beta 2. The menu allows users to add a core set of features to Office 2007’s Quick Access Toolbar.

If you’re running Windows Vista RC 1, you’ll be happy to know that B2TR (Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh) works great on RC1 (unlike the much earlier Office Beta 2, which has some problems on Vista RC1.),” Harris also noted on his blog.

“B2TR represents an iterative step forward for the UI design—a refinement and polishing of each component,” Harris blogged. “The UI is now totally feature complete, and you will see only cosmetic differences between B2TR and the final version in most areas.

According to Harris, Microsoft made nearly 1,000 individual improvements to the Ribbon user interface that is built into Office 2007 – “everything from redesigning the Home tab of PowerPoint to subtle changes to scaling or labels to work better on small monitors.” Improved support for the “minimize Ribbon” capability is also part of the new test build, Harris confirmed.

Office 2007 will run on Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista. The server components of the product, known as SharePoint Server 2007, will run on Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server Longhorn.

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

I found this on mikeysblog.com

I love Youtube and Yougle is a Media Center UI for Youtube and Google Videos

Read more about Yougle at the developers page. Download it for free from HERE

http://www.push-a-button.com.au/products/mce/Yougle.php

ATI have created and released an application that allows you to see, whether your Computer will meet the Vista Premium Requirements.

According to results, at least 70 percent of those that used the Application failed to meet the criteria needed for various reasons, including Graphics, Hard Drive Space, Processor Speed and other factors.

If you’d like to try the Application you can get it HERE

Since Microsoft Released Windows Vista™ Release Candidate 1 (RC1) on September 1, 2006, Microsoft has “Forked” the development cycle and began work on the Release To Manufacturing (RTM) builds, which Technical Beta Testers and the Technology Adoption Program Members (TAP) will continue to receive throughout the development cycle. Once Microsoft finalizes Windows Vista™ later this quarter it will then be shipping the code to manufactures for production, also known as “Release To Manufacturing” or “RTM”. Microsoft is currently targeting to release the product to manufactures in October 2006, the exact date is unknown and is ultimately determined by the product quality.

Upon the final release of Windows Vista™ Microsoft will be delivering five (5) different editions, two (2) Business Editions which is currently targeted for release in November 2006 to Volume License Customers and three (3) Home Editions which is currently targeted for general availability in “Early” 2007, Some sites are saying January 30. 2007 although the exact delivery date of Windows Vista™ will be determined by product quality.

Read the rest of the story HERE

WE’VE HAD THE pleasure of using Vista since its very early builds. The first release candidate is now upon us, and was made available to download by TechBeta and Technology Adoption Program program subscribers last week.MSDN and TechNet subscribers should now also be able to grab the near-complete RC1 release, build number 5600. One INQUIRER columnist has already given us his positive and then negative spin on RC1, and further testing from this hack has uncovered further problems.

Throughout the testing of the past releases, it was strikingly evident how incomplete Vista’s code was. Various incomplete features, missing graphics, place-holder text messages, and a plethora of bugs, left many feeling very underwhelmed, and increasingly worried by the next operating system from Microsoft.

A release candidate should consist of all features that will appear in the finished product, in an almost final state, with simple bug fixing and last-minute problem finding being the main concerns of the testers and developers. A beta 2 ‘pre-RC1′ build, numbered 5536, of Vista was only recently made available for download just before RC1, and was considered surprisingly stable and bug-free compared to previous betas. RC1, then, should easily cope under scrutiny from the INQUIRER.

Installation
The install didn’t go well. The test system had a Nvidia based RAID setup over two SATA disks which had been running XP perfectly for some time. Vista refused to see the RAID, even with beta Vista-specific drivers from Nvidia. Booting Vista from within XP allowed setup to see the hard-disks, but after the preliminary setup routines, and a reboot, Vista failed to again see the drives. Searching Nvidia forums gave an answer - load the Vista specific drivers in an XP-based Vista setup even when it recognizes the RAID. The install then worked. It’s surprising one of the most utilised RAID supporting motherboard chipsets from one of the biggest suppliers of chipsets are still having problems with their Vista drivers at this very late stage.

Read the rest of the story HERE

I have had the chance to use Windows Vista RC1(Build 5600). I installed it inside of a VMWare Virtual Server. I then searched around the web and found these hints from a variety of sources (and one of my own). It’s all legal as nothing is reverse engineered.

According to Microsoft, the requirements for a successful Vista installation are:
Processor of at least 1GHz 32bit(x86) or 64bit (x64)
1Gb of system memory
A graphics card which is DirectX 9 capable and with 128Mbs memory
40Gb hard disk space
DVD Drive.
Audio
Network Capable

1. Installing Vista RC1 without a key
You can install Vista without a CD key. Just leave the product key field blank ,hit next, and answer no to the dialog box. You can then select any edition of Vista to install (Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, or Starter). Check the box at the bottom and there you go. Vista with no key. Note: You cannot activate if you don’t do this unless you have a CD key for the version you installed.

2. Logging on as Local Administrator if you have already logged in as a user
a. If you are having trouble logging on as the built-in Administrator account, you will have to modify some registry entries to display the Administrator account.
Log in using the user account you created during the Windows Vista setup process.
From the Start menu, click All Programs and then expand Accessories.
Right click on “Command Prompt” and click “Run as Administrator”.
Click on “Allow” from the Windows Security dialog.
In the Command Prompt window, type “regedit” (without the quotes) and press Enter.
In the Registry Editor, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Add a new key called “SpecialAccounts” (without the quotes).
In the “SpecialAccounts” key you just made, create a sub-key called “UserList” (without the quotes)
Make sure you are navigated to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
In the “UserList” key, create a new DWORD (32-bit) item and name it Administrator.
Double click on the new DWORD item and set its value to 1.
Close Registry Editor and the Command Prompt.
NOW:
Go to Start/All Programs and right click the command prompt.
Type Control UserPasswords2.
Click Advanced.
Click Advanced again.
Select Users.
Select Administrator and untick the the box “Administrator is disabled”NB. If you follow the above path (Tip 2.) you may find that some of the following tips, related to security, are not needed. Bu believe me, it makes a difference working withou those nags.

3. Exclude some unused services
It’s a good idea to try disabling these services a little at a time. If you do not have a complete knowledge of you computer, you may need some of these. Alternatively, you may leave them all in, they will not impair too much on the resident memory.

1. Run services.msc via the Run command (Win key +R).
2. Stop the following services and change their start-up type to disabled

- Computer browser (if not connected to LAN)
- Fax (if not using printer and fax)
- Windows Error Reporting Service
- Secondary logon
- Tablet PC Input service
- Print spooler (if not using printer and fax)
- Windows time
- Media center receiver service (This caused some dysfunction on my computer)
- Security center
- Routing and remote access (if not connected to LAN)
- Internet connection sharing
- TCP/IP NetBios helper
- Server (if not sharing resources through LAN)
- Offline files
3. Close the services management console.

By taking these steps, you will ensure that your OS has less processes running in the background, so more memory can be dedicated to the programs you open, not the ones that are used by Windows itself, by default.

4. Disable system restore
1. Control panel- System and maintenance- System
2. Advanced system settings
3. System protection tab
4. Uncheck all the drives.
5. Apply changes.

5.Disable some UI effects
1. Control panel- System
2. Advanced system settings
3. Advanced tab/Performance/Settings
4. Uncheck the following boxes:
- Fade or slide menus into view
- Fade or slide tooltips into view
- show shadows under menus
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Slide open combo boxes
- Use a background image for each folder type
5. Apply changes.

Successfully running Windows Vista RC1 within VMWare Server 1.0.1 Build 29996. Additionally, I am using the new Microsoft Writer blog software.

So far it seems stable and fast (considering it is in a VM environment) compared to Beta 2. I have 1GB of RAM allocated to it and gave it a 50GB hard drive.

I am going to install some of my favorite software and see how that goes. My complete review of it is going to take another day or so however…

One comment however, to give a taste of what is to come - this feels a lot like it should be XP SP3 or XP Third Edition, not quite enough new user environment. Maybe Win98 Eighth Edition. More testing however, before final conclusions will be reached..

One of the best ways to test a new (or old) operating system is to install it in a virtual environment. Instead of messing with physical hardware, you create virtual disks, run processes on a virtual CPU, test what happens when you add some virtual memory, and save the whole thing as a file that you can restore in a few minutes.

I’ve been running various builds of Windows Vista in virtual machines for months now, but not without a lot of pain. And recent builds have been particularly troublesome.

Windows Vista RC1 installs and runs just fine on Microsoft’s free Virtual Server 2005 R2. It also reportedly installs and runs on VMWare Server, although I haven’t personally tested this combination.

But if you try to install any recent build of Windows Vista on VMWare Workstation, you’ll be stymied. The opening setup screens appear, but the system appears to hang when it reaches the end of the text-mode “Windows is loading files…” screen.

Read the rest of the story at: Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report

Betagnome says *** I have tried to setup Vista on VMWare and earlier Virtual Server builds, as well as Virtual PC and have had no luck to date, I am downloading Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta 2 as I post this and will attempt another virtual install - check back to see if I was successful. As you can tell by my nickname - I am not afraid of BETA software!!!