Vista Beta & Meaning of Beta

Good news for the folks that are willing to spend the weekend testing a new Vista build. Get to it before everyone else brings connect.microsoft.com to a crawl.

Dear Longhorn / Windows Vista Beta Tester, We are pleased to announce the availability of Windows Vista build 5342 this afternoon. This build is a snapshot of our progress on our way to the Beta 2 milestone and will allow you to verify fixed bugs as well as check for new regressions that may have been introduced. We need your feedback quickly so it can be evaluated for inclusion into Beta 2. For this reason we ask that you download and install this build as soon as possible. This is the first build we are making available to the beta program outside the CTP so please be sure to read this message completely.

For what its worth, I have been a passionate player-hater of Vista because performance was just NOT there. I mean not even remotely bareable on even a brand new PC. This turned around with the last build, it is almost as tollerable as XP if not quite finished/ready. Thats the beta world for you, its not something that you use in production. And while I'm on the beta tangent, several clueless people on the list were suggesting to someone that was relatively new to SBS to go ahead an install a beta product. The same beta product that Microsoft offers no support for (ie, you break your system beyond recognition and you can't call for help.) The same beta product that has disclaimers, warnings, FAQ's and big red BETA warnings. Yup. So if you're an IT Pro please be a professional and do not allow people to install beta/incomplete/unfinished software on production PC's. Not everyone has the same set of skills to handle experimental software so please don't pour people a poison and tell them to go ahead and drink it if they are thirsty. Fine in a lab, fine on an expendable box… but not in production unless you're on the TAP program and you have Microsoft to hold your hand. Nino from Exchange PSS recently posted on this topic, please take a sec to read it.