Cool Tech Zone has an indepth look at Microsoft Windows Vista CTP Build 5270 :
A while back, when Microsoft announced its decision to no longer release a monthly CTP for Vista, we were a bit worried, since we wanted to follow-up on the latest developments of Microsoft’s next-gen. operating system (though Microsoft promised to update current versions via critical updates). To Microsoft’s credit, it has kept its word and has released an update sooner than we had anticipated, and needless to say, the changes in this release are substantial.
25.Jan.06 
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Theres a review of IE7 over at ZDNET.
Over all it seems a big improvement over the sloppy current release and previous incarnations. A lot of this, I put down to the increasing market share of Firefox, my current browser of choice.
Some of the new features include :
Extreme makeover
The toolbar and address bar areas of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Vista have been totally redesigned. The address bar is now locked at the top of the window so that hijackers can’t replace it with phishing or spyware substitutes. Words have been eliminated in favour of iconic buttons so that only the bare essentials are displayed. In all, it’s a very clean and sophisticated look for an Internet browser.
Zoom, zoom, zoom
As you already can with Opera 8, Microsoft, Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Vista will allow you to zoom in on text and photos within a given Web page. By hitting Ctrl+ or Ctrl-, you can adjust the size of any Web page. This is great for people with disabilities.
Goodbye messy toolbar add-ons
In its desire to eliminate clutter, the new Internet Explorer does away with toolbars for the most popular search engines by integrating search engines from AOL Search, Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo Search directly into the browser. Of course, FireFox already allows you to do so.
Full review here.
Web designers have been cursing microsoft for years, expecially those using css to build sites as all the previous IEs have included a fundamental bug in the way they display css - resulting in a lot of extra hacks being put in the code to cater for ie users. Hopefully this will be fixed in the new version, this may be not be a blessing though as the old versions will still have to be catered for - it could end up being more of a nightmare, we’ll have to wait and see.
01.Nov.05 Reviews Read more Comments (0)
There is a review of the new Windows Media Center over at CoolTechZone which describes it as :
It’s so confusing; it would render even the computing enthusiasts frustrated. There is a new scrolling menu, thanks to the abundance of options that you don’t need. Compare this to the Front Row launched by Apple a few days ago at its famous “One More Thing….” press conference. Now that is simplicity, and the previous Windows MCE beat Apple to that. Of course someone at Microsoft was not delighted in making things easier and hired the best brains to figure out the most complicated way of listening to and watching music/videos/movies. We must say the developers accomplished just that by disguising everything under the hood of more choices. If you have ever driven an M5, you know that more choices are not always better, and forced choices are the worst.”
Once you have gotten over the initial shock, you calm down and decide to give it a spin (after a lot of “easy customizations” using “wizards”). Although the interface is responsive and very smooth, it’s a painstaking task to get to the options of your choice. The menus, sub-menus and sub-sub-menus are just as cumbersome as the rest of the interface.”
Oh dear, doesn’t sound great but we have to remember that its still in Beta so a lot could change between now and launch date.
28.Oct.05 Reviews Read more Comments (0)
Good review of build 5231 at Windows Supersite, Paul Thurrott concludes that Microsoft are on the right track with Vista :
Windows Vista Build 5231 (Community Technical Preview 2) could have been horrible and I’d still be happy about it, because we’re finally getting regular Windows Vista builds. That build 5231 is not horrible, and includes a number of exciting new features, is just the frosting on the cake. After a rough beginning and a particularly bad 2004-2005, Windows Vista is finally on track. And that’s good news for all Windows users, not to mention Microsoft, which, let’s face it, desperately needs some good news on the client side. This month, build 5231 is that good news. I hope things continue this smoothly going forward. So far, so good.
Read The full Review at Windows Supersite
24.Oct.05 Reviews Read more Comments (0)
