I nominated you all for VISTA BETA

[davidan]

I nominated you all today for the VISTA Beta (next release of Windows). Within 2 weeks you will receive an email about the program; how to particupate (should you choose too) and instructions for downloading the operating system to install and test.

Note, do not install this yet on your primary racing machine, I'll advise you when it's stable enough to do that ...

have fun and if you dont want to participate just decline the invite when you get it ...


David

[Paul]

That sounds great David. Beings though my primary racing machine is my ONLY machine, let me know when it's safe!

[HenryHudson]

Thanks DA!

Should be interesting...

Henry

[TimCollier]

Thanks David....I'll put it on my wife's machine in the kitchen and have her be the guinea pig!!

[davidan]

You bet guys!!!

[HenryHudson]

Currently Surfing the site using IE7 and Longhorn Build 5270...

Interesting OS and Browser. Will take a bit to learn the nuances...

Thanks again DA...

Henry

[davidan]

Wow that didnt take long! So you got the beta invite very fast I assume! Glad you are enjoying.

[davidan]

Hey one thing we can test is all of our Sims, have you loaded rFactor and/or N2003 yet? I need to do that as well.

[TimCollier]

Can you guys tell me the power of the machines that you're running Vista on....

I plan on putting it on an AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz w/1MB SDRAM and a GeForce4 4400 128MB Video Card. Figured that would be enough....but wanted to check with you guys.

Once I get it installed this weekend, I'll let you know what sims are working on it as well as see if it will support a dedicated server for something like rFactor, which would be cool for our team practice sessions.

[davidan]

Tim that would be great if you can test the sims for us. That is pretty important, and I dont have a powerful enough second machine any longer to do it ... As far as your specs that will run VISTA just fine. The key thing is from a VISTA perspective is

1. current generation processor or close to it -- you should be fine
2. need 1 GB of RAM for decent performance
3. need a video card driver with WDM driver to get AeroGlass look

now keep in mind these beta builds (5270 for instance) are going to be pretty slow and sluggish feeling. That is because the product still has all of the debug code in it so that they can resolve bugs easier. Before the product ships all of that will be removed and it will be optimized for performance. That is one of the last things they do in an operating system release. You will be able to expect it to run equal to or better than Windows XP on a comparable machine.

Also anytime in the next few weeks a new Community Build is going to be posted on the site which should be even further along. The 5270 build we are working with right now is from December.