Build 5270: A first review…

In hope that this is the first review on the internet for Vista 5270, I will try to keep it as factual as possible…

Microsoft Windows Vista 5270.9 (aka the December CTP) is the final build to be given to the Technical Beta testers before Vista reaches code complete. For more information about the background of the December CTP please read the previous post on this topic..

As most of you know, the November CTP failed to make it to the scene, causing much dissent in the ranks of Beta Testers worldwide. This is very important, because it put pressure on Microsoft to release the Decemeber CTP as soon as possible.

As far as my impression about this build, it can best be summed up in a list of quick, sharp, and to the (very pointy) point. In a nutshell it is beautiful and buggy. Read on…

• From the very first, the aesthetic niceties of this build are immediately visible. Setup itself (from within Windows XP, or from boot from DVD even!) comes with transparency support; aero; and the MCE background.
• Upgrade from XP is disabled in this build, though I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions it cannot hurt to tell you that we suspect that next build will have more-or-less flawless XP-upgrading, and this once came very close :P
• Setup takes longer than 5231, but not too long..
• It actually supports formatting and creating partitions (Yipee!!), so I managed to get Vista running by itself on this system without dual-boot or upgrading or anything (after 4 tries!).
• The in-setup partition manager has a nasty habit of adding one to teh partition number every time you do something to it.. So I ended up (the first 3 times) with one partition on Disk(0) but labelled Partition(3); which gave me hell to boot from it.
• Build 5270 does *not* run Windows Live Messenger; I have yet to test Office 12.
• Do not, no matter what run WLM, it ruins explorer.exe
• DWM has been integrated into the system very deeply, you will not notice performance benefits in Classic mode.. :(
• Microsoft has integrated the (annoying!) ‘feature’ of prompting you before you open any program, change your screen saver, add a wallpaper, type a letter, click the start menu; you have to first tell it “I accept the security risks” again and again. Only known work-around is to use the real Administrator account..
• DWM tweaks from previous versions (pre-5259) no longer work; you need to use the 5259 and later tweaks (namely using HKEY_CURRENT_USER to store settings..)
• Windows Defender now ships installed and working, and is a completely different program from MS AntiSpyware as far as power and interface go; only the engine beneath seems to be the same.
• P2P code (the most pondered-over item in our previous posts) seems to have been removed :( So much for that!
• The sidebar is not included….

That should just about sum up the features of 5270 for those of you interested… Again, it looks great, runs decent, is slow, and crashes a bit more often than 5231; but its a nice start!