s vista feedback ms

I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which I would like to encourage some discussion about:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time?
5. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
6. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
7. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
8. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on?
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but possibly this is a good thing.

its
windows key + tab
to se ethe flip 3d navigation.
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote in message

I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which I would like to encourage some discussion about:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time?
5. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
6. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
7. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
8. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on?
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but possibly this is a good thing.

Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

Sorry about all the dups - the newsgroup system kept giving me an error every time I tried to post, but it was actually silently posting my message. The last dup contains the most recent "version" of my msg :-)

Thanks Rahi - that explains it.
"rahi" wrote:

Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

I doubt it's anything to do with my BIOS - I'm using a bog standard Dell Precision Workstation 670 with an Intel E7525 chip. There are no USB timing settings to speak of (there are no USB settings at all, actually). I suspect that the setup program simply doesn't try to load drivers for USB mice, just PS/2. I'm sure it will be fixed.
I'm not sure all the UI problems can be dismissed as it being "new" or "different." The in-place program navigator browser in the start menu, for example, is just clumsy - I can't see any actually benefit over the hierarchical menu. I have no problem with the look and feel changing, but I don't think there is anything to gain in replacing standard UI features with things that are harder to use and provide no improvements.
"rahi" wrote:

Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

Well my mouse is usb and it works fine. 2 different pcs with usb mouse and no issues at all.
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote in message

I doubt it's anything to do with my BIOS - I'm using a bog standard Dell Precision Workstation 670 with an Intel E7525 chip. There are no USB timing settings to speak of (there are no USB settings at all, actually). I suspect that the setup program simply doesn't try to load drivers for USB mice, just PS/2. I'm sure it will be fixed.
I'm not sure all the UI problems can be dismissed as it being "new" or "different." The in-place program navigator browser in the start menu, for example, is just clumsy - I can't see any actually benefit over the hierarchical menu. I have no problem with the look and feel changing, but I don't think there is anything to gain in replacing standard UI features with things that are harder to use and provide no improvements.
"rahi" wrote:
Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

My USB mouse works fine as well...sounds like your BIOS doesn't support USB on startup
"gerryR" wrote in message

its
windows key + tab
to se ethe flip 3d navigation.
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote in message I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which I would like to encourage some discussion about:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time?
5. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
6. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
7. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
8. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on?
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but possibly this is a good thing.

My Usb Bluetooth mouse and keyboard were recognised without problem.
Have you logged this with Microsoft? "Oliver David Stuart" wrote in message

I doubt it's anything to do with my BIOS - I'm using a bog standard Dell Precision Workstation 670 with an Intel E7525 chip. There are no USB timing settings to speak of (there are no USB settings at all, actually). I suspect that the setup program simply doesn't try to load drivers for USB mice, just PS/2. I'm sure it will be fixed.
I'm not sure all the UI problems can be dismissed as it being "new" or "different." The in-place program navigator browser in the start menu, for example, is just clumsy - I can't see any actually benefit over the hierarchical menu. I have no problem with the look and feel changing, but I don't think there is anything to gain in replacing standard UI features with things that are harder to use and provide no improvements.
"rahi" wrote:
Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

Legacy USB support in the BIOS is so that a USB keyboard can be used to navigate the BIOS settings screen without an OS being loaded.
There is no reason why Vista setup can't load a generic USB mouse driver without requiring any support from the BIOS.
"Bones" wrote:

My USB mouse works fine as well...sounds like your BIOS doesn't support USB on startup
"gerryR" wrote in message its
windows key + tab
to se ethe flip 3d navigation.
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote in message I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which I would like to encourage some discussion about:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time?
5. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
6. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
7. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
8. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on?
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but possibly this is a good thing.

Yes - I've reported it using the Vista feedback webpage. Hopefully it will get fixed.
"news.microsoft.com" wrote:

My Usb Bluetooth mouse and keyboard were recognised without problem.
Have you logged this with Microsoft? "Oliver David Stuart" wrote in message I doubt it's anything to do with my BIOS - I'm using a bog standard Dell Precision Workstation 670 with an Intel E7525 chip. There are no USB timing settings to speak of (there are no USB settings at all, actually). I suspect that the setup program simply doesn't try to load drivers for USB mice, just PS/2. I'm sure it will be fixed.
I'm not sure all the UI problems can be dismissed as it being "new" or "different." The in-place program navigator browser in the start menu, for example, is just clumsy - I can't see any actually benefit over the hierarchical menu. I have no problem with the look and feel changing, but I don't think there is anything to gain in replacing standard UI features with things that are harder to use and provide no improvements.
"rahi" wrote:
Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

If it's just a simple bug then that's great - I've reported the problem to MS using the Vista feedback web page anyway.
"AMDX2" wrote:

Well my mouse is usb and it works fine. 2 different pcs with usb mouse and no issues at all.
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote in message I doubt it's anything to do with my BIOS - I'm using a bog standard Dell Precision Workstation 670 with an Intel E7525 chip. There are no USB timing settings to speak of (there are no USB settings at all, actually). I suspect that the setup program simply doesn't try to load drivers for USB mice, just PS/2. I'm sure it will be fixed.
I'm not sure all the UI problems can be dismissed as it being "new" or "different." The in-place program navigator browser in the start menu, for example, is just clumsy - I can't see any actually benefit over the hierarchical menu. I have no problem with the look and feel changing, but I don't think there is anything to gain in replacing standard UI features with things that are harder to use and provide no improvements.
"rahi" wrote:
Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

What I found amazing is that when I plug my mouse from one usb port to another, it takes a few seconds for the mouse to be ???Installed???
I recall plugging the same usb mouse on a mac (A Microsoft intelimouse) and the moment it was pluged in, it worked. (Same goes with DV camera)
also, speaking out the mouse, it seem Vista still got a case of the 'jerky' with the mouse freezing with some operations. Its also not in sync with the beam (Even so its a 100hz capable mouse)... (X800XT + 1gig of 128bit DDR memory + 3200XP processor)
Is this a beta 2 thing, or MS think of shiping the OS this way ?
Stephan
"rahi" wrote in message

Performance is secondary issue at this point. About the mouse issue you described seems bit odd. Maybe its some bios setting and usb timings. I believe that will be fixed as releases go forth. Nvidia beta drivers with your card should trigger the aero glass as well the win+tab selections. UI itself, who knows. Its just something new imho.

Just a thought here, but just because you personally don't care for some of the features doesn't mean they are problems. And I doubt the code has been optimized yet, so of course it runs slow! It's a beta.
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote:

I am a software developer and have recently downloaded Vista Beta 2 build 5384 x64 edition. I have experienced a number of issues with Vista which I would like to encourage some discussion about:
1. The Vista setup program does not support USB mice - I had to use the keyboard to control it until Vista finished installing, upon which my Dell USB mouse was finally recognised and started working.
2. The display settings UI does not seem well thought out. The initial user interface presents a page of hyper-links to different settings which looks good. When you actually click on say the "Display Settings" link, it doesn't take you to a new page which you can navigate with the forward and back buttons like you'd expect a hyperlink to, instead it pops up a dialog of settings similar to the old Windows XP Display property sheet. The new Vista UI is supposed to use a browser style interface - why is it mixing metaphores like this?
3. Performance in general seems to be very slow on a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon with Hyper-Threading, 1GB of RAM and an NVIDIA 6800 Ultra card (Vista rating 3) and it is obvious that not everything is being double buffered. Our own scientific imaging application, Volocity (www.improvision.com/Volocity) is unable to use hardware accelerated Open GL (probably due to the beta NVIDIA drivers) and even 2-D drawing with DirectDraw is incredibly slow and flickery due to the selective lack of double-buffering.
4. My monitors resync every time a security dialog appears - this is not good as it puts a strain on them.
5. There are way too many security dialogs - do I really need to click on one just to change the date and time?
5. Multiple monitor support seems messed up - I was not able to set my LCD panel to use its highest res (1024x768). Whenever I tried, the settings would reset, my LCD would set itself back to 800x600 and my CRT would become the secondary monitor instead of the primary monitor like it is supposed to be. Maybe this is a problem with the beta NVIDIA drivers?
6. The start menu is too cluttered and the distinction between individual items has been lost due to the removal of the icons. In particular, the "Computer" option needs to be much more distinctive and belongs near the top as it one of the most frequently used items.
7. The new inplace browser to view available programs in the start menu is awkward to use because the available space is very cramped and requires much more clicking just to see what programs are available. I much prefer the old hierarchical menu system.
8. I haven't seen any sign of the new 3-D Alt-Tab window navigation system. Is this something I have to turn on?
Personally I think MS still has a lot of work to do on this release (yeah, I know - it's still a beta). The UI is starting to grow on me, though. It doesn't seem to have the ton of flashy 3-D animations I was expecting (mostly just subtle things like the scale-down window minimisation animation), but possibly this is a good thing.

Of course we are reporting the bugs we find. But, at least for me, I don't rant on a message board about a beta operating system having bugs. I actually expect there to be bugs. Isn't that the point of a beta release, finding the bugs? Have you reported the issues you are having with bug reports?
And yes, I would agree that the lack of USB support for the mouse is a bug. So, report it.
"Oliver David Stuart" wrote:

"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote: . And I doubt the code has been optimized yet, so of course it runs slow! It's a beta.
"I doubt all the bugs have been fixed yet so of course not everything works! It's a beta."
See how useful that attitude is? No one would report a bug and nothing would get fixed! MS have released a public beta so they can get feedback. I don't personally care if the slowdowns are because of debug code or because no optimisations have been done. I am simply reporting a performance problem with Vista. It's up to MS to either discard my feedback because they know it's all explainable due to Vista being a beta or to follow it up because they are not expecting this.

Of course we are reporting the bugs we find. But, at least for me, I don't rant on a message board about a beta operating system having bugs.

Ermm... most of the issues I reported on were issues I had with the UI, not bugs per se.
What rant? You're coming across as a bit of a fan boy here. Beta releases are made to solicit bug fixes and feedback. I'm providing feedback. Are you going to post these kind of unhelpful messages after every bug report or usability comment in this newsgroup?

actually expect there to be bugs. Isn't that the point of a beta release, finding the bugs? Have you reported the issues you are having with bug reports?

Yes, I have.

And yes, I would agree that the lack of USB support for the mouse is a bug. So, report it.

Yes, I did.

"Oliver David Stuart" wrote:
"Mark D. VandenBerg" wrote: . And I doubt the code has been optimized yet, so of course it runs slow! It's a beta.
"I doubt all the bugs have been fixed yet so of course not everything works! It's a beta."
See how useful that attitude is? No one would report a bug and nothing would get fixed! MS have released a public beta so they can get feedback. I don't personally care if the slowdowns are because of debug code or because no optimisations have been done. I am simply reporting a performance problem with Vista. It's up to MS to either discard my feedback because they know it's all explainable due to Vista being a beta or to follow it up because they are not expecting this.