Longhorn Beta - is it available?

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BobTheSlob

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 16, 2002
Messages
291
I looked around on Google but I didn't find much, but I figured you guys would know. Is it available? Is it coming out?

Does it have capable drivers for any hardware? I'd like to try it out now that I don't need a stable system for school.

Thanks
 
if your really looking for a stable system I wouldn't look towards the beta of anything.. why not stick to XP?

edit\nm you said you DON'T need a stable sys
 
I have tried several versions we've had at HP. Aside from being buggy, if you don't have a top-line system, it's barely usable.
 
Syndicated_Death said:
what is your idea of top of the line?
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At the time I had it on a 2.4B P4, with 512 MB of memory, and it wasn't very responsive at all.
 
Is it available? I'll try it. I just want to fiddle around with it before I reformat and put XP back on. I can't find it on Microsoft's site?
 
BobTheSlob said:
Is it available? I'll try it. I just want to fiddle around with it before I reformat and put XP back on. I can't find it on Microsoft's site?
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I assume you mean legally....

Then the best (and probably easiest) way to get it is to join MSDN ( = $$ ). I have also heard that Microsoft was giving out some copies to some notorious bloggers (fishing for reviews, perhaps). Naturally, there are "other ways" to obtain a copy, which I won't go into here. As for drivers, most of them work out fine if you use the WinXp drivers as they are. It might complain (as XP does) about driver signing, but I've had no problems so far.
 
I was going to post something like this today.. I do have an MSDN sub. and I cant find it on there anymore...
 
I got to see Longhorn in action at school. Slow as heck, even on the P4 3.2Ghz machine it was running on.
 
awesome, so when dualcores come out to play longhorn will hog them both up leaving us in the spot we are in now
 
Syndicated_Death said:
awesome, so when dualcores come out to play longhorn will hog them both up leaving us in the spot we are in now
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If the software didn't use the hardware, why upgrade either? Every new OS has higher requirements, not because it needs them, because they are available. The things limiting how much software we can run (IE how productive the machine can be) is limited by the "average" hardware available when it's released. If everyone had dual cores now, it would be more processor intensive.

I guarantee you some features are not even considered because the "average" machine won't be able to run it. I see 3D features being disabled on many-many machines because hardware manufacturers have gimped video with onboard controllers/shared memory.
 
Phoenix86 said:
If the software didn't use the hardware, why upgrade either? Every new OS has higher requirements, not because it needs them, because they are available. The things limiting how much software we can run (IE how productive the machine can be) is limited by the "average" hardware available when it's released. If everyone had dual cores now, it would be more processor intensive.

I guarantee you some features are not even considered because the "average" machine won't be able to run it. I see 3D features being disabled on many-many machines because hardware manufacturers have gimped video with onboard controllers/shared memory.
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That's all fine and dandy but I'd like to be able to dedicate more to my games in hardware resources than my OS. perhaps then games could grow more since they actually have teh room to do more. or maybe I'm wrong
 
Ok. Install Win 3.11 then your games will have all the resources they need... Oh wait... ;)

Yes every operating system adds more bloat in features, but they also add more functionality games and other applications can use. ;)

And the MSDN copy you guys have access too is very unoptomized, as usually the developers think of new ways to optomize the code the longer they work on it.

But we are running out of the room to just say, (And every application I know has had this philosophy) Intel will fix our perf problems. Since Intel and Amd are starting to hit the ceiling of what they can do for a single threaded CPU. So now the perf stuff as a developer gets much harder, as they have to optomize for multiple threads. :(
 
Syndicated_Death said:
That's all fine and dandy but I'd like to be able to dedicate more to my games in hardware resources than my OS. perhaps then games could grow more since they actually have teh room to do more. or maybe I'm wrong
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Which is what's happening when the OS is more effecient.

NTFS helps with improved disk access.
DirectX helps with 3D gaming.
PnP helps with detecting new hardware.
 
Phoenix86 said:
Which is what's happening when the OS is more effecient.

NTFS helps with improved disk access.
DirectX helps with 3D gaming.
PnP helps with detecting new hardware.
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ok yeah we've got all that now, but what more do you think that microsoft has to bring to the plate? oh and I'm a bigger fan of openGL games than directX but what ever.
 
Syndicated_Death said:
ok yeah we've got all that now, but what more do you think that microsoft has to bring to the plate? oh and I'm a bigger fan of openGL games than directX but what ever.
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Time will tell, the features of longhorn are still changing... I don't think it'll be revolutionary though. Nothing like the jumps 3.11>95, or 98>2K, but even that's speculation.
 
Phoenix86 said:
Time will tell, the features of longhorn are still changing... I don't think it'll be revolutionary though. Nothing like the jumps 3.11>95, or 98>2K, but even that's speculation.
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If you don't count Avalon or WinFS there isn't much to get giddy about (that we know anyway). But once you throw those into the equasion, things start to get exciting. Too bad it's up in the air if either feature will ship with Longhorn though.
 
Could the moderators please put a damn sticky up to clarify to each of these damn "Longhorn Beta??question??" threads that THE DAMN THING IS STILL IN ALPHA STAGES, THERE IS NO BETA. There isn't anything close to a stable build yet because, as Ranma_Sao pointed out, there are craploads of optimizations that need to be done to the code before they beta it to work on a stable release.

Anyone who is not officially speaking as a Microsoft spokesperson making specific claims about Longhorn at this point is pulling things from their ass. We know the basic idea about some components that may or may not be in the release, but have no serious clue how they will be implemented. We only know what is being released in developer conferences and official comments from MS. All of that information combined boils down to "we aren't sure the system requirements, but they will be higher than XP, and WinFS will likely be in a service pack later that will also be available for XP/2k3 installation to make them forward compatible with the Longhorn builds."

That's all we know for sure, people. That's it.
 
yea its still in alpha stage and it sux...I had build 4079 and it sucked bad so I went back to xp pro
 
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