Hit

At your local Windows XP dealer, of course Seriously, I believe it's too late to become an official tester. However, I heard something a while back about nonags.com offering "offical" betas such as Beta 1 and the soon-to-be-released Beta 2, assuming you register with them.

Awesome. This should be an interesting release. Get ready for a shock tho, I'm reading that the GUI is gonna be....quite different. Shame too, I was just starting to get used to the snazzy Whistler GUI.

Speaking of MacOS...isn't OS X (XFL, XML, XP, X windows...X,X, X...sheesh) supposed to be out soon? Wouldn't that be funny if MS came out with XP before OSX...even though the latter has been in development for years? That would be interesting.

"Microsoft" and "Cross Platform" go together like a grill cheese sandwitch and mustard. So yeah, I do find it hard to believe that XP would mean "cross platform". Whatever it's called, it doesn't matter. As long as it kicks *** like I hope it's going to, they could call it "We're Gonna **** You All" and I'd still use it. Oh yeah, the official beta 2 should be out "real soon now".

In simple terms it's what allows you to see "transparent" things such as windows (linux telnet windows come to mind) or icons. In Quake3, for example, this is used to show a glass or water surface. In more technical terms, it's the application of one graphics texture onto another, with the exception that the second texture you apply has an "alpha" value associated with it. This means then when the graphics hardware is "adding" the textures together, not all of the second texture's pixels cover up the first. Hence you get a nice transparency effect. Windows2000 has had this capability for almost any graphics object. Although not many programs are written to take advantage of this currently, you can be sure you will see more in the future. [This message has been edited by Hit (edited 02 February 2001).]

Yeah, it seems right now that games have a tough time working on Whistler, and they take up a LOT of memory. Right now, that is. Whistler is still beta. IIRC, Beta2 for Win2k beat the living hell out of Beta1, so I expect the next beta will be a huge improvement for Whistler. Only when the Release Candidates start coming out will you be able to make final judgements as to whether or not MS can deliver on their 98 compatilbility promise.

Prolly due to the fact MS has all of the software showing it as Beta 2. This is obviously in anticipation when it WILL be beta 2. Which I believe comes out pretty soon, like in the next two weeks or so. But I think that release will not be out to all testers. Not until later in the month.

Oh, and thanks for avoiding personal attacks in your second post. In my opinion, people come off as far more professional when they attack points the person is making (in a constructive way), rather than the person his or herself.

I am not flaming the OS or MS in this case. I am writing my experiences. And they weren't good, despite the fact 2296 ran wonderful except for memory usage problems, and the fact it still had the same compatibility issues Win2k had (such as certain windows based emulators still not working). Oh, and about the beta concept. I seriously think MS has redefined this concept greatly. It used to be that a "beta" was code with a completed feature set, that was at the testing stage. Granted, no one, not even MS does this anymore, and betas these days seem more like alphas, and Release Candidates more like betas. Again, you're right, I didn't have to do this, and paid the price. I was merely pointing out others that they may want to wait to possibly avoid the problems I encountered. But to make this clear, I was not flaming MS or their OS. Theres plenty of that going on in any linux board, slashdot, or hell, any popular nerd-visited site. I for one am hoping MS achieves their goal with Whistler, because I would love to have an OS that runs whatever 98 does (or at least most) and doesn't crash like every 5 minutes. [This message has been edited by Hit (edited 30 January 2001).]

Oh heavens mercy... 2296 ran fine for me, but the 241x releases have been rather painful. Apparently, MS is ripping apart at the internals of the OS, probably so it supports more 98 features...one thing I think MS will fail it. You can't emulate crappy code without...well...writing the crappy code again. At any rate, the 241x releases, for some reason, are WORSE than 2296 because I'm getting BSODs, slowdowns, and the network card utterly refuses to work, despite the fact it worked in 2296 and Win2k. Oh yes, and the memory leak is still there. Again, mileage may vary for someone else, but my recommendation is to avoid it for now unless you like pain and suffering. Hopefully, the "official" beta 2 will be better, and if it's not, expect major delays.

Why is it that running emulators (snes9x and callus specifically) in full screen "stretch" mode is so horrible in 2k? The framerate stinks, and I don't get that nice edge "antialiasing" effect that I get in 98. Anyone else dealing with these issues? My system is: PII 450 128 MB ram STB TNT video card (16MB) Turtle Beach Montego II sound card (Aureal won't support it anymore...bleh)

Hey, anyone tried running emulators with these drivers? It seems emulators such as snes9x don't get support from that full screen filtering trick that it does in 98 drivers. Anyone actually get this working in 2k? -Hit