Microsoft has finally depleted their supply of 100,000 downloads that they were giving out of Vista 5536. That build is considered to be Pre-RC1 but you shouldn’t be too disappointed if you didn’t get an opportunity to download it. If RC1 remains on schedule it should be available sometime next week.
The site for the download now says:
The Customer Preview Program is now closed.
We have reached our goal of 100,000 downloads for the pre-RC1 release and the program is now closed. Windows Vista RC1 will be available in the coming weeks. Please refer to the Customer Preview Program website for information, including DVD-burning instructions.
I am extremely happy that Microsoft did this because it is a really stable release for everything that I have been running on it. This is now my primary operating system on two computers and the only thing I lack is a widespread AntiVirus compatibility. AVG seems to be doing well for me but I was hoping to use Avast. For more details on the compatibility issue please refer to my previous article.
Remember that your Beta 2 keys do work with this build and can be activated on up to 10 different machines (I think that is what the number was). Happy testing!
Build 5536 has been reported as installing in around 20 minutes. That must be for a clean install only, because my upgrade from 5472 took almost 3 hours to complete. This is in contrast to the one hour that 5472 and beta 2 took to install/upgrade. My upgrade from beta 2 to build 5472 was really disappointing; I had a BSOD once every couple hours, and even more frequently when I was running memory intensive tasks like bittorrent. So far, 5536 has been fine in that department, and everything is running smoothly. Thanks for the heads up!
3 hours for an upgrade! Geeze, it took me 21 minutes for a fresh install. I hope it doesn’t take that long for people to upgrade from XP otherwise there will be some negative comments about that I’m sure.
I have read some articles that the latest Vista build does install in around 20 minutes.
I plan to wait for the public release of the release candidate.
Azureus is still fetching my Vista 5536 for me – I’m now pondering what hard drive to install it on. Would it run on a 3.6GB drive, because my two big ones are for my main system and I don’t yet feel like a full switch to Vista.
Ha…3.6GB
After installation I think it ate up something crazy like 9GB. Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I am pretty sure it was high. I think it requires 6GB at least though.
My windows folder is 8.37gb. I didn’t even have the option of upgrading until all my partitions had at least 5gb free, so a 3.6gb disk will definitely not work. Also, at this point I definitely recommend a clean install over an upgrade. After having upgraded from Beta 2 to 5472, and from 5472 to 5536 now, I’m still getting a BSOD any time I do anything memory intensive in the least, such as having a few tabs open in firefox. It seems like so far, a clean install is the only stable option. But overall, I do really like Vista. It feels like this is what Windows XP should have been. At the same time, this really does just feel like an upgrade to XP as opposed to what Microsoft bills as their most innovative and unique OS yet. Still, I’m sold. Any improvement is a welcome one.