Since there are 2 betas this time, I really don't think beta 1 will be anything special. With 7 there was 1 beta so all the features just came on show. I think things will still be hidden in Windows 8 beta 1. They will probably show the new UI in September, but like Vista, the new UI won't be publicly available until beta 2. Usually when MS do 2 betas, the first one is mainly to test features, and beta 2 is for the UI/look and feel. I would say its pretty likely, as I have been saying for ages that: Beta 1 = 8100 Beta 2 = 8200 RTM builds are always rounded numbers; Windows 7 7274=7600. They bumped the build number. Just like Vista 58xx=6000 It will probably be 8400-8500=8800 Anyhow, seeing as though the development cycle is actually longer than Windows 7's, there will be waaay more changes coming up than before. It will be like a Longhorn without a feature creep. (Hopefully )
The kernel of Vista had nothing to do with the issues it had. It was that it took way too much space to install, ate memory like a fat evil psychiatrist, and the requirements were too high for 2007. Most laptops around the time were 1GB RAM or so, and as that's the minimum requirement for anything other than Home Basic, it ran extremely sluggishly. Today on my 2GB MacBook, Vista (SP2, admittedlt) runs fine. But the point I'm making is it had nothing to do with the kernel.
OK let's say we both have a reason why Vista had failed. The sign off of RTM was controversial (OEMs). I had tested it on a nforce II board AMD 3200+ with 1 GB RAM. It was very slow (hardware hungry), but the main reason why I have deinstalled was that I could not get a driver for the sound!! Later at some friends (who were stupid enough to buy that crap) for the 64 bit version they could not get any driver!! Terratec sound card, wifi, scanner. NO avail! Either they stay at XP 32 bit to use their hardware, or they throw it away and buy new one. Why Vista had failed 2007 -Vista RTM has been released too early (not developed enough) -Vista is 'hardware-hungry' (your reason) -No OEM support, no drivers, especially at 64 bit (due to kernel update and hence new device driver management) (my main reason)
But do you have any ending in :32? Bare in mind the user may be in a different time zone, which usually stuff like properties "last modified" changes the time to make up for the time zone difference. If not then fair enough.
Please post Beta questions in the Next Leak stickies as it appears the next leak will be a Beta. I will move relevant posts to the Next Leak thread later. I am closing this thread.