My unhappy reaction to the Windows Hardware Engineering (WinHEC) 2005 build of Longhorn is now, shall we say, infamous. I wasn't trying to make a statement per se. But I did refer to the next major version of Windows as a "train wreck," so I guess it makes sense that people would latch onto that statement. OK, that was three months ago. A few weeks ago, Microsoft briefed me about Windows Vista Beta 1, suitably setting my expectations. And Beta 1--and the pre-Beta 1 builds I've used over the past weeks--are much, much more impressive than Build 5048. Microsoft may have made some boneheaded mistakes in the past, but they're clearly learning.

Paul Thurrott Windows SuperSite