Post the fastest BETA you've ever tried, the specs of the computer and why it's fast. (Unnecessary if you used a Virtual Machine).

OS: Windows Neptune
CPU: Pentium MMX
RAM: 32mb
HD: 2 gb
Video: S3 Trio 64
Boot up time: 27 seconds including BIOS.


Green: Later added text (edits made)

Neptune will be fast as I think it's basically just normal Windows 2000 with a few extra bits, whereas most betas are buggy things with lots of debug code etc, so are slower than a final OS.

OS: Windows Whistler Build 2296 Advanced Server
CPU: Core Duo 1.83GHz (Parallels Desktop, VT enabled, acceleration set to High)
HD: 4GB (expanding image)
GPU: Parallels VESA
Boot time: From loader to desktop in less than 10 seconds

That's no big surprise, Parallels Desktop on OS X is amazingly fast on an Intel Mac anyway. XP boots in less than 10 secs too, it's way faster than VirtualPC or even VMware on the same hardware.

I'd say it's significantly faster than native hardware, let alone other virtual machines - my PC (and I assume most others) takes a good few seconds just to do the POST stuff. The clean installation of XP Pro SP2-slipstreamed that I put on recently takes at least 30 seconds from pressing the power button to a full desktop.

I'd be interested to hear how Vista performs in Parallels. Does Parallels have 3D support though or would you be Aero-less?

Windows Neptune uses hibernation to shutdown, or Power Off in Neptune's start menu, whether you like it or not. It doesn't even confirm if you want to log off or not. But it was the first viewing of the new Welcome Screen which in XP along with XP's new theme, made a lot of baby's computer lives a lot nicer.

Ah yes, I remember that now - it is very difficult to shut down for some reason! They have taken a similar approach in Vista of course, hiding the shutdown option in a tiny menu (on the default start menu) whereas they have a huge button for Standby. Vista doesn't ask for confirmation for logging off either, nor for shutting down if you use the default start menu - if you use the Classic Start Menu you do get a dialog when you select "shut down" as they have to present you with all the other options, the same as on XP.



Lol, true!

Why didn't you ask that earlier? I've run several Vista and Longhorn Server builds in Parallels (in fact, every single one since build 5600). So here you go: With 512~768MB RAM allocated, it's quite fast, faster than my 1.5GHz Athlon XP, I'd say but it hogs one of the two cores completely, the one is always at 100%. Luckily you have the 2nd core still available to do other stuff outside of Parallels. Overall, it's not too bad. You don't get Aero Glass, you only get Vista Basic or whatever this is called (same in VMware, VirtualPC and the like).

Hmm, guess I didn't think of asking earlier! I thought you said you had a special testing machine which was what you'd been trying Vista/LHS on, I didn't know you'd done much testing elsewhere. Euurgh, Vista Basic - since using Vista with Aero, Basic looks so horrible, it was a real shock going back to it when I tried that Vista Enterprise yesterday!

The two-core thing sounds good, as things can get a little slow when virtualising - do you reckon it would be a good idea to use Task Manager to make VMware use only one "core" of my P4HT or would that just slow everything down?

Windows Me 2525 on HP Vectra VEi8DT, 20 secconds with quick post.

neptune too

on a:

300mhz processor
64mb ram
4mb video card and 8gb hd(ntfs)

boot time: 40 sec.

i love this os

Yep, I usually do/did the testing on the box in the basement (which doesn't support Aero by the way), but if I need(ed) it for something else or don't/didn't want to fiddle around in the cold basement (especially in the winter months), I just threw/throw it on the MacBook in Parallels or VMware. Yep, Vista Basic looks boring once you felt Aero once, I have to agree here. I was running Vista #5600 and #5728 natively on the MacBook and I have to say it was very speedy with the dual-core and 2GB of RAM.


I'd say leave it as it is. VMware supports SMP and does the load balancing by itself.

OS: Chicago 490
CPU: AMD 3500+ x64...
RAM: 2gigs (not all supported)
HD: 10 gigs
Video: Some Old Diamond Viper
Boot up time: 12 seconds with BIOS done with stop watch...

OS: Vista 5600
Ram: 512 MB
Processor: 1.6ghz
HD: 120 GB
Video: 128MB NVidia

I haven't really tested many betas... but this was the fastest that I have.

OS: Windows Chicago 58s
RAM: 8Mbytes
HDD: 2048MBytes Fat16
Video: S3 Generic
Bootup Time: 12 Seconds

In fact, most of betas i've tryed worked fast. Well... maybe except Longhorns, early Vista builds and OS X 10 previev 3...

Windows Whistler Build 2296
256 MB Ram
30 Gig
Voodoo 3000

Haha, oooooooooold times.

As far as VM 3D acceleration goes, it's coming along. Parallels 3 and VMware Fusion both have some variety of DirectX 8 (or something like that) acceleration, although it's still limited at this point. I expect that we'll have full Aero in less than a year.

Windows Code Name Longhorn build 4074
256 MB ram
10 gigabyte
onboard graphics with 32 mb


! xDDD

Does a DOS beta count?

How about the OSBA OS pre-alpha?

I'd have to say Neptune...even on standard hardware, it loaded faster than any OS I've ever used....at least beta wise. The Fastest final release was Windows 3.1. 9 seconds from power on-to-program manager (Including POST-check)

Neptune OS Boot specs:

AMD Atlhon MP (1.0GHz)
512MB RAM (DDR 266MHz)
60GB, 7200RPM IBM Hard Drive (NTFS Partition)
64MB nVidia ????

I believe boot-time was around 32 or 33 seconds. Very Nice.

Processor: 1.6GHz Celeron M
RAM: 512MB
Video: ATI Radeon 200M
Hard Drive: 60GB

For some reason, RC1 booted MUCH faster on this system than RTM on my current, fairly high-end notebook....

Neptune is pretty fast but any pc today can run it fast. I would say vista 5112 is pretty fast.

Woah, did such a thing exist

Yes, it was created by ppc_digger himself and based on Apple Darwin (hope I'm correct on that).