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All posts tagged "beta"


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Windows 8 Consumer Preview (Beta) Arrives for Everyone

Posted by Michael Knutson in "Laptop Thoughts Talk" @ 02:00 PM

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/wind...t;siu-container

"Summary: With today’s release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft is finally ready for the public to pass judgment on its most important software release in nearly two decades. Here’s what to expect."

Naturally there is controversy already: much of what I've seen written today has been about the disappearance of the start button in the lower left of the screen. Funny the amount of resistance to change in technology; reminds me of the introduction of Windows 95. I even saw Windows 8 referred-to as MS BOB V2. In any case, this is only a beta, not a finished product, so I'm sure that MS is paying attention to feedback.

The Consumer Preview performs well, and W8 may breathe a bit of life into computers that struggle with Windows 7. It is a 2.5GB download, and should run in a virtual environment. This article is a very good overview, and even explains the new keyboard shortcuts. Reading the comments, there seems to be real resistance to change, with comments akin to "how will I get Grandma to change?" or "who will support the users when they get lost?" Well, based on tablet acceptance and the improved user experience, I expect fewer problems for more casual users. Grandma will be fine. Thoughts?


Monday, April 11, 2011

Lightworks: The Open Source Video Editor

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Software" @ 08:00 PM

http://www.lightworksbeta.com/

"Back in April 2010, we announced our plans to take Lightworks open source. We always said the first step would be to make the application freely available so that a large community of users could start becoming familiar with it. We are very pleased to have reached this first milestone. Now you can freely download the most intuitive and advanced editor available. This is not a trial download. From here forward, you will always be able to download and use the latest version of Lightworks for free."

An open source video editor? Sounds like it might be too good to be true, but looking at the list of features, it's quite impressive. Amazingly, it was used to cut "The King's Speech" together - and that says a lot for software that's still in beta! Unfortunately, I've been unable to figure out how to use it yet - when I start a new project and go to import the video files, my AVCHD videos are not available for import. Turns out this file format isn't supported - which is a real shame given it has become a standard consumer format. Still, Lightworks may be the video editing you're looking for if you happen to have video in a format it can support...


Saturday, August 28, 2010

Windows Live Sync to be Re-Named Windows Live Mesh? Seriously?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Talk" @ 12:00 PM

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_..._medium=twitter

From the very first day I discovered FolderShare, created by Byte Taxi and later purchased by Microsoft and re-named Live Sync, it's been a transformational technology for me - literally changing the way I'm able to work on multiple devices. Over the years, Live Sync has been ignored, improved, then ignored again - a clear sign that the leadership at Microsoft didn't know what to do with it. And the obvious overlap with Live Mesh didn't help its cause. Things seemed to be getting better about a year ago when Live Sync really started to get some effort put into it, but took a drastic turn for the worse when the Live Sync beta came out in June.

FolderShare was truly dead; the lightweight, super-fast client was replaced by the heavy and slow Live Mesh client. Worse, the performance issues - specifically, the hard drive access load - virtually lock up several of my computers when a sync is happening (and were talking about a Core i7 system with 6 GB of RAM in one instance). It wasn't all bad news though - the 20,000 file library limit was raised to 100,000, so I was finally able to re-unite my photo collection. All in all though, I've been very disappointed in the performance of the new Live Sync client. Read more...


Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Adobe Releases Lightroom 3 Beta 2

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Software" @ 12:50 AM

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

"New features in this release include tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon cameras, the ability to import and manage video files from DSLR cameras for a streamlined workflow and additional behind-the-scenes architecture enhancements for faster importing and loading of images. The addition of luminance noise reduction to the color noise reduction options already available in the beta helps photographers achieve overall exceptional image quality from high ISO images. The import experience and watermarking functionality have also been modified to reflect feedback received from the Lightroom community during the first beta period."

Anyone using the Lightroom 3 beta? I'm toying around with it on one of my laptops, but it's a sadly underpowered 1.6 Ghz AMD Neo processor that is pretty awful at keeping up with Lightroom - I'm still using Lightroom 2.0 on my main media editing computer. Lightroom 3.0 brings some pretty cool things to the table - I like that it's able to import and manage video files now. It's a hassle to insert a memory card, import the photos using Lightroom, then have to manually dig to get the video files. I don't expect Lightroom to help me edit the video files, but I do expect it to at least import them for me. Looks like Lightroom 3.0 is shaping up to be a winner!


Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Win 7 Beta Bests XP and Vista

Posted by Timothy Huber in "Digital Home Software" @ 10:00 AM

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236

"How does Windows 7 beta 1 compare to Vista and XP in terms of performance? That's a question that's been hitting my inbox regularly over the past few weeks. Let's see if we can't answer it!"

ZDnet ran a series of tests comparing the performance of XP, Vista and the Windows 7 beta on the same hardware. The results were nearly a sweep, with Windows 7 finishing first in 42 of the 46 individual tests. Results like that a particularly impressive when you consider that Windows 7 is a beta build and most likely hasn't received any fine-tuning. The more I hear, the more I'm anticipating good things from Windows 7.

Tags: beta, windows 7

Monday, January 5, 2009

Windows Media Player 12 Beta Maiming MP3 Files

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home News" @ 02:24 PM

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/...rrupt-your-mp3s

"Several reports from users testing the latest leaked build of Windows 7 indicate a potential data corruption issue using Microsoft's Windows Media Player 12. Windows 7 beta 1 build 7000 leaked over the Christmas holidays and a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed that there is a bug which affects the leaked build. Approximately 2-3 seconds will get shaved off the beginning of MP3s if you have set your Windows Media Player 12 settings to retrieve information from the internet and update files. The default configuration for WMP12 sets this if you use the "express" option during setup."

I've beta tested a lot of software over the years, including Windows operating systems, and I'd never have hesitated to use it to play back my media. Sure, you don't use the beta OS for mission-critical stuff, but I'd certainly test out the media player...but now I'm sure going to be cautious about Windows 7 until they fix this bug! Apparently the problem is triggered if the header is more than 16 KB in size on the MP3...and since I embed high-res album art in all my MP3s, the headers are definitely bigger than 16 KB. As always, when testing beta software, assume that things are going to go wrong.


Friday, September 26, 2008

Photoshop.com Mobile Goes Live

Posted by Darius Wey in "Pocket PC News" @ 04:40 AM

http://https://www.photoshop.com/in....html?wf=mobile

"Adobe® Photoshop.com Mobile is the easiest way to upload, view, and share your photos online from your phone. All you need is a supported Windows Mobile phone and your Photoshop.com account ID. Photoshop.com Mobile beta will be available as a free download in September."

The beta of Photoshop.com Mobile - announced a few weeks ago - is now live, but only for US customers. Only a small handful of Windows Mobile devices are currently supported, but that list is set to grow, and you may still get lucky with your unsupported device, anyway. Anyone plan on using this service?


Thursday, September 18, 2008

Windows Live Movie Maker Beta

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Software" @ 07:43 PM

http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/archive/2...ndows-live.aspx

I try not to be too critical of software with the word "beta" in the title, but Windows Live Movie Maker Beta should really be considered alpha software - it's got a long way to go, and is missing so many features that it can't possibly be considered beta software. And this is coming from someone who's a fan of Movie Maker. Usually by the time software reaches the beta stage, all the major features are there, and it's just a matter of polishing the code and tweaking things. This software? You can't even edit a video clip! In fact, there's no timeline. Without a timeline, how can this be "movie making" software? The more I use it the more I think this product is mis-named: it's really closer to Photostory, sans everything that made Photostory cool (the Ken Burns pans and zooms). It's really just slideshow software. Read more...


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