Live from the Windows Vista Lab in Las Vegas
The company has invited about 60 bloggers, Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and/or Microsoft Featured Community site members to the Microsoft-sponsored Windows Vista RTM Lab, which runs Saturday and Sunday, right before the start of the Consumer Electronics Show.
Just a few of the other attendees include (in no particular order): Long Zheng from Istartedsomething.com; Robert Stein from ActiveWin.com; Sandro Villinger from Windows-Tweaks; Steve Sinchak of TweakVista.com and a number of well-known Windows-centric books; Josh Phillips from Windows Connected; Brandon LeBlanc from MSTechToday; Robert McLaws from Windows-Now.com; Ryan Hoffman from Extended64; Steven Bink from Bink.nu; a bunch of the Neowin.Net crew; and Michael Reyes from Hardware Geeks.
At Microsoft's invitation, I'm attending bits and pieces of the lab. Because of certain non-disclosure-agreement terms with which I am not able and willing to comply, I am not attending a number of the sessions. So I'll be relying on other Lab "rats" to share what's fair game.
Mauricio Freitas, a Microsoft MVP and admin of the Geekzone site, shared the session list for the Vista Lab, as well as a photo of the Vista welcome kit provided to lab attendees. On the list of items to be discussed, according to Freitas:
- 3P (third-party) Hardware
- Day in life of a bug
- 3P Software
- Vista UX (user experience) backstory
- Friends & FAmily upgrade
- Toshiba PC
- Innovations
- Windows Live
- AMD Platforms
- Vista & Photography
- Office 12 / 2007
Extended 64's Hoffman was none too happy about Microsoft's disclosure Saturday morning that hardware certified under Microsoft's "Certified for Windows Vista" logo program isn't guaranteed to work with 64-bit versions of Vista.
"What’s the point of the logo, when it only is half true?" Hoffman demanded.
Over on the ProNetworks site, lab attendee Larry Richman is posting summaries of (at least the non-proprietary parts) of each of the Vista Lab sessions. Regarding the number of third-party apps developed for Vista, Richman admitted "there really aren't many applications ready for Vista just yet."
Supposedly, there is, however, some secret new Vista app that Microsoft is going to go public with Sunday night at midnight eastern time, according to Richman.
Anyone have an inkling as to what that one is?
Update: I hear the secret app is from Yahoo, not Microsoft. Sources say it's likely a new version of Yahoo Instant Messenger that has been custom-developed for Vista.