Yep, Colin. And there are some very good ones, for Office, Vista, Group
Policy and Active Directory in XP and Vista, and MSDN topics are offered as
well. A lot of these presenters have a richly deserved reputation for
being very good at it--and have for a while. There seem to be more than one
place to look for them--and emails are a help to me in finding some.
The reason though that I harp on making as much public about Vista as
possible is that because it's new and it has ayk a lot of interesting added
features as well as infrastructure under the hood (I guess as opposed to "in
the hood.") XP has been around for a good while, and so tons of sites and
resources are available as you'd expect for that time period. I think the
faster that people can get familiar with how things work in Vista, and the
tips and tricks that a lot of us find to make them work, so much the better.
In the closed chats, there is more information on how something works--and
many enthusiasts both want and may need to know that. There are more
specifics in the category of "this problem with UAC boxes in your face in
xyz circumstances will be fixed in RC1--although I've seen comments like
that for months only to find that the problem that was referenced wasn't
fixed at all in the build proffered that it would be.
It gives people the opportunity to ask questions of representatives from the
Vista teams. I haven't yet seen any complaints/problems from MSFT that "a
chat is too crowded" or "a Live Meeting is too crowded." Most of what I've
seen over the years is that interest is desirable and appreciated.
Also because it is public, a lot of people are using it and runing into
stumbling blocks that are (of course) part of the territory of any Beta
particularly what I'd call a "Mega Beta"or the mother of all Betas as far as
code, features, development opportunities--Windows--the OS--- the big
enchalada that drops once every 5-6 years although Ballmer hints at
shortening this interval in the future.
Vista Live Meetings and Chats IMHO should be public but aren't. Call me
old fashioned, but I can't see any perjorative side effects from more people
learning about Windows, given it's 95% give or take of the Operating Systems
used on the planet give or take those who enjoy Linux, and Mac and of course
the niche operating systems most people never hear or think about made by
Sun, HP, Oracle, ect.
One reason I want bugs fixed is I don't want to have to put up with them for
another 5-6 years, nor do those of us who try to help on groups and in
forums want to have to spend time fixing the bugs that we knew could have
and should have been fixed prior to RTM.
CH
