Over at ZDNet, I’ve put together a gallery of 30 screen shots digging deep into Vista Beta 2. I’ve dug up some stuff I guarantee you won’t see anywhere else.
For instance, there’s the new Performance Diagnostic Console, which is like Task Manager’s Performance tab on steroids.
If you’ve got questions about Vista Beta 2, post a comment here or in the Talkback section at ZDNet. I’ll do my best to follow up.
Ed Bott 
Ed,
What’s the base amount of memory this build uses in a fresh install, sitting at the desktop with no applications running?
Carl, there is no single answer to that question. The base footprint varies depending on the resources available. On a VM with 768MB of RAM, the base footprint is approximately 441MB. If I install on a system with 512MB of RAM, the footprint will go down somewhat, based on past experience. On a Pentium D machine with 4GB of RAM, the commit charge is 742MB.
Ed, this is way cool. (So was the ZNET article). Is there going to be a similar upgrade for the Performance monitoring tools (e.g. System Monitor)?
Ken
Nice… another Uncle Tupelo & Alejandro Excovedo fan. I can’t wait to pick Alejandro’s new CD. Oh yeah, great shots. Thanks!
Wow, now I want to get Vista (buying an extra piggy bank tomorrow). Great screenshots. The only graphic inside of Vista I don’t like is the standing folder inside of dialogs and Explorer. But that’s nothing.
Ken, in Beta 2 the Performance Monitoring tool is improved, but not radically different. I haven’t spent a lot of time digging into it yet.
Thanks, Ed. More generally, Vista seems to be at least a bit more “power user” friendly. For me, that could be a good thing or a very bad thing. 🙂