Author: Blue Horizon

The final Beta 2 build. Microsoft has rebranded the operating system to "Windows XP". With that being said, we got a lot of ground to cover and over 20 screenshots to look at.

Upon first boot, the OOBE is completlely broken. The only way to get out of this is to press Shift+F10, then in the command prompt, type "taskmgr", and end "msoobe.exe". By doing this, a name won't be set for you.

The first time you see the Windows XP branding. You can see they removed the clouds from the logon screen and the Whistler logo on the top right is gone.

Lots of things here to comment on:

• The shortcut to the readme notes is gone.
• The "File a bug report" icon is updated and it looks just like the "Run in Compatibility Mode" icon.
• "Bliss" is now the deafult desktop background, and there's other new backgrounds as well.
• Recycle Bin doesn't have handles on the icon anymore!
• The Luna theme is now called "Windows XP". (big shock there)

There's also no final XP sounds at this point. The taskbar also has quick launch by default and is unlocked still.

The start menu looks just like it should in the final version. "More Programs" has also been renamed to "All Programs", and my name is Administrator cause the OOBE didn't work.

Balloon tips now have an "X" you can click to quickly close them. I guess Microsoft workers got tired of getting those without an easy way to stop them.

The activation dialog is still the same as in previous builds. They also removed the old Windows flag icon with just an empty white window icon.

And there's the activation balloon, this time with an "X" and an updated error icon. All icons such as "Red X circle", "Yellow ! triangle", "White i and ? speech bubble" have been changed to their final look.

And of course, I got to show you the new logon screen.

Windows Media Player got updated again with a new deafult look. Like so many media players back then and today it has to reinvent it's own UI buttons and controls.

Windows Movie Maker is now also slightly updated. The built-in tour is removed, and it's not a fully capable YTP machine yet.

The Outlook Express 6 banner is updated and matches with the Luna theme.

The screen saver is way different from the final. I think it actually looks better this way.

There is one wallpaper that is no where to be seen in the final version. It's this early Windows XP wallpaper that later got replaced by another one with blue or green colors depending on the edition of XP you bought.

And here's the full image as well.

A brand new tour! It actually has different music than the final and the tour isn't automatic, so you need to click on everything manually.

This tour will be provided for download at the end of this review.

Help and Support Center has been given a new look. And looks like what it should in the final.

Crashed applications is now handled differently, this has already been in Whistler for a long while, but I just came across this while trying to use search.

And look, they aren't sorry for any inconvenience! At least not right now, or ever.

The system tray now has a "<" arrow so you can see your least used icons there.

The classic start menu still has some old Whistler icons, but the logo banner on the side has "xp" in tiny red letters. I personally like that more than the final.

The logoff prompt now makes the background fade to black & white instead of dimming the screen via tiny appearing boxes from the top left to bottom right.

Finally, shutting down. Stand-by is still called "Hibernate" at this point, and the background turns black & white here as well.

Phew, that was a lot to showoff and document! In conclusion, Microsoft are doing a nice job merging the home consumer versions of Windows with the business ones. And there's still more stuff to come.

And just like I said, here's a copy of the beta Tour below.

Tours.zip