wb5 - why on earth did they release this broken beta?

Works for me! It's a good thing that there are so many problems in the beta. More that will be fixed for the stable release.

SD has a huge user base. And I think many skinners customize their PCs in other ways. I'm impressed that WB5 works as well as it does.

Submit your bugs and help make it better.

beta

The key word

It's only beta and it's first release.
No need to get that way about it.

I haven't had any success on any of my 3 systems yet. I only feel left out.

You know the meaning of the word BETA?

Sorry to hear that NT. I guess I'm one of the lucky one's as it works great on my system. I'm sure Stardock is hard at work to fix the bugs that show up in any beta release. Hang in there as it's worth it. I hope there's an update soon that will work on everyone's system.

This isn't Beta, it's Alpha as far as I am concerned, and I have never had so many problems with any beta. After about 30 installs and uninstalls, now it works however. I think the problem with this beta is not so much the program itself as the "upgrade" process. There is something wrong in the WB4.6 upgrade. It leaves you with 2 entries of WB. WB4 updated to 4.9 and WB5 at 4.9 also in Stardock Central. There must be a subtle glitch in the routine. Once the program installs and loads properly, it works pretty good, except, the roll up/down feature doesn't work anymore in advanced options on the new skins.

It leaves you with 2 entries of WB. WB4 updated to 4.9 and WB5 at 4.9 also in Stardock Central.

I did not experience this. Thus the need for a (semi-)public beta.

No one forced you to upgrade. Installing alpha or beta software implies that you are willing to lose EVERYTHING on your PC.

YMMV

Yanno, I'm just a little peeved here... I installed WB5 from scratch with a clean system and got every stupid DLL error imagineable, added to which inconvenience, it seems WB5 does not show up in one's Add/Remove Programs list, which means now I have to do yet another system restore. I'm sick of this. At least Stardock Central has the good sense to keep 4.6 in the downloads for now.

Yanno, I'm just a little peeved here... I installed WB5 from scratch with a clean system and got every stupid DLL error imagineable, added to which inconvenience, it seems WB5 does not show up in one's Add/Remove Programs list, which means now I have to do yet another system restore. I'm sick of this. At least Stardock Central has the good sense to keep 4.6 in the downloads for now.

You do understand that this is an unstable product, if you decided to download it, you really shouldnt be complaining about it. Complain if it is still like that when it is stable.

/me waits for the x64 version to come out.

Well, of course it doesn't show up in Add/Remove Programs - it's installed via Stardock Central, so you need to remove it via that . . .

WC needs a sticky thread defining what a beta is.
From the wikipoedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_version):

A beta version or beta release usually represents the first feature complete version of a computer program or other product, likely to be unstable but useful for internal demonstrations and previews to select customers . . .

it seems WB5 does not show up in one's Add/Remove Programs list, which means now I have to do yet another system restore.

You should be able to uninstall through stardock central. I did many times last night. No need for a system restore.

There are lots of happy people with the beta remember.

Broken, for you maybe, but not for everyone. It worked fine on my desktop, got rundll error on my laptop, but still runs fine.

Any Beta release [or alpha] of ANY product should always be weighed up with it's potential for 'issues' vs. the mission-critical status of the Computer system it's to be TESTED on.

My work computer....this one I'm using....is important to me presently...as a lot of REAL WORK projects are at critical release stage.  I cannot really afford any 'down-time' to play with recalcitrant installs....so I don't.

Next week...I'll give it a go, perhaps.....and any issues I MAY come across....they'll be simply more beneficial input for the coders' beta program.

It's all about understanding the choices you make.

And remember....I'm one you often see loading an iffy shell/theme while shutting my eyes and putting 2 fingers in my ears.....

Just not right now....

i love trying beta stuff only had issues with the upgrade thing, took a few installs/uninstalls to get it to work (still says i have wb4 installed.. but i don't worry about that). only issue was when i was running WinFX it would making my windows slow to open and opening with classic look initially - so that is disabled and all runs well am rather happy with this beta. (i also keep my important stuff, music, movies, etc. backed up on another hard drive because things can happen with beta products lol) i feel lucky i haven't gotten any of the dll errors though

yeah it's funny when people complain about bugs in betas, no matter how many there are. betas exist to test things in much more broad situations, like the huge variety of pc's we're all running windowblinds on whereas stardock's testing team can only have a certain variety of hardware/software combinations.

long story short, they released it to find these bugs, narrow down the factors that cause them, and fix them. so by downloading this beta, you made yourself a beta-tester. you're testing this for them. so report the bug, and help them fix it. wouldn't you rather have an influence in the final product than have to accept the final as-is?

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new Yahoo Messenger, AIM, and even AOL 9

Consider that they are somewhat bigger companies with more resources... and also that SD here are doing something which people thought was impossible: translucent window frames on XP without performance lags.

oh... comment gone...

Well I'm just happy that I can be a part of it! Stardock is bringing us the future of GUI's today, which is a feat in itself, and despite briefly reverting back to WB4 for operability, I've reinstalled the new build of WB5 without major issue and have every confidence that it will go from strength to strength.

Given the very short time in which to do so, Stardock has done an amazing job to address most issues for the majority of users testing this beta version, and that gels well for the future of WindowBlinds and the skinning community.