After giving Windows Vista Beta 2 less-than-stellar report cards, Windows testers are finding more to like about a new Vista test build that Microsoft made available for download on June 23.

Microsoft quietly released to Technology Adoption Partner (TAP) and other selected technical beta testers the first post-Beta-2 build of Vista, Build No. 5456, over the past weekend.

The new build contains very few new additions and no major code cuts, according to testers. It is mostly a bug-fix build, testers said.

Unlike Beta 2 – the major milestone release Microsoft made available for download to two million testers – the new Community Technology Preview (CTP) 5456 build has not gone through as rigorous a test pass, according to a note Microsoft issued to Vista 5456 testers. Nonetheless, the Vista team characterized the new build as "generally better than Beta 2."

Directly following the release of Beta 2, some testers and other industry watchers said they did not believe that Microsoft would be able to hit its fall release-to-manufacturing (RTM) target date. Many characterized Beta 2 as buggy, unstable and bloated, and encountered a variety of problems installing and running the Beta 2 release.

Microsoft officials said earlier this year that the company believed it would be able to RTM Vista this year, delivering volume licensees the code this fall, and launching Vista through all distribution channels in January 2007. Microsoft officials, for now, are still sticking to that public timetable.

On June 27, when asked whether Microsoft had any availability update, a spokeswoman provided the following statement, via e-mail:

"In March we announced 'Microsoft is on track to complete the product this year, with business availability in November 2006 and broad consumer availability in January 2007.' We continue to track to those dates but have always said (and our customers expect) that quality is the final determinant."

The company plans to make available Release Candidate 1, the near-final and more broadly available test build, of Vista in the third calendar quarter of this year, the spokeswoman added.

Some testers who downloaded the new build over the weekend said they felt Microsoft should have designated 5456 as Beta 2 and held off from releasing the code to a wider testing audience until this week. Others said they thought Microsoft should give all Beta 2 testers the option of installing the latest test build, as it is more stable and solid than the code they downloaded a month ago.

The new Vista test build "feels like, two steps forward, and one step back" when compared to Beta 2, said Ryan Hoffman, a Windows tester and founder of the Extended64.com Web site. "I've had some bad experiences with Desktop Window Manager (DWM) on my desktop, but overall, it's better than Beta 2."

Of the few new additions to Build 5456 are: