Windows Vista Beta 2 crashes before I could give my presentation!

On Friday I had created a presentation for my kids school. I’ve done the 8th grade graduation presentation for the last couple of years. I get all the images and video from each student and use Keynote and iLife create it on my Mac. I can create a very professional presentation that can be watched from a DVD very quickly.

However, I don’t have a portable Mac so each year I’ve played the DVD on my Dell notebook. I’ve been running Windows XP and it’s been pretty reliable. However a couple of weeks ago, I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 on my notebook.

Today I went down to the school, did test run and it played great in Windows Media Center. When it came time to showing the presentation (about 1.5 hours after the test run), Windows Media center decides to die. I kid you not! The exact moment when I have over 300 people waiting to watch the presentation, Media center crashes. Then a few minutes later Windows Vista Crashes! I had to reboot the computer while the principal and my wife are worried that we may not be able to play the presentation.

After the presentation my wife starts laughing and says that does not say much for Microsoft’s new operating system! I know, it’s a Beta, but by the time you’re in Beta 2, the core OS should be stable enough that something this trivial should not happen.

I can guarantee you next year, I’ll be doing everything on that new Mac book pro I’ve been waiting to get!