Today I decided that I had had enough aggravation with this whole Vista copy/move thing that I face multiple times in a day that I figure I had nothing to lose by biting the bullet and installing the just released Service Pack 1  RC1 of Vista in the hope that it would fix the problem. I’ll have more on that later and trust me it ain’t pretty but that isn’t to topic of the post.

What is the topic is that when I went to grab the download files for SP1 RC1 I was given an opportunity to check out the next generation of Microsoft’s Download Center (MDC) being brought to you in all the SilverLight glory possible. Now just to clarify one thing at this point - while the beta of the new MDC is presented in SilverLight and you can search or browse for available downloads you can’t actually download the files from this beta site. When you click on any download button you are transferred to the current MDC download page for the file. So this is a case of look but don’t touch I guess

Below you will see the screen shots of various parts of the beta site and while it was a little slow loading at this point I kinda liked the whole look and feel of the beta site. Some folks who don’t already have the SilverLight plugin; which also worked both Firefox and Safari because I already had the plugin installed - although it took Firefox longer to recognize that then it did with Safari, will have to download and install the SilverLight plugin.

Once that is done you will see much of what the screenshots show.

The landing page for MDC Beta:

The File Availability Page:

The New Files listing page:

The Popular Download listing page:

Search Results page with Download options:

While I am sure that is not all the available pages on the site it will give you a little idea of what Microsoft has in the works for the next generation Download Center.

Listening to: Cascada - Perfect Day - What Hurts The Most

Conversation Tags: Microsoft, Download Center, SilverLight