As I posted about a few months ago, I couldn’t get Windows Vista Beta 2 to install on my computer. Wether the download had corrupted, burned to DVD incorrectly or my computer is just stuffed may never be known. Since then I’ve not bothered to try again.
A few days ago, I got the link to download Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 and decided to give it another go. This time it downloaded correctly, the MD5 and SHA1 hashes matched and all was good.
The install ran smoothly – except for it not letting me install it on my second hard-drive. Thankfully, Ubuntu is a bit more forgiving than Windows if you move it to a different drive.
It installed remarkably quickly and didn’t require a reboot – a nice feature in the world of Windows reboot-a-thons.
It also managed to detect and automatically install my wireless network card, video card and extra USB ports. However a standard (and common) soundblaster live wasn’t set up until it looked on the internet and downloaded the drivers… But it works now.
The default install of Vista is 7.5GB compared to less than 2.5GB for XP. There are certainly loads of new features, but that’s kind of excessive…
Finally, the Aero Glass interface is very shiny. The faded and blurred window borders and animations are entertaining to play with for a little while, but like those found in the older versions of Windows, I think they’ll find themselves disabled pretty quickly.
Below are some screenshots.
