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Over the holidays I took the opportunity to install the Windows Vista CTP Build 5270. I wasn't about to take the risk of destroying any of my current Window installations so I thought I'd give it a whirl with Microsoft Virtual PC. I knew this would probably be a challenge, Virtual PC on an IBM T42 laptop, but I had the time. All in all my experience was... typical.
Installation
Attempt #1: Enter the key, accept the terms, select installation type (upgrade or custom) and then select the install location. This is where my first hang-up occurred. The disk was showing as unallocated and also wanted 16 GBs to install. Hmmm... 16 Gigs, okay, if you say so. Problem was that the disk was marked as unallocated and the wizard wouldn't let me do anything about it. So I exited out of the install and created a partition in hope that the installer would see it.
Attempt #2: Enter the key, accept the terms, select installation type (upgrade or custom) and then select the install location. The disk still showed as unallocated but this time I was able to work around it by selecting the "New" link. At this point I'd thought I'd try to cheat the system and create an 8 Gig partition. No go. I could select 8 Gigs but would get an error when proceeding on. After I allocated the 8 Gigs, I was given the format option. A quick format and I was prompted with "Windows will now finish installing automatically". SWEET! I watched the progress bar slowly work its way up to the half way point where it decided to stay for a LOOONG time. I'm talking hours. I still hadn't lost hope until I started Googling around for other Vista install experiences and found that one person had installed it within 20 minutes (not on a VPC). Twenty minutes? I've been stuck on the half way point for nearly 3 hours now. At this point I started to question whether or not the drive could read the CD correctly. The light was blinking every once in a while; it just didn't seem aggressive enough. My patience had run thin and the braggart with the 20 minute install got me thinking something was wrong. So, I popped out the CD and checked it for smudges. Nope, looks good. I put the CD back in and was rudely rejected by the Vista installer. The installer had decided it was going to quit without the CD and it didn't give me the option to try to point back to the CD. They should change that one button alert box text to something like "Damned if you do, damned if don't. Click here stupid". Ouch...
Attempt #3: Enter the key, accept the terms, blah, blah, and there I was again waiting patiently at the half-way indicator. Still not discouraged from my experience I looked at the progress indicator as half full and not half empty. I wasn't going to wait around this time though. So I set my laptop on my chair and did some things around the house while it tried to break the half-way mark. When checking in about an hour later I found my laptop turned off. What the F... Picking up my laptop revealed that it was hot. A little too hot. Looks as though it overheated and shut itself down (no, the side vents weren't blocked. Only the bottom). The fact that it shut down was good for my laptop and bad for Vista . Ok, note to myself...Don't put laptop down micro-fiber chair while installing Vista .
Attempt #4: PROP LAPTOP UP IN PRECARIOUS POSITION ON MICRO-FIBER CHAIR. Enter the key, accept the terms, blah, blah, watch the progress meter go to half way, and go to bed. When I woke in the morning and checked in I was happy to see a prompt for Country selection. Woohoo! I worked my way through 5 more install screens and the Vista desktop appeared before my eyes (Albeit ugly at 640x480 with 16 colors). I fixed this by running the "Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions” from within the VPC. Whew...I did it!
In a nutshell, Vista took me one whole day to install with Microsoft Virtual PC. Granted, it could have been quicker if I hadn't popped the CD out on try #2 but c'mon.... the progress bar was stuck at half-way for 3 hours.
Desktop Experience
First visual impression.... pretty and Mac like. I was surprised to see that when Vista came up for the first time I had a network connection even though the setup doesn't ask for the configuration. Impressive? Scary! My wireless network is encrypted and requires a key and I didn't put it in.... So either I was connected to the neighbor's unprotected network or the VPC was magically porting my connection through the laptop's wireless connection. It seemed to be the later. Looking through Vista's " Network Center " revealed little to nothing about where my network connection was coming from (wireless vs. local area connection). The Control Panel's Network List revealed a bit more info. I did have a wireless connection but it wasn't connected. My IP address revealed an IP delivered from router, so I assume it had to be running through the current laptop's connection but had acquired my own IP for the VPC. Maybe this network tunnel was the reason for the stuck at half-way progress bar? Only Billy Wonka knows.
Under VPC....the experience is SLOW. My laptop has a Pentium M 1.8 GHz with 2 GB RAM and I allocated 1 GB of RAM to the virtual machine. It seems like it would help out a bit but it didn't. The slowness is practically unbearable. In my enthusiasm to check out the cool new features I suffered through waiting 5-10 seconds for each mouse over, click and window load. Upping the priority to High or Real-time for VirtualPC.exe within Task Manager helps a bit but can cause VPC lockups when running some things that are graphic intensive (like Media Center or the new Game " Purble Palace ").
The new features are pretty cool though. Lots of new stuff to sort through: Windows Mail, Media Center , Media Player 11, Internet Explorer 7, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Defender and Parental Controls (I'm really excited to lock the kids out of their PC on timed intervals). I like the new look and feel (the circular start button is outside of the box). I'm sold. Why? I can see the usability is better. No longer will I have to spend so much time maintaining the wife and kids computers (ages 33, 15, and 11. Each has their own PC). I think things are so self explanatory that THEY can do a lot of the things that I spend so much time setting up and doing for them (Virus scanning, SpyWare, OS updates, network configuration). Also, the DEFAULT security is going to help the misinformed, unknowing and absent minded users. Vista is a great leap in helping users regain control of their computer (if I had a nickel for every friend and family member that wanted to buy a new computer because theirs was too slow. Later, after installing a few recommended basic tools, I reveal to them that it was riddled with SpyWare and viruses).
I like it! I don't like it in a VPC though...Too SLOW and the install is misleading.
Check out TheElderGeekVista.com. He took the time to take screenshots of his similar experience. |
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