My Vista experience

So I bit the bullet and installed Vista today. Why do I say I bit the bullet? Well, frankly, because I bought into all of the hype in the blogosphere that it was going to be some sort of nightmare. I was wrong.

Now, it may seem strange that this is the first time I've installed Vista. most of you know I'm a total geek and gadget hound. It would seem logical that I would have been running it for a long time. Well, the later part is true. I have had it for awhile. I've just never installed it. It has always come preconfigured for me. So, for me to do it on my home machine by myself, is kind of like walking a tightwire without a net. If it went wrong, I'd be completely SOL.

Fortunately, the install went very smoothly. It took about half the time an XP install usually takes me (and yes, I've done that many times). It took about an hour and ten minutes total including the Office install. It didn't give me a ton of choices as to where/how to install it, but it did allow me to dual boot. I just created a new partition and installed there. It worked like a charm and I could roll back if something went horribly wrong.

After several reboots, it finished installing. It immediately checked for updates and found several. However, install was painless, but did require a restart. It was missing some drivers (a common complaint from what I read, but did have a new nifty driver download service that found all but one. Ironically, it was the Zune driver that failed, but that was easily remedied when I installed the Zune client.

I only have two complaints. my old machine is not powerful enough to run Aero (technically it's not new enough to have a DirX 10 driver). The other nit I have is it didn't fine my front-side audio port. It found the one in the back, but not the front. Really, it was no big deal.

I'm very happy with the results. It seems faster and more stable. Clearly there is a focus on security (you'll understand when you install it yourself). My test is whether I could give it to my parents have have them install without my help. I think the answer is yes. Trust me, that's a huge endorsement since there is nothing I hate more than being tech support. I plan on a follow-up once I've lived with it for awhile.

One more interesting thing. The install didn't wipe out my other installed OS. Yes, I run "that other" operating system as well. It's a triple boot machine. Vista recognized it and updated the master boot record accordingly. I have to say it is pretty slick.