I installed Windows Vista beta 2 on my laptop last night. I decided to try an upgrade install, which took quite a long while, and left me with a pretty slow and weird system. In particular, the wireless networking didn’t work at all right. (I hadn’t really expected much from that, but I thought I’d try it.)
I punted and did a clean install today, and that went a lot faster and has left me with a much more stable system. I had some inital problems with the wireless card recognizing my Airport Express base station, but it seems to be working now. (It’s an Intel Pro/Wireless 2100 3B Mini PCI.)
I also signed up for CA’s eTrust Anti-Virus free one-year trial subscription for Vista beta users. My usual AV software, F-Prot, probably doesn’t work in Vista.
Since I did a clean install, I don’t have any other software loaded yet. I may try the Office 2007 beta, or I may just stick with Office 2003. I’m not sure on that yet.
My laptop barely meets the requirements for Vista, so I’ve got none of the funky Aero Glass stuff going on; just the basic interface. It looks nice enough for now.
Assuming the system remains at least borderline usable, I’ll leave Vista on the machine and play around with it a bit over the next few weeks.