Now that Windows Vista (formally code name Windows Longhorn) Beta 1 has been released, I happened to be one those to receive this copy. Yes this installation media comes in a whopping 4.3 GB DVD and it is interesting to note the difference over the previous versions of Windows where it just fitted a CD and was less than 650 MB.
Having read all the news about the demanding system requirements for Windows Vista, I was first not sure if my aged system (i have been running it for the past 3 years) P4 1.5 GHZ with a measly 512 MB RAM but adequate hard disk space and equipped with a nVidia display adapter. I have purchased that exclusively for one of the Microsoft games Rallisport Challenge.
Ready to start the installation, I started the setup from Windows XP Professional and decided to go for dual booting. The process involves just 2 steps. The first step is collecting information and the second step is installing Windows. The setup went through a breeze and the entire process was completed in just 26 minutes. This is a big improvement over the time taken for setup for the previous versions where it would vary from 55 minutes to over an hour.
Most of the detection of the hardware was automatic and only the video adapter had to be manually installed. nVidia had already released an alpha driver (LDDM) for supporting the Aero Glass theme. Unfortunately this didnt work out well in my system and maybe it is due to the version of the nVidia display adapter. On browsing to the website it is evident that only a limited models of nVidia support the Aero Glass theme.
So now that I have installed Vista it is time to browse through the features and see what are the enhancements that Microsoft has done. Watch out this space for more exciting news in the future.
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