I just installed Vista Pre-RC1 with Office Beta2. Pretty nice. It's definitely slower than XP, but it's not laggy on a 1.8Ghz Dothan-based Thinkpad T42p. I get all the Aero glass effects, and have yet to blue-screen. I upgraded from my original XP install too, no need for a clean format.

There are noticeable changes in how things work - wireless networking seems simpler, and Windows now knows if you're actually connected to the Internet (as opposed to a local connection). A lot of the control panel tabs have been been broken out into individual applets and dialogues though, which make things a bit hard to find at first.

One of the coolest things is that the Alt-Tab, Flip-3D and the thumbnail-on-mouseover-of-system-tray are all fully updated in real-time. So progress bars, ajax updates, and videos play in thumbnail mode (sometimes with 2-3 on screen together, such as if you alt-tab and mouse-over a movie in the systray).

Definitely a bit more polished than reports on the web have you believe. Although I agree, there's work to be done optimizing the speed and system resource usage.

My original comment didn't stick. I'm running P-RC1 with Office 07 Beta2, and it plays pretty nicely on a 1.8Ghz Dothan-based Thinkpad T42p. Glass effects work, and even alt-tab thumbnails are miniature live views of the windows they represent.

A little on the slow side compared to XP, but much farther along than web accounts have thus described.

The live alt tab thumbnails are available for xp as a powertoy already, nothing new there.

Again, the computer security world's biggest question is: Has Microsoft yet implementented a true permissions based file system, or are they still deciding whether a file is executable or not based on the last 3 letters of the file name?

Survey says...

BZZZZZT!!! - It's still a 3 letter free-for-all.

Wohho - I've seen that powertoy, it generates a static thumbnail of the each window. The Vista ones are actually live - a video playing in a window will also be playing in the alt-tab and start menu thumbnail views. It's a small detail, but I think it's nice that MS is actually paying attention to some details this time around.

From my lil' bit of playing around with it, what's changed is that I installed it via Boot Camp without having to delete any partitions (yay!), things (especially boot and login) seem faster, the new indeterminate progress indicator is pretty, the Brightness app that I unyoinked from the windows driver CD causes Vista to crash kinda reliably, and Black & White 2 now runs without triggering a cascade of "Oops, that crashed" messages from Vista.

All in all, it's nice.

I finally got it to install, but damn if I can get it to connect to the internet!

Pretty and shiny - but at the moment it's just a cheap ring for me.

My boss installed it, so i had a chance to play with it... and to me is nothing more than some pretty colors and shiny themes.

I wouldn't touch that thing with a 50-foot pole. Maybe in 2-3 years after it's been stress-tested by those more foolish than I...

lol, that first screenshot looks like Expose, except less useful because you can't actually see the whole window. And why is the desktop a window in the back, yet also, still the desktop. Seems hilarious.

Have you guys had a look at Suse Linux 10.1 running XGL...it does everything vista does and more and its not a beta ;-) give it a try and be amazed

i downloaded the vista 5536 from the link here in gizmodo....i want to install it but....do i need to be a beta tester or something inorder for it to work....like is the vista going to ask for a key/serial that i dont have or can anyone install and use this pre rc1?

nachobel: I really like the addition of the desktop to alt+tab and this new flip thing. Now if you want to get back to your desktop you don't need to click on show/hide desktop. It's a shortcut away and it's MUCH more convenient.

It's not as good as OS X but I have a lot of positive things to say about Vista so far and that is only from my experience w/Beta 2. Hopefully better things to come.

henhen: Yes, although I've heard you can run it for two weeks without activating it with a key (untick the box when installing), you'll need a beta serial to install and use it (until it expires next year). If you registered for beta 2 then you should have been sent a key that should work fine in the newer builds. If not, you'll just have to wait for MS to make the releases more public.

Seems this is more of a screenshot than screenshots.

I agree with nachobel, a less-well implemented version of expose. And as for the live thumbnails and playing videos within alt-tab, surely not that big a deal as its been in OS X for a while.

I'm not a hater, just not sure what the fuss is about (granted I only tested the Beta though not this build). Much more excited about OS X 10.5 Leopard in the new year