Steve Clayton kindly sent over a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate. Sweet.
Hint: If Microsoft thinks you’re an ‘influencer’ they’ll send you all manner of stuff for free. Like them or not, it’s a great way to win friends and influence (sic) people. It’s also a great way to get developers to buy into Microsoft’s latest ‘stuff.’ Back to the plot.
History has taught me to never upgrade a Windows machine but always wipe out the old operating system and start afresh. In my case, I’ve been running Windows XP inside Parallels so I wiped Parallels and XP, making sure I deleted all files and folders. For an example on a PC, check out Tom Raftery’s saga with Vista on a Sony Vaio. And Tom’s being paid by Microsoft!
Tip: This method has the advantage that if I don’t like Vista, I can always start afresh with XP but without the hassle of starting from scratch. That’s because I put the XP files into the Mac Trash basket but did not delete them permanently. 
It also means I could start this post while Vista does its stuff.
The XP installation was glacially slow, requiring me to get hold of XP SP2 updates before I could run modern Office applications. It took almost a day of my life, which I value more highly than any operating system. In fairness, my copy of XP was pre-SP2 but even so. Vista took rather less time. By the time I got to this point in this post, it had pretty much done. Wow!
I only have one install nit. Vista reboots several times during the install. You don’t get the Blue Screen of Death but you do get the Black Screen of Nothingness – a gapingvoid perhaps? If you’ve not experienced it then it is mildly scary. I’d prefer a message that says something like: ‘You are seeing nothing which is perfectly normal while Vista continues its installation – have a nice day.’
Once the install was complete, I launched IE7 (shock, horror I know) Vista then ran through a series of 12 yes 12 security update checks. As with most things Windows, it required a reboot. Why can’t software simply apply patches etc without requiring this reboot thing? It really is annoying. I then re-installed LiveWriter. No hitches. Now all I need do is re-install Office 2007 and I’m set to get started.
Verdict: At this stage of proceedings, Vista gets a solid thumbs up as a way of running Vista inside the Mac environment. It seems to run faster than the Mac OS – which it should because the MacBook Pro, even in bog standard configuration, beats the crap out of most other PC based laptops. That might change over time as I install more applications but for my admittedly limited use it gets:
from this Mac Fanboy.
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