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As I’m sure you’re aware Microsoft had rumored to release Vista this year, but instead decided to delay its release.  We won’t be able to purchase Vista until 2007 now, but until next summer Microsoft has given everyone the opportunity to try Vista in beta test until it’s released.  I don’t think Microsoft has ever before offered a new OS release under a completely open beta. 

Downloading Vista is truly an easy thing, but as anyone who has used windows before, the real challenges occur during the installation and continue into the setup, and do not stop once you are logged in.

There are some nice cleanups and improvements over XP, but I’m afraid that I certainly understand why this product was delayed and certainly why there are still lots of unhappy MVP’s and users.

I have some feedback and initial impressions of the Vista product which I will discuss in future blogs but right now I want to give everyone the information about acquiring and installing Vista.

Keep in mind, getting Vista and installing it isnt any more difficult than any other OS installer or previous versions of Windows, unless you introduce limitations.  Vista really wants to use a powerful machine, and will seriously take advantage of newer hardware.  That certainly doesnt mean you have to upgrade or even buy a new PC for Vista, though it may not be a bad idea.  The time you will run into problems is when you have a box that barely ran XP, and you decide to upgrade/install Vista on this.  That would probably be a bad idea.  If you meet the minimum specifications you should be fine.  If you meet or exceed the recommended specifications you should be able to see and use a very powerful OS.

To start first thing to do is get the software and the license.

The first thing to do is to go to Microsoft’s Vista web page and download the ISO file.  This is a large roughly 3GB file so be prepared to spend some time downloading this, ensure you have enough free space available.  A high speed connection wouldn’t hurt either.  During the initial week of release the download servers were simply overwhelmed and many of the servers and additional processes simply broke.  At the time of writing this, you should have little difficulty as I\’m sure the initial demand has dropped. 

I have a fairly decent cable connection and had the ISO in less than one hour.  I didn’t really time it, I went out for lunch and when I came back I was ready to burn this to a DVD.  An ISO now needs to be burned to the DVD.  Any DVD Burning software that supports ISO images should be effective at making the Vista Installation DVD, in our case we used Nero Burning ROM which is one of the more common and feature rich software for removable media.  Nero was able to quickly create our Installation disk which we booted in our machine for installation.

Yes, a 3GB ISO is not going to fit on a CD, so DVD was the only option which leads to qualification #1 is that you must have a DVD Burner to create the Installation Disk, and the machine your installing to must have a DVD ROM drive.  I have heard some folks attempting to break this into a multi-CD format but I couldn’t be bothered to attempt this.  However this did limit a couple installation candidates for me, and I decided to be able to install this on a couple different setups so I decided to go the VMWare route for most of my installations rather than move DVD ROM’s around constantly. 

Ok, so you got the ISO downloaded, now just like a real Installation you need a product key which Microsoft provides you.  When you normally acquire the ISO it will step you through the process to getting a product key, but at the time I acquired it, this was broken.  Later I was able to go back and get one (actually two ) so this was only some confusion on my part trying to decide what I did wrong. 

You will need a Windows Live account (also known as Passport) and this is easy to setup and then allows you to go to the download beta section and then it will present you with both the download link and the product key for you to use.  The really nice thing about this is that the beta is good for one year roughly and this is exceptional.  I do believe microsoft wants as much possible feedback from the community prior to finalizing and releasing this product.  If so this may be the most demanding OS released in history and additionally one of the more supported and user-backed OS’s ever.   I say this because many linux distro’s and Apple are moving into Microsofts markets and taking advantage of the fact that many folks understand the value they get with non-microsoft OS’s and software.  However many users still require (or think they require) Windows in order to use their PC’s.  By offering Vista as a free beta for a full year you allow the users to grow accustomed to the OS, and when they do release it sales should be immediate.  Just like a game company releasing demo’s, this allows them to guage the market, demographic, potential share, potential growth projections based on beta reaction and feedback, etc.

So to say this was simply an ability for Microsoft to release Vista at no cost to ensure quick adoption of the OS would not be entirely incorrect.  I’m sure there were other reasons, some would say security issues, but I don’t think they would delay because of security issues, unless it was a core/fundamental process in one of the new features.  Other reasons may be because key features still don’t work as well as they should.  Regardless once you have your own copy installed you can decide this for yourself.

If you boot your computer from the Vista disk you quickly see a familiar looking setup environment.  One of the main differences is that awful blue background is gone and replaced with a nice web like white background that loads a image.  Since I chose to use VMWare to install Vista with for my first couple tests, I decided to install it on a fresh machine and had considerable problems.  This was apparently more of an issue with VMWare and following the helpful hints on their support forums enabled me finally get past this I only ever had this error with Vista.  No other OS including Windows varieties had this issue. 

I did not attempt this for real, but the idea crossed my mind, and that was to simply mount the install disk vs. burn and run from a DVD-ROM.  This is not recommended. 

The questionnaire was easier than XP in that it allowed you to get the installer running faster with less questions, the disk setup also is more friendly which allows you to pick which disk, and how to set it up and format it prior to you running the OS installer.  The default admin account is still created and the installer will ask you to create a user for your use (or more if you require, however I would not use this method for anything other than home-based/test installation).  For most users this will be enough to get everything working. 

The installer runs and about 45 minutes later (or more) it starts rebooting and initializing the desktop. This is the time to be patient and allow the installer to do its several reboots to get all the hardware initialized and working.  Hopefully you won’t have any issues with this, as I was using VMWare I had no difficulty installing the basic driver set, and when I added specific drivers for video card I was able to quickly find them online and install them.  The only downside to this I had was the numerous reboots before everything was ready to use.  I counted 14 reboots.

The really nice feature of the login screen is that a key set of features
for accessibility are moved here so that when you login, you can choose the features you want to use, otherwise once you login these features are no longer directly available.  I welcomed this change since windows 95 these features have been left as simple tools that any user can enable at any time, and they tend to cause operational issues that confuse users later.   By sticking these features at the login screen allows most users who never use these features to ignore them and move into the desktop with less ability to enable these ‘while using’ the system, whereas for those users who depend on these features they are able to set them before login so they can quickly take advantage of these features.

Now you login and the desktop loads and you are greeted with a familiar desktop with some interesting changes.  The icons on the desktop have increased  and they are much bigger.  You can even make them bigger than the default install.  I could not comprehend this.  I have used software in the past to make these smaller, and I would have jumped for joy to have discovered a ‘shrink’ or ‘smaller’ option for the desktop icons.  Nope.  Regular, huge and really huge only.  The start button has some nice changes which can be easily configured by right clicking on the taskbar and selecting properties.  The system properties have also taken over the traditional display properties when you right click on the desktop background.  This allows you to make the numerous changes as before, plus additional system property changes. This should make moving around the control panel looking for that setting much less likely in Vista.  For the most part the desktop changes are not revolutionary simply evolutionary but still not utilizing all the ideas that have been developed into other desktop UI’s over the last ten years.  Of course now the Vista desktop actually takes advantage of transparnency in the desktop that has actually been around since Windows 2000.  They’ve also added some nice features that take advantage of better utilization of older features.

From here you get to see the ‘Welcome Center’ which is a glorified control panel and allows the user to quickly get to nearly any setting for the system they might be interested in.  Microsoft Update along with the Security Center run immediately putting the checks into protecting your system from hackers and malware, and Microsoft Defender is running along with the Microsoft Firewall also.  Essentially the next thing is to install a Anti-Virus product, and the Security Center takes you to the one Vista-ready product (Trend Micro) but the product is not available for download.  The page indicates that the beta is running and only good til the end of the year, one could decide whether they wish to try this vista-ready product now, or wait for another or to try installing a current stable product and test it on the beta.

Next…New features highlighted and discussed.