vista ultimate

[Joe]

I am planning to build the system recomended in the 05/23 edition of your blog. Today I see you are recommending xp. Is the new hardware worth changing over to or will I be ok with the May 25 th version?

[JeffAHayes19]

Joe, I'm a newbie here, but I've been waiting to build my first system until Windows 7 goes RTM, because I didn't want another "upgrade debacle." Upgrading from XP to Vista was something of a nightmare.

There have been lots of rave reviews of Windows 7 and why it's really time for all the folks who have been sticking with XP to upgrade once Windows 7 comes out... At any rate, now that 7 is pretty much "finished," since I had already partitioned my C: drive a while back and that partition just had some recorded TV on it I could easily move elsewhere, I finally decided to reformat it and downloaded the "final beta build -- RC 7100" last night and installed it this afternoon, giving me a dual-boot system now -- I downloaded the 64-bit version, even though my Vista is 32-bit, and I'm on Windows 7, Explorer 8 right now -- Ultimate Edition.

According to Microsoft, I can use this Beta until June 1, 2010, although beginning March 1, 2010 it will start shutting down the computer every 1 hours to let me know "time's running out." Anyway, my point is that I MIGHT go ahead and do my build NOW, knowing this, and just install the RC 7100 Windows 7 on it until the finished product is available, rather than have to buy Vista for the new computer, then upgrade -- IF that'll work... I'm on my first day playing with this, so I need to test it a bit more, but so far, so good.

Perhaps you should look into that, as well. The download is 3.05 GB, so it's going to take you a while, even with a fast broadband connection, and after you have it downloaded you have to burn the downloaded *.iso file to a DVD disk (and that requires a program that will burn .iso files -- but on the instruction page Microsoft tells you exactly where to find one, which I did). After that, you have to turn the computer off, and THEN restart it and boot from the DVD (a "restart" didn't do it). And once it's started from the DVD, then you can install it on whatever partition you want (make sure it's not a partition you already have a system you want to KEEP installed on). The actual installation is NOT a long, hard process.

So far, it runs smooth and nice and looks and feels way better than Vista... Time will tell.
Jeff