So Microsoft call it dogfooding. I guess I had to take the
plunge on a
number of fronts. I've installed Vista on my laptop - yes, not in a
VPC. Not only that I have now abandonned by .NET 1.1 dev environment
(theres a major repave on the way if I get a 1.1 consulting gig ;-) ).
I decided, as we are going to run (assuming I don;t have a completely
hideous experience) the first run of Guerrilla
WinFX on Vista, that I
would repave my machine on to the same config as the course will run on.
So I installed Vista non my Dell Precision M60 (NVIDIA FX
go700) and it went slowly but smoothly. Unfortunately it turns out
there is not LDDM driver for my video card so I don;t have the Aero
Glass shell. However, I'm not doing this for the wizzy graphics
(although they would have been nice) rather to make sure all my samples
and labs work in the config I've specified for the course
machines.
Here is my install experience:
Vista: very slow but OK until the supplemental drivers (I
think thats where they infill hte missing Vista drivers with
XP ones). It froze after installing my network card - running it again
found nothing else to install although I do have a couple of component
s it doesn;t know what to do with.
WinFX runtime - no problems - installed clean
VS 2005 beta 2 Team system (PDC disks). Would not install off
the DVD, started asking me to insert the DVD - "its in there you
fool!!!". So I copied it to my external HD and the rest of the install
was no problem until it came to the compact framework bits and some
driver was missing. I don't care about the CF at the moment so not an
issue.
WinFX SDK and VS extensions no problem. I looked for the
Workflow projects and found they weren;t there - theres a separate
install on the PDC DVDs.
Office - no problems. However I'm having some issues getting
authentication to work against one SMTP server. The server is owned by Ian Griffiths
so I could blame him instead ;-).
So I then install World
of Warcraft - yes I do spend some of my time running about as
a Gnome who can summon demons - well sue me. The install was fine but I
didn;t want to wait for the painful online patching process so I
downloaded the full patch. I had to copy the patch file into the WoW
install directory and run the patching software as admin and it all
worked.
I should mention that not only have a switched onto a beta OS
but I've started running as non-admin (am I mad?). Running as non-admin
as so far proven OK - but I've alot of things still to try. The one
isue I had so far (that wasn't obvious) was that the WoW online
patching software requires admin access. So you can run WoW as
non-admin, you just can't get any updates - which i guess OK as you;re
patching something in the program files directory.
I started off not really liking Vista due to some of the pain
- but I have to keep reminding myself that its beta software - which is
kind of cool that I have to remond myself - its not staring me in the
face the whole time. I'm surprised its so stable really - I've
defragged my HD with it which I thought was very brave.
Anyway more on my Vista experience to come.