About a year ago, I participated in a Windows Vista Install Fair. A few weeks ago I finally got around to installing my free copy of Windows Vista: Ultimate Edition on my machine. Before I started, I backed up everything and removed my FastTrak TX2000 IDE RAID card from my machine. I had other reasons for removing it besides a desire to avoid Vista driver hell. Namely, my Gigabyte i-RAM Solid State Storage card doesn't like RAID arrays and I think a modern SATA II drive or a WD Raptor is going beat the snot out of any IDE drive RAID array, so it's probably time to retire the IDE drives to external drive duty. Anyway, after wasting my time futzing with IDE drive jumpers, and getting the i-RAM hooked up, I began my quest to install Vista.

The installation was pretty uneventful. I was pleasantly surprised it recognized my 3Com Network card and my on-board NIC (Windows XP also had issues with my onboard NICs). I was disappointed that it didn't recognize my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card or my on-board sound card. Oh well, I just hooked up a USB sound card from the hardware museum and I'll blame Larry Osterman for the trouble. (just kidding Larry - I'm loving the per app sound controls).

Anyway, the real problem with Vista is that because of internal development issues, Microsoft lost mindshare and momentum to Mac OS X, Ubuntu and other Linux variants. You just expected more after 5+ years in development. It's a nice change, with a lot of under the hood improvements that show great promise. However, without the application, driver & hardware support to take advantage of the new infrastructure, there is no Wow.

I dunno, it feels like getting a new car in which the most exciting new features are heated seats, more cupholders, XM radio, and cool new look. I like it, but it doesn't make the daily commute shorter, it  just makes the daily commute more comfortable. Hopefully Sinofsky and crew will bring sexy back for Vienna, because although I like the new sedan, I wanted a fast and stylish convertible.