Took today to install the Vista RC1 disc that Microsoft finally mailed me. I purchased the Beta 2 DVD when it was available to the general public. I never received that disc and when RC1 came out I got an email saying I would get a copy of that in lieu of Beta 2.
Installation to a second logical partition was a breeze. Don't have too much to say about the new OS. It is very pretty when compared to XP. The sidebar is interesting. I think this might take off as more gadgets become available. I did have a few issues with the ubiquitous "Consent" dialog box. I was performing some actions that required consent, I could see in Task Manager that an instance of consent.exe had been launched, but the dialog box was not displaying. Just a bit annoying but hey, it's only RC1 right?
IE7 works rather well. I'm so used to the tab behavior in FF that IE7 is a bit annoying in that area. Tabs opened with a middle-mouse click open next to the tab I am currently viewing, rather than at the end of my tab list. Also, when I close IE7, it prompts me to close my tabs, but open them the next time I open IE. Why can't I make this the default?
Overall it runs well on my P4 3Ghz with 1 GB RAM. It is a disk hog though. All I have installed is Vista, Office 2007, iTunes, Picassa. Together that comes to a whopping 15 GB.