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<\/a><\/p>\nEULA, EULA, EULAs everywhere. We knew that was coming, and I won’t bore you with a picture of it. After that is the key request.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of options for installation, one for a new install and the other is for an upgrade. Upgrade has been disabled – I’m not sure if that is because it can’t find a previous bootloader, or because this is a Beta. Probably the former.<\/p>\n Looks like the dev team took a page from a couple of the Linux installers and gave this one some pretty highlights. It even has a graphical disk manager instead of XP’s text version. Pretty limited though – it doesn’t allow for re-sizing or moving of partitions, just creation and deletion like in XP. I’ve also read that the Vista bootloader takes over the hard drive making it impossible to boot to previous non-windows installations. Gee- color me surprised.<\/p>\n Now that we have determined the type of install and where to put it, it’s time to go make some coffee. When the download-decompress-install bit is done, it reboots, comes back to this screen, then reboots again after completing the installation.<\/p>\n Ahh, now we are getting somewhere. Namely, the user name and password screen.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n After that comes the computer name screen, with a selection of background wallpapers to choose from. Nice to not get stuck with something like “Bliss” on every install.<\/p>\n The next screen is for Windows protection settings. I’m using custom settings here, since I won’t be needing the built-in firewall.<\/p>\n Aww, how polite of them.<\/p>\n Now it does a little hardware detection to see how much bling it can give me. I get to watch a little slide show about the new features while it digs around. This took almost 3 minutes.<\/p>\n Oooh, pretty greeting page. The hourglass is gone, now replaced by a little spinning thing that chases it’s tail. I’ve seen that before somewhere…<\/p>\n And here we have the first desktop! Okay, time to get a screenshotter in this thing so I can get some better pics. Well, that would be easy, except that Vista can’t figure out how to make a simple network card work. There are apparently no basic drivers at all in this stupid thing. It can’t even figure out what the card IS. Now that is just asinine – it took the XP 3Com drivers, but they couldn’t include a copy on the frigging install DVD? Oi.<\/p>\n So anyway, now that I have that sorted out, you will get a welcome screen when you first boot into Vista. Uncheck the box in the corner to get rid of it on next boot, but take a minute to wander through here. They have moved several things, and this gives you an idea of where you may locate things in the future.<\/p>\n And now for a screenshot of the finished install. Now you can see the “Graphite” theme I’m using, the new Start menu, and a couple of the Gadgets that come stock with the Beta. Woo-hoo, will the fun never cease?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n