I had the joy over the last few days of installing Windows Vista, aka windows Longhorn, in a Virtual PC image. Here are a few of my initial thoughts about the install and my first impressions of the spanking new OS:
You need memory
I initially tried installing the OS with just 768mb of Ram. For 8 hours, I tried installing the about 5 times, and every time, my computer locked up (I think my memory might be bad). I decided to try again after I got more memory.
Prompting for the CDkey twice
When installing the OS on a fresh hard drive, the setup program ends up asking you to enter the CD key twice. I for some reason can not seem to enter a cd key correctly the 1st time, so this becomes tiresome. The first time you are prompted for the key is before you partition your new hard drive and a second after you reboot for the new partition to be read. It seems like the partitioning prompts should take place before a cd key is entered. This actually more than a slight annoyance as long as you don’t have to install the OS many times. Once I upped my memory to 1.25gb, the install went much smoother. I was able to complete the install in about 2 hours
Installing Virtual Machine additions
Microsoft is touting the Windows Presentation foundation for its vector graphics along with other eye candy. This sure is not the first impression one gets when installing from a virtual PC. The first thing a user sees is an 800x600 4-bit color screen. This sticks around until you install the Virtual Machine additions. I was pleasantly surprised how well this install went. After you install these additions, you can set the screen resolution to any normal resolution and color depth you like.
My advice
I would not try this install with anything less than 1 gig of ram. 1.5 is what you should be running.
VPC’s for beta software
I love having Virtual PC’s set up with new beta software. Some of the installs can really drain the excitement of a new product. Virtual PC’s allow people to get their hands dirty real quick without the risk of trashing their system. I recently installed the Virtual PC image for Team System from MSDN and am so impressed with how well that image is put together. More on that later.