Vista

I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 on a spare 40GB 7200RPM IDE HDD on my main Windows machine (S478 P4 o/c'd to 3.6GHz, 512MB GF6800, 1GB DDR400). I get a "Windows System Performance Rating" of 3 (though if you actually average-out the scores, I get 3.92; higher if I were using my main hard drive).

Anyway, here're some first impressions:

• Slick installer; quick, painless
• Very pretty, smooth, responsive
• Doesn't seem to like KVM switches; device issues disappear when KVM switch is not connected
• Crashed a few times (one blue-screen); possibly due to default drivers or the KVM issue
• Woke-up from standby at unsupported refresh rate; fixed by installing monitor drivers
• Gadgets appearing randomly on desktop at start-up
• Nice interface, convoluted Control Panel, annoyingly redundant confirmation dialogs
• New games! :)

Overall, it's a very nice interface upgrade, but doesn't seem to do much of substance otherwise. From here, I guess we wait to see what 64-bit applications and DirectX 10 have to offer.