Last week, I installed Windows Vista RC1 on my Averatec C3500 Tablet PC.  The experience has been fantastic!  Windows Vista RC1 feels smooth and polished.  Driver installation was the only slightly tricky bit.  I did a fresh install of Vista (wiped the drive during the installation process) to make things as smooth as possible.  After the installation, here were the problems I had:

  • Wireless card (802.11g MiniPCI Wireless Network Adapter): Was detected but did not have a driver.  However, my wired LAN port was fine, and when I connected it to the Internet, Windows automatically downloaded and installed a driver for me.
  • Video card (SiS Mirage Graphics):  Also detected but no driver.  Windows found the driver online for me and installed it.  No prompts or anything!
  • Sound card (Realtek AC’97 Audio):  Again, detected, no driver, downloaded driver and installed automatically.
  • Digitizer (the pen on the Tablet PC): Did not work by default.  I downloaded the XP drivers from Averatec’s site and after several tries and a reboot, I was able to load the driver in using Device Manager.
  • Touchpad: If you touched it, the mouse went everywhere and clicked everywhere.  I got around it by plugging in a USB mouse until I could download and install the Synaptics drivers.  Interestingly enough, I was able to use the Windows XP setup program to install drivers, making everything work perfectly.

Microsoft is looking for more people to try Windows Vista RC1.  They’re hoping to have 5 million testers total!  If you’re interested, check out:
Windows Vista Customer Preview Program

A few quick impressions of things I really like in Windows Vista RC1:

  • Offline Files:  SOOO much better than it was in Windows 2000/XP.  It actually synchronizes the files!  This really reminds me of ActiveSync (in fact, it even uses the same sound).  I feel much better about knowing that Windows will actually have a copy of my offline files when I need them.
  • Tablet PC Features:  Again, a huge improvement!  The hardwriting recognition seems better (it actually knows what I’m trying to write) and the interaction is much more seamless.  The pointer switches to a dot as soon as you start using the digitizer, and there are great little pointer icons that show up when you double-click.  Also, Vista introduces “Flicks”, which are pen gestures that you can do to, for example, scroll down a web page.  Pretty neat stuff!
  • Internet Explorer 7:  I’m a big IE7 fan, even on XP (IE7 RC1).  I know that most of the features are simply catching up with what Firefox has had for years, but it’s just all very slick.

Of course, my Tablet PC doesn’t have a beefy video card, so I can’t play with the snazzy aspects of the Aero interface, such as “glass”, but even without that Aero looks… well… PRETTY!