First off, I installed Microsoft Windows Vista Business on my desktop today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I went ahead and upgraded my XP Professional OS instead of performing a clean install. I only had one issue.
I have no sound. If you recall my machine is several months past three years old. Back then the 'hot' sound card was the Sound Blaster Audigy PCI card. When I purchased the machine they had just come out with the Audigy 2. Luckily I went ahead and upgraded to the Audigy 2. I say luckily because Creative Labs, the manufacturer of these cards, has decided to only provide Vista drivers to the sounds cards starting with the Audigy 2 and newer. Sadly, this means that my card is the lowest priority card to finish the driver for.
I downloaded the 'beta' driver, replaced the Microsoft supplied driver, and still have no sound. I can't get too upset about it as Vista has only been released for two days. Even if Creative does not end up fixing this, a new top of the line sound card is less than $150.
Once I had Vista installed I ran the Window's Experience Index and was pleasantly surprised to see that the new 'value' graphics card I purchased maxed out with a 5.9 score. I was saddened to see that my CPU and memory only scored a 4.2 which dictated my final score. I guess my 3.0Ghz Pentium is now on it's last legs.
I played around with the Aero glass, the sidebar, and even downloaded the new power users command line tool that was released today. So far I like what I see and look forward to playing around with the new features in the future.
Next step will be to install Office 2007. I'll save that for next week sometime.