Prerequisites

• Virtual PC 2007 (free download)
• A healthy amount of RAM (I have 1GB, it ran fine once I turned off some services like SqlServer and IIS. I also didn’t run any other applications…like Visual Studio…while running Virtual PC and Vista.)

New Virtual Machine

Open Virtual PC and click New…. Select Create a virtual machine, the location you would like to store the virtual machine file, select Windows Vista as the OS, and select Using the recommended RAM. Select a new virtual hard disk including the location for this disk, and then click Finish.

You now have a new virtual machine with no OS installed on it. Select the machine you just created and click Start. Since there is no OS, you will get a prompt asking you to insert boot media. Put your Windows Vista disk into the DVD drive and hit Enter.

We’re Just Getting Started

This is the first thing that happens. I actually had to start my virtual machine 6 or 7 times before it would finally start the next step. The first few times it just sat and spun on this step and eventually told me it couldn’t find the boot disk.

It’s starting up!

Choose your language, time format, and keyboard type.

Enter your product key.

“Read” and agree to the license terms and conditions.

Select installation type. I thought it was interesting that a clean install is classified as Custom (advanced).

Where do you want to install windows?

Installing. This step took about 25 minutes to complete.

Halfway there, but you’ve gotta restart.

Mysterious things are happening here. This took about 5 minutes to complete.

We’re back in business, it looks like we’re getting close!

Setup Windows

Vista is now installed! Before reaching this point it reboots again…now you are prompted to create a user account. I was disappointed in the selection of user account pictures. Being a man, I was hoping for something like a picture of a rocket or a rhinocerous.

Pick your wallpaper.

Choose protection settings.

Make sure Windows figured out your time zone and date/time settings correctly.

Windows Vista Setup thanks you. For what? I’m not sure.

You’re done, but Windows need to check your performance.

Time to login! (and change my user account picture to something less feminine)

Final Analysis

Although I couldn’t run all the cool Vista bling in the virtual environment, I still had fun trying out all the new features in Vista. I think the Finder erm…Explorer is easier to use that it’s XP predecessor. I also like the built in tagging, although this does not work on all document types. The new search functionality is pretty fast, and even finds stuff buried inside of documents. However, I didn’t like that the search from the Start Menu behaves differently than the search from the Explorer window. Being a person who does not bash MS, I’m looking forward to having Vista installed in a non-virtualized environment…someday.