My first impression is good but interesting. When Windows Vista became available for download to MSDN subscribers last Friday I couldn’t wait installing it. So now I am running Windows Vista on both my laptop and my desktop machine, leaving one system running Windows XP. Installation was an experience on its own. No problems or whatsoever, but it turned out that a clean installation could be performed in under 30 minutes, an upgrade from Windows XP took me over 2 hours. However, both are working like a charm. The look and feel of the new operating system is great, although that is of course a matter of personal taste. I do particularly like the new way to explore my own system using Windows Explorer. Navigating through hard drives seems faster with some clever ways to get to the information you need. I also definitely like the Windows side bar. Not that I really need it, but it is kind of need. A totally different area that I have not yet explored because I don’t have supporting hardware for it yet is Windows SideShow. A Windows SideShow device is a secondary display that accesses information from your computer. In other words, it can for instance show if there are new emails available, without having to fully power up the system. Such a device can be integrated in a system or it can be an external device. I guess it is time to experiment with a few Windows Mobile devices to find out if they can act as Windows SideShow devices. Ok, back to my installation experience then. The operating system is working fine on both systems I am running on right now. However, when installing hardware and software I had some scary experiences. First off, Office 2007 runs perfectly fine on Windows Vista, but that was to be expected I guess. What I don’t like at this moment is that my Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse and Keyboard are not supported right now. Looking at the website, new drivers are announced, but I would have appreciated if they were here from the first day Windows Vista is available. Installing development tools was more of a negative experience. When installing Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 I got warnings that compatibility issues exist for these products. I guess they both need new Service Packs before those compatibility issues are gone. At least both products are installing, and I have created my first Hello World application for a Windows Mobile device under Vista, and even deployed it to both the emulator and a physical device. So it seems everything is working, but compatibility warnings are definitely not reassuring. At this moment I am wondering if the urge to ship Windows Vista left no time to solve compatibility issues for Microsoft’s own products. No please don’t misunderstand me. I am thrilled about Windows Vista after playing with it for two days, if only all applications I need would have installed without warnings or problems it would have been perfect, so far I will say that Windows Vista is good. If it is good enough to “survive” my next Webcast is something you can find out this Wednesday. Tune in and find out.

Maarten Struys