Testing Vista safely in 4 easy steps
Are you curious about the new Windows Vista? Are you tired of only reading reviews and seeing screenshots?
Do you want to spend some quality time with Vista? Just you and Vista, together, no strings attached? No harm done to your computer if it doesn’t work out the way you hoped it would be?
Let’s not waste anymore time. I’ll guide you through it step by step.
Step 1: Download Parallels for your OS (Linux or Windows)
Go to the Parallels download page, get a trial key and download the software. Install it.
Step 2: Download or order the Vista release candidate
You can either download Vista or order a cd. It’s up to you. If you have a fast connection the download of 2.5 GB shouldn’t be a problem. Go to the Vista page here. Make sure you get the trial key. You’ll need a Microsoft passport id.
Step 3: Install Vista in a virtual machine
- Start Parallels, create a new virtual machine with File -> New VM..
- Click through the screens. Create a “typicial VM”.
- Pick “Windows” as a guest OS type, then “Windows Vista (experimental)” as the version.
- click Next and Done so the machine gets created. Make sure you use a harddisk with enough space on it.
- Now click the CD/DVD-ROM and change from “use real cd/DVD-ROM” to “Use image file”. Select the Windows Vista ISO file you just downloaded as an image file.
- You might also want to increase the memory size. I used 50% of what my PC has (512MB) and it worked ok this way.
Step 4: Install Vista
Now boot up the newly created Virtual Machine by pressing the play button. The Vista install will start. Your computer will become slow. It will take a while to install. So start the install when you have something else to do, or be prepared to sit behind a slow PC for a while.
Some notes:
- you can leave the Virtual Machine by pressing control and alt. It will keep running so you can do other stuff while the installer is doing it’s work.
- don’t forget to keep an eye on the installation. It will ask a couple of things like the serial key and your language.
It’s time for some screenshots while you are waiting for those downloads 
Vista installer:
Creating a user:
Vista will check your computer’s perfomance:
The Vista login screen:
The Vista desktop with the new and shiny Aero theme:
The Vista start menu:
Vista has a standalone Caledar application:
It’s nice to see windows finally has a calendar build into it. I hate it that I have to install Outlook just to sync and backup my PDA with windows. I never liked Outlook because of the bloat.
I added an appointment ‘doctor’. I then went through the menu’s because the details pane on the right annoyed me. It’s not resizable and takes up way to much space. After finding the option and removing the pane, my appointment with the doctor disappeared. Adding the pane back didn’t help. This thing is still buggy, at least in Vista release candidate 1. See below:
Notice those dates in “week view”. I don’t like the way it displays these dates at all. Why show the 2006 part if I’m looking at the current week? I’d prefer the day of week in text (like Monday, Tuesday, etc.) and maybe the date in small number below it.
If you have any questions or if you want to share your experiences with Vista, feel free to leave a comment!