The question is: How come I’m not running Vista? As an early adopter, I’m a little embarrassed and a lot frustrated in not having a shipping copy of Vista. I did get on board early with beta testing — I distinctly recall loading up a laptop with a TechNet-issued copy of Vista for the August, 2005 Engadget meetup in DC.
I thought I had a good plan in place for acquiring Vista, but I’m somewhat impatient. When we decided to visit a great uncle in upstate NY for Thanksgiving, it seemed like a good time to replace his aging PC with my aging PC. Of course that decision was made the same week it was announced that all XP machine purchases would be eligible for a copy of Vista. Imagine the coincidence! ;) So I bought myself a powerful, though inexpensive, HP running XP MCE in October with expectations of receiving Vista in February.
Several times in November and December, I tried to reserve my copy of Vista online… and the frustrations began. The website missed both it’s first and second launch dates, and when it finally was available in December it barfed after taking all my data. I did manage to get my information entered last month, and even got a confirmation email. I also did my part in snail mailing a copy of my receipt (as instructed). And here we are… Every day this week I’ve checked my status online, and every day I’m given no ETA on shipping. The official documentation says 6-8 weeks after Vista is released… which is TOO long. I want it now.
To make matters worse, it turns out I’m getting “Upgrade Software” — meaning I may not be able to perform a clean install. And that really irks me. Given how often I rebuild my computer(s), I should not have to install XP and then upgrade to Vista each time. I was looking forward to starting fresh with Vista by blowing away this XP MCE install as it’s already hosed (blame DVICO). (Fortunately, I do have two early images courtesy Acronis.)
Vista isn’t revolutionary, but digital media features I use (MCE, Movie Maker, WMP) have been enhanced and I’m looking forward to playing with them. The sooner, the better. I’m impatient and I’m considering pulling the trigger on a personal TechNet subscription.