I finally got around to intalling the new version of Windows today. I had used up the thirty day trial on my PVR software of choice, and didn't really like any of the free alternatives. I had no classes today, so I figured I'd give Vista and its built in Media Center application a shot.
Early Afternoon: Tried booting from burned 64 bit installation DVD. It sat on the loading screen for 10 minutes so I figrued I'd try again. Unplugged all of my hard drives except for the main system drive and it loaded up without a hitch. Wiped my drive and installed fresh. The process took about 25 minutes and was very easy compared to XP installation. I didn't have to reboot once. Vista prompted me for the basic info (user name/pass/time zone) and I was on my way. It did a system scan and gave me a performance rating of 4.8. Set up the graphics driver, fixed some RAID driver issues and I was on my way.
Later AfternoonAfter about an hour of trying to get Media Center to work with the xvid and divx codecs, I found out my 64 bit edition of Media Center was not able to support the 32 bit codec applications. Not wanting this problem to arise again, I reinstalled Vista, but the 32 bit version this time. Did the same stuff, and got everything working by about 5:30. Woo!
At this point, I am very impressed with the Media Center. It seems to be very powerful and will play almost anything with the right codecs installed. I would post screen shots of MC, but it wont let me print screen from it. Oh well.
All in all, I'm very impressed with Vista. I was very happy to leave XP for Mac OS X, but now I can't get away from Vista. It's very easy to use and suprisingly stable.
http://i12.tinypic.com/2hhgbv5.jpg