So, they made Home Server a “public” beta, but really you have to sign up to be approved to use the beta. I did this about a month ago and I’ve finally gotten in. I now have access to my keys and software. The only darn problem is I’ll be moving soon and won’t have any time to mess around with it for at least 2 weeks. I’ll report back once I get it installed.
I wish we would have come up with this little beauty. How come no one has done this yet. Louit is FULL of these guys. Maybe fulljeff or chouse did this at one time?
I miss the good old days…
After a week of using Vista and performing the anytime upgrade to Ultimate edition, I’ve been quite pleased. It has performed as well as it should. An ATI service was the cause to my BSOD and daemon tools did create one glitch.
I’m not sure if its the Core2 DUO talking, or if its Vista, but this thing is FAST. I have never had start ups this fast and programs execute so much faster now. Firefox, with all the BILLION extensions I seem to love and NEED to take up useless space with, seams to start up FASSST. Also, Trillian use to take a couple days to start up. Now it’s a matter of seconds with no extra waiting around.
All and all, its going well. I’m trying out the CS3 beta right now, and that seams to be running well. I can’t wait for the final release. (for some reason I was thinking it was out already)
I’m not dedicated to using one OS over another, I just want to use what works well for me. I felt for the cost, I was getting a lot of bang for my buck using a Windows Based PC. Media Center is a great app if you want to use TV. The photo viewer even reminds me a lot of what picasa can do.
If you don’t have ultimate yet, don’t worry about throwing some $$ out. It’s worth it.
If anyone is using the Academic version of Vista Business and you were only able to download the 32 bit version, it is legal to use your key on a 64bit version. You just need to find the ISO somewhere.
That is where I started. I then installed drivers, and what not. I then tried the anytime upgrade to only result in getting endless looping of BSOD and auto reboot.
@ $140 to update from business to ultimate…what was going on here.
Tired a clean install with 64bit business, then went straight to anytime upgrade without installing a single piece of software.
The results were success. I did however get a BSOD again once ultimate was on. I found out it was ATI 7.3 drivers. I’m still not sure if the 64bit audio drivers work. After doing a tweak to the ati drivers (turned off an ATI service), It worked fine with no problems. Most of my hardware had drivers. I was missing a 64bit Canon driver yet 
I’m hoping within the next month or so, they will have that. Media Center is by far the best reason to upgrade. I have a hauppauge TV tuner and spent forever trying to get it to work with their crappy software, only to have NO luck. They do have a 64 bit driver, so I threw that on, and started up Media Center and it worked like a charm.
So to anyone that’s afraid to brave the new 64 bit world it does work. Also the Anytime upgrade does work pretty well too. Some interesting information that I’m sure Microsoft will change soon, is that when you get your anytime upgrade file and open it in Notepad, you will see you NEW KEY in plain XML text. Too bad this key is a “special upgrade” key. I didn’t have a version of upgrade to see if this thing would work or not but I get the feeling from all the stuff I tried that you can’t use it as a clean install and it’s smart knowing you have a business version and want to go to ultimate.
One thing to remember, when you do the anytime upgrade you’ll find yourself saying. “I’m missing games, and a few other apps, that I thought I got with Ultimate.” Never fear, they are there, but you have to manual install them through the old school way in your add remove Windows programs.
Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try bit locker and lock that computer down. I’ll let you know how that goes.
I built my computer last night. (pictures to come soon).
By far, the largest Heat sink I have ever seen is on this thing.
When I went to install Vista, I had some problems with my DVD drive.
I first tried using an OLD creative 8x DVD drive. It couldn’t read burned DVDs, so I threw in my NEC 3500A DVD drive. It booted the Vista Installer just fine. I then went to the first screen to “install” and it came up with an error. It told be no drivers were detected for a DVD drive and that I were to load them from USB drive or floppy. After searching for 20 minutes or so for a solution online, I found that one user did the following to which I tried:
Leaving the Vista DVD in the drive I plugged in the Creative drive. (You know the one that is pretty much worthless.) It went on as a slave drive with the jumpers. I then booted back up and loaded the installer for Vista and preceded to click the “install” button again. F’n A’, if it didn’t work. So Vista was able to find drivers for a drive it said it couldn’t find, just by plugging in another drive that vista knew about. I ended up being able to fully install from that point on. After installation, I popped out the Creative drive and everything was set.
So, who do I blame? NEC, or Vista. Maybe both. Bad firmware? Not sure what happened but it sucked. My SATA DVD drive is on backorder so I had no choice but to go through hell and back. So, If anyone in the future has the problem, give this a try.
Who doesn’t love http://thinkgeek.com, but I think I will pass on this one.
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