I’ve had Windows Vista betas for awhile, but I just
got around to installing it… figured what the hell and went for the whole
Microsoft experience and through on Office 2007 beta as well.
First: Yes, it runs under BootCamp with MacBook Pro 17
(although that’s been published for awhile).
Second: No Parallels Support officially, although some claim
to have gotten it to work.
Vista changes a lot of visual effects, and a lot of the ways
users are used to working. In my opinion, the learning curve for the
common user to use Vista will be the same learning curve it takes for a Windows
user to become acquainted with OS X. This could be a good thing because
if users have to learn something new, they may lean towards OS X because of Windows
history. (This is common users, not government).
At any rate, the Vista eyecandy is pleasing, and a lot of
Windows users are cheering it (thumbnails of windows when going over minimzed
windows in task bar, etc). OS X has done this for quite awhile, and IMHO
a lot more elegantly with the way they grow and shrink with the doc.
Now Office and Vista – It looks very nice. I
know people compare the new Office in Windows to that of Office 2004 for Mac,
but to be honest (and it hurts to say this), the Office 2007 looks way nicer in
my opinion. I can only hope the next version of Mac Office matches this
look and feel more closely.
There are still plenty of Windows-isms in it though, and the
people I have showed it to who are common Windows users think “It looks
nicer, but does it still have all of the problems?”
Being we are mostly geeks on here, little things like
appearance mean a lot more to us than the average Joe.
It’s worth a look… I use it because an
application I develop has to run under Vista, but if nothing else you will know
what the competition looks like.
Mike