A little while back I wrote about my upgrade to Windows Vista Beta 2, so here's an update.
Overall I was very happy with Beta 2. It was definitely a beta - slow in places, wierd IE behaviour, freezes and software compatibility problems - but I'm used to that so it was certainly usable. I was very tempted to skip RC1 and wait for the next release, but once again my inner geek got the better of me and it was time to sacrifice another nights sleep to upgrade.
There were a couple of other factors. One of them was that after attending Mobius in Puckett a few weeks back (where Microsoft showed off some of the amazingly cool mobile stuff they have in the pipeline) I finally committed to making the jump from IMAP mail to a hosted MS Exchange solution. The main reason - I wanted to be able to sync my mail, contacts, calendar and tasks directly to multiple devices wherever I have an internet connection. Push mail is a bonus. I'd evaluated hosted Exchange solutions before but they seemed too expensive. Jason Dunn of Thoughts Media put me on to 4SmartPhone. Their plans range from a very reasonable $4-$10, they offer good support and they don't overwhelm you with information and options on the web site. I'm now set up and when I can work out how to get around the issue of 4000+ contacts eating up all the memory on my device I'm sure I'll be very happy.
The move to Vista RC1 was also a good choice. Seems to be much faster and no major bugs or crashes so far. My computer is actually working smoothly and so I have to see how long that lasts as I inevitably add more and more software. Beta 2 actually seemed to get faster the more I used it. I'd recommend giving it a try.
