Windows Workstation 2008

Since I have a membership in Technet, I get to play with Microsoft’s new offerings as I want to. Call them “evaluations” if you like; but if you are a habilis boy like me its $400 or so well spent dollars. This last weekend, it was Windows Server 2008 time and how to take it to a workstation that I could be productive on, play around with a bit, and perhaps learn something on. There are some great howto articles out there about this trip already so I won’t bore ya with the story of that trip. I’ll just do a few top things I like and dislike about it.  Its worth remembering that I’m running it on a so-called lower end AMD64 4000 single core chip so I don’t get any to hyper-v it appears unless perhaps a BIOS update or a new system board would take me there.  Anyways, first the likes in no particular order:

1. This pup is fast and its like driving a race car all stripped down compared to my Visa 64 install which seems kind of syrupy slow.
2. I’ve figured out how to install stuff on it like Office Pro 2007, Yahoo Widgets, and even the wondrous Blogjet for writing these blogposts. The applications run at least as fast as on my XP Pro build and faster by degrees than on Vista X64.
3. The interface is malleable but there is some power under that thar hood. It seems to be very responsive and those surly UAC errors I never see. Thank!!

A few dislikes to even the road a bit:

1. Installing was fun and it did not like my activation code at first and insisted it was wrong. Then when I wanted to activate it, it spat out some silly DNS non-existant error. Hey! If you wanna tell me to re-enter the code that technet gave me, just ask!
2. Adding roles requires rebooting. Why? On that other OS, I can add a so-called role or feature and I don’t need to reboot at all. It still means mucho power cycle events for a new system
3. Desktop Experience is cool but it takes a bit to get it right. How about enabling it if I install its feature? Perhaps I really want it if I go so far as to choose it?

Final thoughts on the whole thing are varied; but to tell the truth; I like it. I like its stripped down and ready to run nature. I’ve never really hated Microsoft; but I’ve liked other things better. This OS gets me closer to being a powerful under-the-hood thing with great visuals. Its interesting that people donate lots of blogposts about making this into a workstation and draw criticisms about the Vista client side. If both share similar code bases, I don’t get how Vista can be so poky and this can be electric.

Anyways, I am gonna use it for fun and frolic and try different sets of roles and features out. Technet makes the habilis in me smile!