After receiving a new Dell Inspiron 1720 from work as my main laptop (T8300 CPU (2.4 Core2Duo), 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, 256MB NVIDIA 8600M GT), since I finally had some real hard drive space and RAM (coming from a 2GB system with a 100GB Hard Drive), I decided it was time to enter the virtual world.

Granted I’m only using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1, but I decided to install the x64 version of Vista as the host OS, as it makes the most sense for 3+GB RAM.  Already I’ve noticed how much faster it seems to run than the base x86 install I did literally last week.  I’m running x86 Vista Business in the VM, and will be installing Visual Studio 2008, SP1 Beta, SQL 2008 RC1 (came out last week) and the Expression Studio.  Thank goodness for MSDN!!!

So many people have said that virtual is the way to go for development, as you can just blow away your OS and start over with a snapshot whenever you want.  Sounds good to me, as I tend to beta test TONS of stuff, and sometimes I can screw up a computer really quickly.

I’ll have to post more when I get deeper into it.  Hopefully that level of separation between it and my base OS will ensure that VS gets enough resources to not bring things to a crawl (as it’s prone to do).  As a note, Vista installs REALLY quickly on this machine!  I’m so sick of reading negative article after negative article about Vista.  I know that I’m a fan boy of Microsoft, I get that.  But I’ve had good luck with Vista since the beginning.  I’ve had FAR better luck with Vista than I had with early builds (including RTM and SP1) of XP.  XP matured into a great OS, but there’s sooooo much I use in Vista that I miss whenever I go back to XP, and I just don’t see the reason to lose those things because other people say it sucks.

Personally, I think the only reason most people say it sucks is that it:

a. Doesn’t have the almighty Apple logo on it
b. Is different from the norm of XP
c. Listen to the pundits who just dislike anything Microsoft

Oh well, if they don’t like it, more fun for me…