Well, as I can't right now install the pre-RC1 of Windows Vista in any of my pcs, last weekend I decided to install it on a Virtual PC 2004 to see if it works... And it worked!
The VM Additions work, at least the graphic driver (without them it was hell to move a single window!), and well... you can test Vista. No fancy 3D, and you should disable some things, but it works fast enough to try it's new security system, tools, options rearrangement and such.
I've installed it on a P4 HT 3,4 GHz, 1 GB DDR2 Dual-channel RAM (700 MB assigned to the VM), and a SATA HD (15 GB assigned), with almost no other application running.
I've disabled/deactivated the following to try to optimise for speed:
- Cleartype font smoothing (vast performance improvement), and menu animations, fades, slides, and such (shadows and visual styles kept)
- Windows Defender & Firewall (no change in performance)
- No screensaver/power-saving
- HD not indexed for fast searching (took a lot to "deactivate" indexing because of the almost 6 GB Vista takes once installed)
- Disabled System Restore
- Defragmented the HD
And now it goes quite good. It's not as fast as an XP (I've developed with an VS2003 and XP Virtual Machine on lower specs PCs) but I'll be able to play with the OS for a while :)
Note: I haven't configured internet/LAN yet, so I hope VMAdditions' ethernet virtual driver works. Emulated Sound Card didn't.