Vista and Office RTM install experience

Yesterday I got the guts to upgrade my machine. It was about 5:40 pm. The Vista reviews I have read - from Business 2.0 to eWeek have been suprisingly positive, and I had been running RC1 for a while.

I wanted to do a clean install to repartition the hard drive and clean up all my trash. A few days ago I did a backup using an external DVD writer. Now I did a search for any files that have been modified after the backup date and save them on a USB flash drive. Then I rebooted and pressed F12 for a network boot.

One hour later I had upgraded the BIOS of my machine, repartitioned my hard drive, installed Vista and Office 2007. By 7:30 I had restored most of my backup files and installed a dozen apps including our remote access software, antivirus, updated video drivers, some utilities, etc. After dinner I spent a few minutes doing some minor tewaks - UI, desktop background, adding my signature again to Outlook.

This morning my machine is better than ever. Now fully updated to the RTM (final builds) of Vista and Office I can't believe it only took me about 2.5 hours total for the upgrade. This is an amazing feat - do any of you remember the old Novell Netware days? It sometimes took days (literaly, over 24 hours sometimes 36 hours depending on hard disk size) for the installer just to verify the drive. Those were fun days!