With Vista Release Candidate 2 -- likely the final "official" interim version of the operating system before Microsoft releases it to manufacturing in the next month -- the folks in Redmond have pulled together a product which simultaneously teases, vexes, and impresses the prospective user.

		First Look: Vista RC2
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Since this is Microsoft we're talking about, let's take those out of order. The biggest annoyances with RC2 involved installation issues. Despite assurances to the contrary, I wasn't able to upgrade to RC2 from the previous Vista Beta version I had on my test machine. Instead, I had to do a fresh, full re-install. (Interestingly, while RC2 put up a message threatening to wipe my disk clean, that's not what it in fact did; a look at Windows Explorer revealed a directory called "Windows.old," where it had placed the earlier build.)

Vista's Flip 3D feature lets you stack up your open windows in a kind of flip-picture view in the middle of the screen, and scroll through them with the mouse to go back and forth among apps. Click image to enlarge and to launch image gallery.

You'd expect Microsoft to have focused on squeezing out all the stumbling blocks to a smooth installation. After all, isn't one of Windows' big selling points its purported easy installation as compared to Linux? Pretty clearly, that no longer obtains, especially given the fact that many Linux distributions aren't as driver-deficient as in the past. On the other hand, after the initial crop of users upgrading from XP, most Vista users won't be installing the OS themselves -- they'll be getting a pre-install on a new PC.

With RC2 ready to roll, I was afraid I'd run into some of the issues which have challenged other beta testers. Chief among those has apparently been a problem getting some systems to switch on Vista's Aero interface. Aero is Vista's premium GUI, creating a screen with see-through, 3-D-like elements. In earlier betas, Aero would only kick in if your PC was outfitted with a graphics card carrying at least 128 MB of video memory.

Vista RC2 maintained the streamlined welcome screen, which premiered with the earlier release candidate. Click image to enlarge and to launch image gallery.

Following criticism of this rather onerous video-memory requirement, there was some talk of Microsoft scaling that back to 64 MB. Perhaps that's gone out the window, because the message traffic on Microsoft's Aero forum indicated that some users having problems had 512-MB video cards. (Microsoft seems to be aware of the issue, and there is a workaround.)