They are hiding the visual BSoD, but the problem from which the error that generates the screen is still there. It is still a BSoD, just without actually showing the blue screen. BSoD is a term that means more than it's wording suggests. There is more to a BSoD than the Blue Screen of Death.
System builders aren't always the only ones who need to reinstall Windows. I've reinstalled plenty of Windows systems from manufactures, like Dell, that require many drivers to function beyond rendering the desktop. No network, no sound, no video. It is very common. Sure, the generic display drivers are working well enough to install the other drivers, but rarely do people both to keep their setup discs.
And as for building my own machines, I often have hardware that I got for free, which means no drivers.
The point of all this was, saying that everything works for Windows out of the box is even crazier than saying everything works for Linux out of the box. It doesn't. Simple as that. Hardware is complicated like that. Nobody wants to make something that doesn't do something special, and that something special always breaks something ordinary.
I love it! It works well, has some new usability tricks and keyboard hotkeys that actually help, and the new taskbar is actually excellent. Plus it has cool borrowed ideas like the background rotator like OS X. Seems to run faster than Vista on my laptop as well.
I say give it a shot! Dual boot it at the very least to try, but I like it.
Do you think people will hack their way around the Beta time limit?
That is my biggest concern before installing it on my main desktop!
Oh please. My machine has some special drivers I have to install from a disk for my hardware, for it to work to it's full potential, but after a clean Windows XP install, everything, even my video card work. Granted if I want to get the full ability of my video card I need the current drivers, BUT, it will work without it. Windows does a good job of making the machine work without the proper drivers.
I'd just like to throw in that the newer XP discs, especially those distributed by OEMs, are pretty good at having all of the right drivers (and then some). I used a Dell OEM Windows XP Pro install disc the other day on a computer I built myself, and I did not have to update drivers, it even had my nvidia graphics card driver.
