Yesterday, Microsoft released the December Customer Technology Preview (CTP) release of Windows Vista. I’ve just installed it on my test computer, and so far it’s the best build I’ve seen. Setup went without a hitch, I’ve established user accounts, connected to the network, installed a few programs, and confirmed that IE7 works.
I also installed Office 12 on this computer. Alas, that’s all I can say on that subject.
I’ll keep adding things for the rest of this week. If all goes well, I’ll start using Windows Vista and Office 12 for everyday work beginning next week.
Ed Bott 
Did you install the latest Vista build on your MCE machine? If so can you comment on progress there? I am testing Vista but don’t have any tuner cards to test out the MCE bits.
I have a Media Center test machine with tuner, but I haven’t installed the new build on it yet. That’s probably a week away.
Pretty dam annoying that MCE vista still requires an analog tuner. The fact that I can’t just plug in my fussion5 HDTV usb device or my Firewire cable box is very frustrating. They need to clean up these horrible legacy design flaws.