Foray into Windows .NET Server 2003
Earlier this week I decided to take the plunge with Windows .NET Server 2003 RC2. I loaded it onto my Compaq Presario notebook. For the most part, all went well except for three things: it did not recognize my sound card, so I had to get the W2K drivers from Compaq for it, Diskeeper 7 Workstation won't run on it, and I'm having trouble setting up web projects in VS.NET.
Other than that, I'm liking the new features of IIS 6 and, though it may be just my imagination, it does seem to run faster than XP Pro on that box. I'm a bit wary of trying to use the Style XP uxtheme.dll patch to enable non-standard themes as I did with XP Pro. Currently I'm just running Windows Classic theme, which may account somewhat for the perceived performance increase. Another really nifty feature is the Manage Server program; it looks to be quite powerful and yet very easy to use and understand.
In any event, this is only the second day since I've installed, so we'll see how it turns out. Unless you're just goofy like me and have a hankering to try out the latest OS from MS, I'd probably recommend sticking with XP for the time being as a workstation OS (duh!). But if you do like playing around with server features and the latest tech, you might want to give it a try.
Update 03/13/2003 22:31 CST: I found a resolution to the VS.NET setup. You need to add a MIME type to the web for temp files (.tmp). Apparently, VS.NET tries to write/read a .tmp file and won't let you create or load web projects if it cannot do that. See Creating ASP.NET VS.NET Projects in Windows Server 2003 RC2 for more info.