Ok, so I was curious.
This past weekend I decided to move all my data and music and pictures and assorted crapola to a secondary drive (along with everything in My Documents... just to be safe) and pop in the Vista Beta 2 DVD and upgrade my desktop machine.
I didn't get very far, although I will say the installer interface is very pretty.
I was presented with a dialog that indicated I had some apps that would need to be reinstalled after the upgrade (no biggie... I expected that) and that I might need some new drivers from the manufacturer (again no surprise) and some apps that I just needed to get rid of, period. There were a few of them, about 5 I think. Among them were AVG Free Antivirus software and Alcohol 120% (CD Burning Software.)
This is the part where I say “huh? wtf??”
I can understand telling me to suspend or temporarily uninstall my antivirus because Longho...err Vista is gonna do some funky shiznit to my PC but telling me to just plain get rid of it? Not gonna happen. I love AVG Free. Been using it forever, that's pronounced FOR...EV..ERRRRR and I'm not inclined to get rid of it. Also, Alcohol 120% is harmless, not that I use it that much anyway, but still... WTF?
I'm really curious why these two apps weren't included in the “reinstall after” category. Or is Vista just not a very good communicator? Does it really mean “uninstall now and reinstall later” as opposed to “you can leave this other crap on while we do our thing, but you will need to reinstall them when we're done.”
If I can't run AVG Free on my Vista box, I might not have a Vista box any time soon. I really hate Norton and McAfee. Hopefully this is just one of those Beta issues we all love. Time will tell.