Like a good nerd, I spent my Saturday installing the latest pre-release operating system on my computer. Having bought a 64-bit processor several years ago, now, I figured it was about time to try running a 64-bit operating system on it, so I downloaded the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Beta 2.

The insallation went reasonably well. I had to switch over to using the VIA hard disk controller on my motherboard because the Promise controller does not have 64-bit drivers available, but once that was out of the way the installation completed without complaint. Unfortunately, this would mean I couldn't have more than my two SATA hard drives on my system, but I could live with that limitation for now.

What I couldn't live with, however, was an absence of wireless networking. My Linksys WMP54G, surely one of the most common wireless network adapters for desktop computers, has no 64-bit drivers available (Linksys support contritely confirmed this, and assured me that work was underway). An alternative driver produced by the chipset manufacturer, which reputedly works with Windows XP 64-bit, installed but failed to do anything on Vista Beta 2.

I'm downloading the 32-bit edition of Vista Beta 2 now. Somehow it just doesn't feel as geeky.