Ok i have now installed the thing and i tried it out, here's what I think
Its faster than Vista, this is probably due to the lack of aero and a theme altogether you get plain old classic as with any server product. From what I have seen there's no media player and photo gallery witch I was expecting anyways
As with any BETA its a nightmare for drivers. No Ethernet, No Display, No, Sound. After trying to install my Ethernet driver I got a "this device could nit start" error leaving my computer totally useless. I tried numerous drivers and troubleshooting guides but still no luck.
A few things I noticed. You get a nice little server setup up screen on first boot and everytime you boot longhorn server you get a replacement for the welcome center witch contains lots of information regarding your server status and info. Powershell and Bit Locker are built into Longhorn Server witch is handy plus Windows firewall is making its first appearance in Windows Server adding a slight security improvement.
Overall if your using Windows Server 2003 and require a stable and reliable server environment, Leave longhorn server for a bit maybe till its first service pack. At the end of the day Windows Server is generally designed for servers but if you have the right hardware i don't see why it wont run nicely on your standard desktop. I urge home users to wait for Windows Home Server to hit the market witch will offer an easy server setup for backing up files and sharing files.
