Being the nerd that I am, instead of spending Labor Day weekend grilling hot dogs, I spent my weekend installing Vista RC1 on my laptop (IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T60 2623-D7U). 
Similar to Scott's experience, my installation went smooth as well. Aero worked out of the box. I was able to get a WEI score of 4.0 (sorry Scott, but my laptop pwned yours 
). I also couldn't get audio to work out of the box.
And for those who don't have a chance to try out the new build yet, here's a visual walkthrough of the installation on my laptop.
Choose your language:
Let's do it!
Usual enter your key. Unlike XP, this is the 3rd dialog in Vista!
Do you agree?
Custom installation!
Select your parition.
Installing...
Reboot... please wait.
More installing...
Your name and picture.
What is the name of your computer?
Secure computing, Microsoft's way!
Select your time zone and your time
You're welcome!
More waiting and more installing...
Yay! Finally at the login screen!
The anticipation builds...
Woohoo! Done!
After installing Windows XP for the past 5 years, the Vista setup visually seems light years ahead. Contrary to XP's NT-like setup process (DOS phase, copy files, then Windows phase), Vista has a complete GUI setup experience. Unfortunately the much touted image setup process didn't improve much on the time it takes to install. It took me 40 minutes from the first picture I took above up to when I finally was able to use my computer. A little shorter than XP's installation time, but not by much.
One thing I noticed with Vista's setup that I found very annoying is the lack of any status indicator. Everything is abstracted with generic messages like "Installing features" or "Please wait a moment while Windows prepares to start for the first time..." with the dots going on and on. Instead of endless dots (or endless rotations of an animated circle), I would much prefer to see which files are being copied or at least a progress bar to show how much is left of the install. How about a time estimate like XP's setup?
While I understand Microsoft is trying to make everything more user friendly, I doubt most home users would be performing Windows setup anyways. I know from personal experience, most friends/family call me up if they have any trouble with their computer and I usually end up reinstalling Windows for them if needed. Therefore, why make setup so abstract like this? Give us some status! At least it gives us something to look at while we sit around for 40 minutes. I sure hope RTM will not be this abstract.
Well that's it for setup. Hope you enjoyed this visual walkthrough!