I hit a weird error when trying install the Orcas Beta 1 on Vista today. After some searching, I found this entry from Aaron Stebner with a simple fix. It turns out that there's a bug in the .NET 3.5 installer. If your installation path includes spaces, it will fail. The error isn't at all clear, and certainly spaces should be fine, but a lack of quotes in the installer script causes the failure. Simple fix, but it sure wouldn't have been easy to find! Thanks Aaron!
I am very pumped about Orcas. If this ever finishes installing it will be awesome!