I just did a fresh installation of the Intrepid beta. I had been running the
64-bit alpha and I wanted to start clean. It took under 20 minutes to install.
It boots in under 30 seconds from grub screen to login screen. It shuts down in
under 10 seconds. This is the fastest booting and shutdown that I have seen on
any distro. Programs seem to load more quickly and performance is snappier. I am
using the 32-bit version. I had been running the 64-bit alpha. Why the switch?
It just is more straightforward and with the enhancements in speed, I didn't
want to go through the hassles associated with running 64-bit. I still have the
64-bit version of 8.04 installed. I will start porting over my settings and data
once I am satisfied that Intrepid is stable. There is no doubt that it will
become my everyday distro in the near future.

The Intel bug is sorted out and all is well with 8.10 and other affected
distros. Intrepid is something to look forward to when it is released at the
end of the month.