Most of my primary system hardware was found and was working properly. USB mouse, DVD-ROM drive, sound card, video card, and so on. However, Zeta did not find my Netgear 802.11b PCI Adapater (model MA311), nor my onboard ethernet NIC's (i later noticed that the ZetaPC-Info tool, located under Zeta -> Software -> System -> ZetaPC-Info 1.1, did at least see that my onboard NIC was there. It was listed properly as 3Com - 3C920B-EMB - Integrated Fast Ethernet Controller. Apparently though, Zeta doesn't have a kernel driver/module for that NIC at this time).
Fortunately I had an extra Netgear PCI 10/100Mb (model FA311) adapter sitting in a drawer which Zeta was able to use. I powered my machine down, unplugged the power cord, installed the NIC, and powered the machine back up. When Zeta rebooted, I went to the network preferences and proceeded to setup the network card. There was quite literally nothing to it. It "just worked". I didn't have to specify a kernel module, locate a driver, or anything like that.
I wasn't thrilled about the default look of the system, so I visited the appearance tab in the preferences panel and tried out the various themes that were available. I didn't really like any of the decor options, and there weren't many to choose from, but I decided that "Smoke" was the best looking option (for me). The "Smoke" decor reminded me of the BlackBox window manager for the X Window System.
Shortly after setting up my decor, I saw a popup prompting me for my serial Number and activation key. I looked at my Zeta box and couldn't find it. I looked on the CD and it wasn't printed there either. I looked on the postcard that came with the CD and it said "ZETA Version 1.0 Activation Keys" on the top of it. However, down at the bottom where the serial number and activation key were supposed to be printed, there was only blank space. "Oh great. They forgot to include an activation key", I thought. The popup option had a "later" option so I just clicked that and the popup went away. I went back to exploring the system.
One thing I found rather odd about Zeta was that it uses CTRL+TAB to perform the function that is "normally" done with ALT+TAB (Microsoft Windows uses ALT+TAB, as does OS/2, and most Window Managers that I've used with the X Window System). I understand the reason for CTRL+TAB in Zeta is due to the fact that BeOS was developed for Apple hardware in the 1990's [ed. note: Mac OS uses Apple's equiv. of the alt key as shortcut key]. Regardless, I didn't want to get used to CTRL+TAB because I would only find it confusing when I sat back down at my Linux desktop.
Fortunately, there was a setting in the keyboard preferences for "shortcut key". The default "shortcut key" is ALT. I changed it to CTRL (that probably sounds like I'm stating it backwards, but that's really how it is). At that point, ALT+TAB would cycle through windows. If you press ALT and then press and hold TAB for more than a second, it brings up the "twitcher". The twitcher is just a small window that shows you an icon of each application that is running. With the twitcher window open, you can press TAB multiple times to switch directly to a given application (personally, I would prefer that the twitcher was visible by default, without the need to press and hold TAB).
