First I tried the “official” virtual machine provided by ReactOS. Unfortunately, it worked like crap. The graphics were terrible — like the driver for the video card wasn’t working at all — and it was just not a pleasant experience. So, I downloaded the ISO image instead, and installed in as a brand new OS. That worked much better.
I’ve been using ReactOS for a couple of hours (in between projects) and I can say one thing: it’s BUGGY! Not very stable, but that’s to be expected since it IS alpha software. Not even beta. Right now, I would say that it’s fun to play with if you’re interested, but I would highly doubt you’d be able to do much with ReactOS until it becomes more stable.
I’m going to keep it installed and do a few things with it for a while. I’ll do my best to keep you updated on anything interested.
