Today I downloaded and installed SQL Server 2008, both the Express and Standard Edition. The first thing I noticed was the huge files to be downloaded. The Standard Edition was almost a full DVD, a little bit more than 3 GB, while the Express Edition was about 500 MB.
The install process is a little bit tedious involving two reboots. The first is needed after a hotfix install (Windows installer 4.5) and the other one is needed after the installation completes. This goes for both Standard and Express Edition. When installing the Express Edition you have to separately download and install Windows PowerShell.
This doesn’t sound as a good start for this database engine, but if you survive the installation there are a lot of nice stuff waiting for you…