...and a whole bunch of stuff to ensure that you aren't violating anyone's digital media rights, or that, if you do, someone is getting paid for it.

How many people actually go out and buy Windows as opposed to buying a machine with it installed?
I'm thinking they say $349, then sell it to Dell for $49, and Dell touts their PC as being $300 cheaper than it actually is. ;)

I don't know anyone (besides businesses) that have paid for an MS OS in quite a while.

Those specs are if you want to run the pretty Aero interface blah blah blah. You can get by with 512mb of RAM and a somewhat decent processor. (According to our Microsoft Rep at work). My computer is ready because I have quad hampsters, the external handcrank, and my 14 inch monochrome TV hooked up. Oh, and the modem box thingy. :p
But yeah, as far as prices, I haven't heard exactly how much each version is. Good question to ask the rep the next time he comes in.

You have a Microsoft rep? How do you keep from locking him in the supply closet and torturing him?

I got a free copy of XP Professional from AIT a few weeks ago...

Are you on MSDNAA with your school?

Edit: Microsoft Developer's Network Academic Alliance. (It's how I get my free stuff)

One more day, and I can give LJ back the squirrel. Although I've gotten kinda used to it.

No... AIT is the American Institute in Taiwan, which is our embassy that we cant call an embassy.

That thought never crossed my mind! hmmm......maybe score some free copies of Windows or something! haha Nah, he's pretty cool. He's about the only real rep that comes into the store with any information for us.

My 1st reaction: How would you know that?

My 2nd reaction- So the hell what! It's just frikkin' graphics, what I care about is how well it works. If I want cool graphics I'll go buy an Xbox 360.

My 3rd reatcion- How much do you want to bet the graphics are there just to slow it down so much that you'll be needing an (expensive) upgrade within three days?

1: It's in the press.
2: Agreed.
3: See above article.

I wonder if the OEM loophole will still exist, buy a $12 mouse from an online vendor and get Windows for cheap. I'm running Vista RC1 "activated", first legal Windows I've had.

In regards to question 3, I'm using a Nvidia 6800 (base model) AGP and I score a 5.9, asumming out of a 10. I don't feel as if this card will be worth much by the time Vista is released. Vista needs a horrific amount of RAM to run smoothly, 1GB is a joke.

Vista RC1
 

I was running it on my 2.0Ghz Centrino laptop on another hard drive (I swapped out my hard drive for a 40GB spare).

The OS, with the most basic theme set up, took up 512MB RAM.

Everything worked except my Cingular Communication Manager software, which caused my Blackberry to crash. I use it as a tethered modem. It's a no-go for me because of that (Cingular will have to update their software).

After a reboot, it had drivers for everything on my Thinkpad, including the fingerprint reader (!). Again, Lenovo didn't have the Biometric software, so this was another no-go for me.

It also didn't have drivers for my second NIC, the CardBus IBM Etherjet (based off of a Intel 82557 chipset, no problems with any other OS, and well-supported in Linux). This is to be expected, however, as they're not going to have all the drivers done.

Aero Glass looks nice, and Flip3D looks good as well, but I missed the ability to see all windows open at once via Expose on OS X. Twisting the windows around in 3D is a little annoying. Expose is better for me because it allows you to see only the open Window, a clear desktop, or all windows tiled at once.

Java 1.5 runs well in IE7+, and AEP Networks' Netilla (a platform built upon Sun's Tarantella technology) works well. It can't print, but that's a Tarantella issue. Java 1.5 also causes Vista to switch from Aero Glass to Aero Basic mode due to some issues between the two. Java 1.6 may fix that.

It looks nice, but:

1. It's a memory hog. 512MB at idle is unacceptable, especially when Windows Server 2003, which is what Vista is based on, takes up 120MB or so at idle with nothing else loaded.
2. UAC (User Account Control) is incredibly annoying.
3. Unlike 2000 or XP, vendors will really have to work to get their software operational on Windows Vista. Remember how a lot of devices didn't work with Windows 2000 at first?
4. There's no Start -> Run option anymore. I had to add a shortcut to the Command Prompt to my desktop to get it to work.
5. The boot time is a bit slower. This is unlike my transition to XP from 2000, which made my boot time FASTER.
6. Aero Glass does slow down the machine, especially those with slower video cards (I have a Radeon x300). The same card runs XP beautifully.
7. The user navigation with back buttons always in the same place is a User Interface nightmare! It got me a few times.
8. IE7 is nice, however the navigation and menu system is a user interface nightmare as well.
9. The lack of backward compatibility with older apps is going to cause a lot of users who expect their apps to work with whatever version of Windows they run to not be happy.
10. Their approach of trying to put the genie back in the bottle with application security and supporting the older apps that they can with "shims" is going to inflame developers more than anything else.

In short, it's a nice try by MS, but I'll at the least wait for SP1 before moving to it.

Mitch

You know, with every version of Windows since Win 3.11 for WorkGroups (except Windows ME, but that hardly counts) I've been ready to vomit when reading the prerelease reports, but eventually came to admit that there were some useful improvements. Hell, at the time Win95 came out, I was supporting Windows networking in college dorms, and say what you want about 95, but the networking was big improvement over that in Win3.1x.

But it's sounding like it's going to be awfully hard for me to come around on Vista.