vista is one thing, but i sooo don't want to shell out more cash for office. that and add in hardware upgrade costs(not that it's necessary for me, but like weird al said "it was obsolete before I opened the box") xmas bonus better be good...

An upgrade to vista is ludacris for most home users. Unlike smarterthanyou's comment some of my co-workers have tested vista and hacked its security. Unless you are a security professional I would wait until at least Service Pack 1 to upgrade. Also keep in mind vista says it needs at least 512mb of ram, at that point it crawls. So if you are ready to go to at least 1 gb for Vista don't do it. It runs comfortably with 1.5gb.

I think you mean ludicrous, not ludacris the rapper :).

Lies. Lies and slander. Vista ran perfectly fine on my Media Center for a month with 512MB ram. If you wait for SP1, you might as well wait for "Savona" or whatever the next windows will be called. Not a day goes by that I don't laugh at somebody who runs Windows 2000 because it's "better" than XP. You stay with XP, the rest of us will get with the times.

I took the tour of office 2007 and was impressed by the collaberation enhansments. In addition the addition of groove to the office suite is a plus.

Did anyone see due to the public outcry about vista being only one time transferrable to a new computer they reversed and made it unlimited?

What were they thinking trying to screw their customers? It was funny though the outcry was incredible. It really did sound like they were willing to screw everyone in the name of thwarting piracy. Yeah and make a few billion extra in the progress on legit users too right? I mean most techie users will most likely buy a new computer and build it themselves using a oem copy of whatever. Now if you can buy a retail copy for 200 and never have to worry about buying another copy again, your good to go. That is at least fair isn't it? At least until they shut down their support and activation servers for vista in 5 years or whatever.

Anyone know when MSDN gets it?

Win95 was a leap. Vista is incremental. But the marketing artificial hype will be the same. It's marketing. They are hyperbole by definition. "Come buy Vista, it's sorta better." Umm... ya, don't expect that out of marketing materials.

And yet there is no excitement surrounding Vista and Office this time around. I only know of two people who plan to upgrade, out of over a hundred. I remember stores staying open all night to sell Win95 at midnight. I didn't get the hype then, either, but I do remember Microsoft bought a Rolling Stones song for the occasion: Start Me Up!

Maybe for this launch Microsoft will purchase Led Zeppelin's Dazed and Confused?

Unless you built your computer yourself, you'd have to be out of your mind not to want to get Vista. The upgrade from WinXP to Vista is even more significant than the upgrade from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 considering Vista gives you the best security available on a consumer desktop, a much more efficient GUI and considerably more speed. Mac OS X and Linux can't even come close.

Hopefully it won't be too long before software developers make new versions of their software that will only run on Vista so people can see how great Vista is.

Good points. But yes, I build every one of my computers and have done so since 1989. So by its EULA, Vista is too expensive for me to consider. When I go 64-bit later in '07, I'll go with SUSE or Ubuntu for good at that point.

Yeah ok dude, I tell you what. I used all rc's of include rc2 and I wasn't impressed. I actually enjoyed going back to xp. Older games and programs were horrid under vista. Direcx 10 botched everything up. The interface really isn't all that big of a deal. Everything else vista has is available for by microsoft like defender, ie7, wmp11 free of charge. What isn't available like direcx10, which has no support yet anyway or will for years to come, i mean it took like 2 or 3 years before direcx9 became the standard.

So what are you left with? about a minimum of 100 dolalrs in your pocket. Now if your itching for something new then do it. If your buying a new computer from dell or whoever, then your going to get it anyway. So who really cares? Microsoft does cause they are going to kill out a few more companies. Anyone else just wants to look at something new and saying something other then windows xp.

However there are some good things. The performance status panel is nice the backup features built in with the ability to use the dvd to restore was nice and will make products like symantec's ghost product un necessary.

The ui is ok but I find not giving the aero interface to basic users pretty unfair. I can understand the media center being a premium feature but aero? I mean that is one of the main feature that microsoft is touting as being so great with vista. So you hamstring the basic users that are still paying 200 dollars or 100 dollars for the upgrade? Like my 2 year old son would say "THAT'S NOT NICE!"

You must have sold your soul to Bill Gates and everyone in Redmond. To compare Vista with OS X when the operating system is not yet out and could even be pushed back farther because of whatever issue will be discovered shows that you have not used a real operating system before. To say that Microsoft will have the best security indicates that you haven't checked the most recent virus update or had the latest security patch put on your computer.

As far as security is concerned, Mac OS X and Linux don't even have an equivalent to Bitlocker encryption. If Bitlocker or an equivalent had been built into one or more of these operating systems most of the computer theft that has been in the news would not be nearly as big of an issue. Otherwise, Vista has the same security scheme as Unix and Linux. In Vista even if you are logged in as an administrator it's impossible for an unauthorized administrative task to complete without someone being physically at the computer to answer the confirmation prompt.

"Hopefully it won't be too long before software developers make new versions of their software that will only run on Vista so people can see how great Vista is. "

That's if Microsoft let's them. The current problem is that MS is so hung up on themselves about how "good" their security is that they won't even let the 3rd party folks have a chance to write code for it. We're back at square one with MS trying to form their little monopolies by integrating everything into their OS and locking everyone else out.

I'm all for MS making the OS as good as it possibly can be, but don't dictate to me who I can and can not buy support software from. I think you should read up a little more on what your friends at Redmond are really doing, smarter...

http://windowssecrets.com/comp/061023

In regards to patchguard, companies that make security/antivirus software don't need to perform an undocumented hack to get into the kernel. Patching the kernel has never been recommended or documented by Microsoft. Is Sophos the only smart antivirus/security software vendor around?