Yes, but that's a bit different situation. Classic runs in its own little emulation pool. It's done gracefully, so it isn't "OS 9 in a box on the screen" like, say, VirtualPC or VMWare or what-have-you. Besides, Classic is dead now. Wasn't installed by default on PPC Macs that came with Tiger, and with the Intel transition it can't even run anymore. Microsoft doesn't have that luxury and it shows.

If you can turn off all the bling bling then I'll try this "Windows"

Without the bling bling, there don't seem to be many new features. The search field on the start menu could, for one, prove useful, but I don't know of much--outside of the various forms of "bling" that will prove to be useful. (Turning off the special effects means that features like that magical sidebar don't work, right?)

All this Aero BS doesn't impress me, or even any new user features. What I'm interested in is the improvements to the core OS in terms of stability, security and speed. If, for example EAC finds a part on a CD that it can't read locks up (like it does on WinXP for me) and fucks up Windows Vista, I'll still be cautious about trying it. The only reason I'm even using Windows XP (as opposed to Win2k), is because Microsoft essentially abandoned the OS, only fixing bugs and security holes now. But since I'm expecting the Vista adaption rate to be slower than WinXP (thanks to there not being Win9x to jump up from), we should be set with XP until 2010.

Then again DirectX 10 will be Vista exclusive, this could shorten the time span one will be able to do everything with XP quite a bit. (Seeing that the availability of games is still a strong pull of Windows when compared to other OSs).

Good to see Microsoft is still forcing his new products by leaving old ones without any support.

I'm still hoping the industry will react by increasing their adoption of OpenGL/SDL.

Don't hold your breath.

The beta version is up for download at the Microsoft website,

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...y/preview.mspx

Installed it and it still has alot of work to go through. Runs about average on my P4 3.2GHZ PC.

Having bit the bullet and installed Vista beta 2, I used it for about 2 hours and decided it was horrible and reverted to my good old XP. I don't think that there is any possible way that that OS is going to shape up. I'm moving to Mac for the next OS I buy, especially because I'll still be able to put XP on it.

Vista was very very slow. I liked the auto driver installation, but that wasn't good enough to keep me insterested. It kept asking me if I gave it permission to do anything administrative, which really got on my nerves, especially because it slowed my computer to a screeching halt every time it asked me (which was about once a minute).

I liked some of the features of it, but I don't think that the new UI is great. There's way too much load on the graphics processor because it brought my PCIE X700 256MB to its knees.

All in all it's just not that great.

We installed the beta on one of our powerful new workstations at work last week. Vista is, in a single word, Pigware. The box was an Athlon 64 3200+, with 1gb DDR2 memory, we just built it the previous day. It felt the same way Windows XP did when I installed it on a Dell Gx1 (No better than a P3 550).

The install was 10gb out of the box, and the PF usage was about 650mb, out of the box. The little toy sidebar alone consumed about 55mb of ram. No wonder 1gb is the recommended minimum from people that have tried it. I'm not looking forward to its widespread adoption.

It's prettier, but not worth the tenfold cost on the system. And the little window previews when you hover over icons in the taskbar was nifty, but that's the only thing I really noticed that I liked.

Really most people who are going to use Vista are those who get it pre-installed. I don't see many people ponying up the money to upgrade their PC to buy that OS. Since Windows XP has MUCH wider adoption with mainstream users than Win2k does, I don't see Microsoft ditching XP as near as early (even though XP and 2k are extremely similar).
Though that won't stop me from trying the final release at least once just for the hell of it :).

I like the way it frosts the title bars on inactive windows. It's impractical, and a waste of resources, but very pretty. It didn't seem *too* slow on a P4 3.0G with 1GB RAM and a 6200 video card. But it certainly was missing some speed when compared to Windows XP or Suse 10.X.

I love that they are really giving the 'administrator permision required' model a go. Unfortunately it's not handled smoothly. Apple does this very well, and it'd just be a matter of changing the way configuration menus etc. are handled for Vista to get close to it.

The reason I installed Vista was to create documentation for connecting to our wireless network (configure adaptor to use DHCP). Using their non-classic control panel it is much, much more complicated than doing the same task on Win2000/XP. A serious step backwards.

It was kinda funny that in doing this I found a bug which prevents the system from taking screenshots correctly in 32bit colour.

I see no reason to adopt it in the near, or any currently projected future. My organization will not be makeing the move until there is a compelling line of business reason that it has to be done. I don't love XP, but it does the same things at least as well as Vista. Why rock the boat when you don't need to? This release may be skipped entirely for me (aside from putzing around with it of course).

They could make UAC much easier by adopting a Linux style handling of admin accounts. OR even better, unkown apps run in their isolated world, where everything they do is tracked and logged by Windows and is fully undoable if you don't like the results (if a virus formats your HDD, undo it; Windows installes a better version of WGA, undo it:lolsign:).

The following might be a little beside the point in a Vista-related discussion but here's my experience with security levels in Windows:
I'm not exactly sure how much more secure it is on XP to do my everyday stuff on a restricted account - which is feasible with little initial effort (by setting everything up as the admin and then switch to the low-rights user, obviously). It just becomes a pain later on with all the small annoyances thrown in for good meassure:

• The control panel modules are simply deemed unaccesible in restricted mode while the OS could simply ask me for my admin password.
• Software installation is possible using the "Run as..." option in the context menu of executables but some of the subsequent desktop shortcuts and Start Menu entries cannot be altered or removed with low rights.
• Some programs become quite forgetful in resticted mode, due to saving their settings only in system wide registry entries (Ragnarok Online for example).

These issues force the security aware user back to run certain applications with full rights or switch to the admin account altogether to set up and fix stuff. I don't know what bothers me more, that Microsoft implemented such a cumbersome security model while the malware threat was already very real and far more sophisticated approaches had long been available on Unix like systems or that Vista's UAC has already been reported to be even more annoying than helpful in the majority of reports I've been reading.

The prices for Windows Vista were revealed today.

Does anyone have any info on what the differences between all the Windows are this time around?

Not bad, really....considering XP Pro is still $150 plus in most retail places. :p
I'm looking to finally have a legit copy of 2000 and maybe consider getting XP. :D

You can't charge that much for an OS and expect people to have legitimate copies of it. Sorry, I'm not sold.

In comparison, Apple's Mac OS X 10 is ony $130. Kind of why I wanted to know what the different Windows versions had included was to make a better comparison. Somehow though I doubt Windows Vista Home Basic is going to be anywhere near as good as OS X to be charging an additional 50. To be fair though, A OS X would typically require you to go out and buy hardware for it, which besides the Mac Mini (Still $600) always seems to be $1000 and above.

If most of the Windows applications I use for XP still work and future applications for Vista are easily cracked and you can turn off that DRM bullshit I'd buy Windows Vista Ultimate.

And the point there is really that Mac OS X in a box is technically "upgrade" pricing, since you have to own a Mac that came with a Mac OS license in order to legally use it. So, it isn't really a fair comparison. I'm sure if Apple decided to sell their OS for non Apple hardware (won't happen, but if they did) it'd be more than $129.

Did anyone else here get the invitation to Pre-RC1? It was a pleasant surprise for me from my inbox until I figured everyone who participated in the Public Beta probably got one. Although I still feel kind of special. Its sitting on my HD as I figure out what I'm going to install it on.

Anyway, besides that, I think I might buy Vista Ultimate. I don't really want to pirate software for the rest of my life, and it seems like pirating Vista, in the end, will be a real pain. Considering I'll have a job, it shouldn't be that hard to get it.

I thought I'd check the price of the Ultimate Edition, since I didn't know it:

LOL.

Because I'm in the ITEC course at the college, I get almost every Microsoft Product for free, with legal keys. XP, Server, Office, VB, etc. The course pays for itself RIGHT THERE. I'm hoping that Vista will release while I'm in the course still so I will be able to simply take Vista and screw Microsoft.

So what's this DRM stuff?