Vista" is gonna have many people following the upgrade train again... 9994

There are a few things I have already found interesting and amusing. First is that they have FINALLY implemented the concept of a "home directory" and placed ALL of a user's files in that directory. This will make it MUCH easier to back up a user's personal files to a back-up device such as memory stick, external hard drive, or network drive.

Sounds like UNIX-Linux to me - even looks like a Red Hat desktop but with even more "bit-gobbling" eye-candy.

It lacks the artistic flair of OS-X and the functionality of Linux, but Microsoft will be able to force-feed it down the throats of OEMs and CIOs, whether it's good for them or not.

Beta versions are always a bit more memory hungry that the final release versions, but it's quite probable that to have a stable and acceptable system that performs anywhere nearly as well and reliably as XP today, you will need at least 1Gig of RAM and 4 Ghz Pentium with 128 Mb-128bit DirectX display card.

And it looks like Microsoft is up to it's dirty tricks again. Now the video cards MUST use DirectX exclusively, which means that anyone wanting to write Linux drivers for these cards will probably have to pay royalties to Microsoft, if Microsoft even ALLOWS them to publish the drivers.

I'm sure the OEMs are almost happy about this. Of course, this means that they will have to roll-out yet another round of "Linux Hostile" hardware, and they will have to hope that by the time the Corporate budgets are available to buy "Release 2" (SP2,...) probably a year after the initial GA release, that their precious investment in Vista won't have turned into a commodity product in which each PC must be sold at a slight loss.

Of course, Microsoft will be doing everything they can to make the PC into as much of a commodity as possible, eliminating any ability to "customize" or "brand indenbreasty" the machines, and will forbid them from preinstalling or advertizing enhancments such as OpenOffice (or any other Office Suite), Linux (or any boot manager or VM engine which will allow you to run Linux), or even "Linux compatibility" (no use of logos or trademarks other than Microsoft's in any ad or any link referred to by an ad or web page containing the Microsoft logo and trademarks).

It's all part of the "standard agreement" that OEMs have been signing for 20 years now. IT probably won't change this year either.

Of course, this year, IBM isn't an OEM, it's a VAR. New rules.