50 million lines of code.
5 million back doors.

I don't want to give credence to the rumors that they outsourced a lot of Vista, but who ever saw an American PC boot up in Hindu before...?

And I understand it was one of the Russian outsourced programmers who came up with the product name: "vista time, vista money..."

I'm here all week, folks! Try the veal!

Never upgrade until the old machine is pouring out thick black smoke.

My very first Mac, 15" Powerbook G4 showed up yesterday......after 15 years with MS, I too am switching.

"Just don't expect to use Vista on the cheap. If you want those Mac-like features on your PC, you're going to have to pay a Mac-like price."

This has always been Microsoft's MO, going all the way back to Windows 3.1 fifteen years ago. There's the minimum configuration, under which it runs like a snail and lacks most of the nifty features; an intermediate configuration, under which it has all features but still runs like a snail; and finally there's the 'sweet spot' configuration which gives you all the nifty stuff and runs at decent speed. I wait for at least one full Moore cycle after the release of a new Windows version, to get the 'sweet spot' configuration at a price I can afford.

You guys are being way too harsh. Here's an account of a $366 vista pc.
$366

SuSE Linux, baby. $60 for the retail box, or download it for free. Xen virtualization, beauty interface (Aero who?), and it runs like a dream in 64-bit -- right here right now.

Agreed that Fry's is awesome. When I'm in Austin I practically live there. "Hey kids, let's build a computer from scratch today!"

This seems like a somwhat better argument than the "Mac hardware is better somehow..." argument of previous weeks. (Fans! It's the fans, people!)

However, this argument basically says Vista would be worth buying if only it was available now running on new hardware available now, but since it isn't, you'd rather buy a Mac so at least you'll have one example of a start-of-the-art OS on a state-of-the-art machine... for six months.

True enough. But no matter what you buy now, it'll be a year behind the curve next year. Buying a Mac doesn't change this. (Nothing you can buy will change this.)

Ash,

I bought a new computer because I need one now. The old machine is on its last legs, and it seems silly to keep pumping money into an out-of-date computer.

Even if Microsoft claims my four-year-old box is just fine for Vista.

Could a get a new PC and upgrade it to Vista? Sure. But for the reasons described in my original post, I won't.

Its nice to see you moving from the dark side. Now it's time to get Firefox

Look, if you are going to become a shill for Apple by lying about what Vista needs, I'll say goodbye now.

If you want to say nice things about Apple, go ahead.

But lying ... thats so DailyKos like.

Who knows what else you'll lie about?

Go to Dell's site: 1020$ for a dual-core, 1GB, Nvidia 7300LE, 19" LCD. That will run Vista really, really well.

Geez Bruce, a little harsh there. I'm sure that if you picked up a Windows Vista software box, it would show a list of recommended requirements that looks like the list Stephen put up.

I still wouldn't get it, even if I had all the hardware. It's the first run of an OS. Let everyone else slam into the flaws and deal with the emergency patches. OS/X is more mature in that area now that it's been out for a while.

By the time Vista comes out, it shouldn't cost you more than a grand to build a sweet box for it. I'm still not interested in Apple due to OS/X's interface and the incredible price premium.

Hey, will you be able to upgrade your Mac with new Intel processors as they come out?

I'll start out with full disclosure. I am a computer Tech. I deal with computers all day. 99.9 percent of those computers are Windows boxes, and the only Macs I have to deal with are my wifes.

You know, I'll be honest. Those sound like pretty heavy specs. But when those PC's are released a year from now, coming preloaded with Vista, a Pentuim D system is going to be a very inexpensive option. Also, finding a PC with a gig or two of RAM will be cheap too. Video cards? Onboard on corperate systems are 64mb right now, and they are all DX9 compatable. So 128 is overly theasable. Components are cheap on PC's. Even if you were going to get a pc now, seriously. Its not too much to upgrade the easy components like the RAM and the Video Card for dirt cheap.

Like I said, my wife has 2 Mac's, and there are so many times where she has to use my computers to do something to make it compatable with the rest of the world. OSX is a wonderful operating system, and it will be years and years before I'm forced to adobt Vista. In 2007 terms however the requirements wont be that high.

Current PC's? Does anyone remember how Windows 2000 Ran on their Celeron 400? I have one, and honestly its painful waiting for that guy to boot. I expect to see something similar to that.

Don't even try to update if you have a Compaq or HP (they bought out Compaq) because their machines are specifically designed for the OS on them when you buy. I'm not kidding, we tried updating from home to pro and the machine simply shut down. If by some strange chance you can get an update to work, the machine won't run properly after that anyway.

And now they're pushing back Vista? Looks like my next computer is a MacTel afterall.

Thats not true. The hardware in current PC's is just that....hardware. If the manufactuer makes drives for the OS, it'll work. Chances are, when you did a upgrade you might of had 2 competing drivers, but I myself have a PC with 4 different OS's, and all of them work like a charm. We also run the Vista Beta on some of our newer PC's, and it works great too. Hardware is hardware, and drivers is what makes the hardware run. As long as you have drivers, it'll run assuming it makes the requirements. Poor Driver support from the manufactuer is probadly what you ran into.

Guipo

Also to add, If you were to do a reformat and just load Professional(which if you bought the upgrade, it'll just ask for your home CD to verify) I'd bet that it'll work. There is virtually no difference in the core of Windows XP to Windows Home. Just features. I'd blame your failure more on microsoft's crappy upgrade feature than a driver issue.

Timmy: And that PC is exactly what Stephen was talking about for the no-bells-and-whistles (or, with that video card, a few bells and one whistle) configuration.

That sure as hell ain't a dual-core 3GHz CPU. (And a 40G HDD? I'm almost amazed the people at Fry's sell ones that small.)

Bruce, Erik: I think Bruce's point was that you can get a new PC right now that meets the Vista "bells-and-whistles" spec. Contra Stephen's claim that buying a PC now would mean you'd have to upgrade it next year to run Vista at that spec.

Which is plainly not true; but if you buy a low end PC today, that's another matter (like the Fry's crapbox above, which is more or less a modern equivalent of the eMachine).

I've run the Vista beta on a system barely better than the minimum Microsoft has stated. It even adapted to the crappy video card within (which meant it didn't do any of the aero/alpha channel stuff.)

The notion that you should buy an entire new computer with your new version of Windows (or even the Mac for that matter, though Apple's tendency to change hardware entirely sometimes requires that) is perfectly silly and a rather lame way to justify buying a Mac.

Why not just say "I want to buy a Mac" instead of being such a weasel about it?

Maybe 2000 drags on a Celeron 400, but 98SE runs just fine on the Celerons I'm pulling out of office dumpsters right now. I bet when Vista comes out I'll be finding machines bought for XP that run 2000 just fine.

Hey, will you be able to upgrade your Mac with new Intel processors as they come out?

So long as it's the same chip family/connector, yeah, you can just drop in a faster one.

The standardized conventions that Apple established for its developers have made understanding of many functions intuitive and readily accessible. An architect in Cincinnati once told me he chose Macs over PCs after a lot of research because he found that although there were literally scores of drafting applications available for PCs, they all seemed to require weeks or months of drill, whereas with the handful of programs available for Mac, his people were able to become productive within a week.

As a graphics professional producing animation for broadcast, arcade games, CD-ROM games, and web distributed entertainment, I’ve had to work with something like forty or fifty combinations of proprietary systems, technologies, procedures, including Mac, Unix, MS-DOS, and every version of Windows.

A typical experience was to work on my Mac at home with the Mac versions of Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Director, while using the Windows versions on Windows platforms on the job. In the spring of 2000, I started with a team producing Flash parodies of songs for the web, and for the first month every Windows unit was crashing about every half hour. We were spending more time re-booting than actually working. Meanwhile, at home I was able to leave my Mac running with documents open for days without any crashes.

Microsoft Windows OS seems to be much more stable now, but I would have to be threatened with everlasting hemmorhoids to own such.

Hey richard mcenroe, Hindu is a religion. Hindi is a language. And most Indian progammers for MS probably speak English better than they do Hindi.

ErikZ said:

"I'm still not interested in Apple due to OS/X's interface and the incredible price premium."

To the rest of Y'all...

Just for the record, per a personal conversation with EZ shortly after he had tried out a Mac, his primary example of the Mac's "lousy interface" was the redundant menu bar. Why are there two different menu bars?

This complaint, as you might suspect, confused the heck out of me. Did he mean the toolbar?

Turns out the primary application he had tested on the Mac was OpenOffice -- a Unix X11 program. So his largest beef with the interface was from running software that wasn't made for the operating system, but ran anyway.

As a wise man once said to me, "Some people bitch when their ice cream's cold!"

Sorry Z -- Can't let you go knockin' my system unchecked. ;p

(Yes, yes, he had other issues with it as well, but that seemed to be the biggie....)

Windows XP needs at least a gig of memory to run well. With all the bells and whistles of Vista, I find it hard to believe 2 gigs or more won't be needed for it to run well.

And one of the big innovations is Direct X10, and there currently aren't any (except maybe 1) video cards that support it.

And no offense, but anyone currently running Vista is either a MS employee or a fanboy, so they aren't exactly reliable....