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Actually... Windows XP is directly based off of Windows 3.1

This is the primary difference between Windows XP and Windows Vista in a nutshell.

The GDI and API that comprise the underlying GUI system in Windows dates to Windows 3.1. Vista does away with this as the GUI is now based on Direct3d, basically DX9L and DX10.

The slightly technical overview is here http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars/1

Well, your post makes it sound like you are surprised by those findings? Unfortunately religion has made the world spin around since the dark ages and beyond. It's been the basis of the majority of strife for countless and varying reasons, and has been everything from an excuse for mass murder to becoming the underpinning for major facets of today's society.

Thankfully those kind of views are on the decline, it won't be to much longer before religious convictions cease to provide a winning party block to political candidates seeking office here. Even so, I still say some of those percentages were from biased samples...

I think trying to play the religious card to explain the war is to completely dismiss the actual reasons for why it was started, and is a borderline naive oversimplification. Christians and Muslims have plenty of bad history going back somewhere around a thousand years, but that's not any excuse for the current blind indoctrination of violence in today's Muslim society to combat anyone that does not bow to Allah.

There is a detailed article on it here: http://www.dailytech.com/SoundExchang...s/article6361.htm

It simply drives me nuts to no end, I'm sure their ultimate goal is to drive people back to buying discs and stopping the deline in their sales, and make a fortune in the process. One of these days they're going to bite off more than they can force down people's throats, I'm sure.

Gotta love the " 500" fee per channel, and also that the RIAA expects everyone to pay backowed royalty fees for all of 2006 along with 2007. And that the rates will more than double by 2010.

Screenshots are fine for nice wallpaper sometimes... but trailers are not that much better in my honest opinion.

If anything a game trailer is usually more misleading these days. I'm sure many have noticed game developers like to speed up the action for their trailer, when the game itself is played more slowly, or completely differently. Tweaks to the camera angle and objects on screen to make it cinematic only further distort the feel of the gameplay... it's not a movie so why glamorize it as such, unless you are trying to hide something? Unforunately most game developers usually are trying to hide things.

The only thing I trust anymore is a actual game demo that I get to install myself.

As Sam said, this trick only works with XP Professional.

By default once you close the reboot prompt and keep closing subsequent reboot msgs, once ignored for to long the machine will auto-prompt you with a 10 or something second countdown which you must cancel to abort a forced reboot. This is a great way to catch AFK users and sneak a reboot in.

While this is one thing I quickly disabled on my machine as I took offense at having all of my work abruptly lost or otherwise halted which I was in the middle of, the reboots are for a reason. If ignored long enough some programs or the OS itself will eventually go unstall and display odd behavior as the OS needs to be reloaded from the patching. It's a good tool, but use it wisely.

Then you are in luck, because Apple will be plugging x2900XT based GPU's into their Mac Pro computers.

Any DX9 based graphics card will give you the full Vista Aero Glass effects. Any graphics card will tell you the hardware DX version it is based off of... my own 9600XT card is 3-4 years old now and still is DX9 based, and it works great with Vista. It won't play much of any games these days though, but I couldn't even sell mine for $50 with all the accessories on ebay. In which case you can probably fork out just half of that now to buy one...

I prefer Mcafee Enterprise... very simply, no-nonsense completely utilitarian interface behind a fairly powerful engine that covers a few extras besides email scanning. On my other machine I simply use AVG, and on the third I don't use anything because the system is constantly in a state of OS flux for hardware reviewing...

I'm rather a Folding@Home fan myself...

Those Core 2 Duo's are sure built for distributed computing, no?

Main Rig: (I will be dipping into watercooling it inside 2 weeks)

Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86ghz @ 3.5ghz w/ Scythe Ninja 1.475v
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard
2 x 1Gb Corsair DDR2-800 RAM @ 1ghz 2.1v
FOXCONN 8800GTS 320mb Overclocked Edition
Antec NeoHE 550watt PSU / Antec P180-B Case
APC 1100 backUPS Pro

My old trusted rig which has lasted ~4 years now that I built myself is based around a Northwood P4 w/HT, 2.8ghz @ 3.3ghz. Had it at 3.5ghz but I've since dropped it to the stock vcore for heat/power reasons.

This chip is not going to be released. Intel designed and build this chip as a proof of concept and so they could work out the major problems that arise in such a complex design. This chip only uses very simply processing cores, not anything nearly as complex as the x86 based design in our computers.

Intel plans to take what they've learned from this project and incorperate it into future massive multicore designs, including one that will likely feature x86 based cores.

A very good breakdown and overview of the project can be read here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2925

I'd be running Vista right now if my local Uni had it to buy yet.

I think the biggest reasons, as already said above, are the bugs and horrible support from 3rd parties. Even nVidia doesn't have a decent driver set yet for Vista that's mostly bug free. XP is also a very stable OS nowadays whose uptime can be measured in months instead of days between reboots. And finally some people are either buying new PCs or simply waiting for the first Service Pack.

I still recall the ruckus caused by XP's own requirements, many of the same things were said.

*coughs* Apple, greedy?

Was the ~50% gross margins on half their products a small hint?

Actually, nVidia is releasing the 8900GTX and 8900GTS to replace the current 8800 series. The biggest difference will be a slightly smaller nm process, which they'll exploit by ramping up the clock speeds. ATI is also releasing the x2900XTX, they simply skipped over a launch.

ATI is sticking to their launch schedule which is timed to coincide with DX10 itself becoming available. nVidia decided to launch the 8800 series to make a tidy profit, and will now launch the 8900 series to match ATI. nVidia is technically a good ways behind ATI right now simply because their driver support is still abysmal, they took most of a month before they could even release a WHQL certified driver for Vista while ATI was ready for it.

Infact, with nVidia the 7950GX2, and any other form of SLI with Vista is not supported. All of the mobile "GO" graphics cards are not supported. nTune for temp monitoring is not yet available under Vista, nor is vsync with nVidia drivers functional. FX series cards were not even supported until the WHQL driver release.

ATI however launched certified drivers and a rebuilt CCC center on the same day as Vista launched, and infact has released a slightly tuned/improved update to their Vista drivers already. Not to mention ATI seems to be only having half of the miscellaneous problems that nVidia users are raving about with games.