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Faster than my quad-core dual-Xeon 3GB machine? I think not. It's likely I can run Windows with just one CPU core and a GB of the RAM faster than your machine does, and still have three 2.66GHz cores and 2GB of RAM left to run OS X. All of this on the same screen. Or I can just make the Mac Dock occupy the left side of the screen and the Windows taskbar on the bottom and run programs from both OSes side by side with integrated clipboard support.

But what's more interesting is that Tiger runs almost as smoothly on a puny 1.4GHz PPC Mac Mini I have here. And Vista does almost nothing that Tiger doesn't.

The conclusion is pretty clear. Vista is a terrible resource hog, another piece of bloatware. There is no good reason in the world why MS has shoved out something so mediocre and required such powerful machines to run it. It's sheer laziness in coding, design and software architecture. And they have already announced they will release a SP1 yet this year? Essentially, they're admitting they've sold you something they know to be flawed when they sold it. Reminds me of how just yesterday they had to retract that new patent because they actually admitted they knew they were stealing it from someone else and it was prior art.

So did you run out to CC or BB for their little midnight "event"? Which Vista did you buy? The Ultimate at $400, uh, no, your machine isn't powerful enough (BTW mine is but I have passed up many opportunities to grab a copy). Maybe you could get the high-end home package to run, more likely the Vista Home Basic since you have integrated graphics (probably that cheesy Intel graphics chipset, the 970 maybe?). Seems unlikely that you have the Third World peon version (Starter).

Notice that Mac's OS X has only two versions: standard and Server. MS is offering very little in their high-end expensive versions that Tiger hasn't done for years. And those few features often revolve around making Microsoft the hub of your digital living room, features like UPNP network streaming of media to an Xbox 360 (big deal, I have a router with USB hard drives that's been doing that for the last year).

I don't like the proliferation of versions and separating the customers into different "classes" of user. It smacks of elitism and price-gouging. Given how few new features Vista really offers, it's just sad to see the already-victimized MS users further debased in their little Balkanized Vista ghettos. And for what? So MS can make tens of billions more so they can gobble or destroy actual technology innovators as they've done so many times before?

There is nothing that justifies pricing Ultimate at $400. Or separating the home user into ones with and without the media center features. It's just ugly to do that to your customers.

Buying Vista just allows Microsoft to palm off its uninspired and insecure operating system longer. It allows a company with bad and mediocre ideas to dominate the market and crush the real innovators on all platforms.