how much is Vista gonna cost and will it be compatible with Windows XP home i have on another computer, to network them together.

Since Vista is nothing more than XP on steroids, it will surely be fully compatible with XP Home. But nobody knows yet what the cost will be. There are five different versions (not including 32 and 64-bit) and I've seen guestimates ranging from US$99 for Vista Home Basic to US$450 for Vista Ultimate. We won't know for sure until MS announces the prices.Doug

Yes yes, I know that. But if you want DX10 (main reason for most of us simmers to get Vista), you will HAVE to upgrade to Vista.

But, for me at least, the decision whether or not to go with Vista is far more important and far-reaching than just considering DX10 alone. There are many reasons why I won't "upgrade" to Vista in 2007 and, therefore, DX10 is, for me, a moot point. I would think that most of us would want to see the results of Vista itself across a wide number of applications before installing it just to get DX10 for FSX. But, maybe that's just my cautious nature and most folks like to live a bit more dangerously.Doug

Can anyone advise as to whether it would be practical to buy a new harddrive with Vista installed, and have a dual boot system with XP on one drive and Vista on the other? All my software (other than upcoming FSX) works great on XP....the only thing I think I would want Vista for is FSX with DirectX10. Then it would be on a seperate dedicated drive. Any advice, anyone?

>Can anyone advise as to whether it would be practical to buy>a new harddrive with Vista installed, and have a dual boot>system with XP on one drive and Vista on the other? All my>software (other than upcoming FSX) works great on XP....the>only thing I think I would want Vista for is FSX with>DirectX10. Then it would be on a seperate dedicated drive. Any>advice, anyone?That's really up to your personal preference. If you have a large HDD, you can partition it and have Vista/FSX on one partition and whatever else you have on another. Of course, it would be better, if you would have a seperate dedicated HDD for Vista, but it's not a requirement.Pat

>the only thing I think I would want Vista for is FSX with>DirectX10. Then it would be on a seperate dedicated drive. Any>advice, anyone?I don't think that's practical because you would still be using your current computer with DX9 hardware (graphics card). I don't think DX10 will do you much good without any DX10 compatible hardware. As far as I know (but what do I know) DX10 really needs a DX10 graphics card to deliver the goods. But I'm no expert, so... Maybe DX10 will do something nice or extra with DX9 hardware, but it won't be mindblowing (like I hope DX10 with DX10 hardware will be!).

>Can anyone advise as to whether it would be practical to buy>a new harddrive with Vista installed, How can you do that? Where can you buy a hard drive with the OS already installed on it??I mean, if you're buying a whole cookie-cutter system, like a Dell, then sure, it will have the OS pre-installed. But I have not heard of being able to buy a hard drive by itself, with the OS installed. Unless you buy from some individual, I guess...Rhett

Vista can be put on a separate drive and or partition on an existing XP system. You could then purchase a new DX10 compliant GPU and run DX9 on the XP side and DX10 on the Vista side. Great idea to slowly build a system with components which you could then transfer to another box. I do it all the time at home...but....a DX10 GPU from what I hear (and don't know because knowbody is spilling the beans on them yet) will need alot of power. Go SLI or Crossfire and you double that power! So be prepared for a new PS (power supply) purchase as well. But then all you are left with is a new motherboard, cpu and memory to buy....but....be careful with new m/b's because some don't support older IDE drives (harddrive and cd/dvdrom) but only newer SATA drives. You get the idea....ask twice but buy once :-)

>how much is Vista gonna cost and will it be compatible with>Windows XP home i have on another computer, to network them>together.Vista beta 2 is working fine for me with Windows workgroup networking to 2 WnXP home machines. Have a shared printer on the Vista which installed itself during the Vista install and was available on the network. File shares are working, but I don't use individual access controls. or any auditing.The network browser (network neighborhood) seems a little easier to use in vista.Setting the vista firewall for LAN access was no problem.Can't comment on vista in a domain / domain controller environment, or netware.scott s..

>Can anyone advise as to whether it would be practical to buy>a new harddrive with Vista installed, and have a dual boot>system with XP on one drive and Vista on the other? All my>software (other than upcoming FSX) works great on XP....the>only thing I think I would want Vista for is FSX with>DirectX10. Then it would be on a seperate dedicated drive. Any>advice, anyone?My 2d hard drive is a 250g WD caviar SATA II. I carved out a 20glogical partition and installed vista as a dual boot to there. I both installed a fresh FS9 under vista, and also run my "production" FS9 shared with Win XP. The only problem with the shared FS9 is that the "keyed" addons don't all work, in particular LDS767. Probably could be made to work though.Note that if you dual boot the vista, the only way to get a clean single boot WinXP back is to run the WinXp recovery console, though you can manually "turn off" the dual boot.scott s..

I have Vista Beta 2 running in a Linux Samba environment with workgroup file sharing and it works just fine together with my XP machines (Home and Pro). No problems whatsoever. Networking is a breeze with Vista, even at this beat stage - much more user-friendly than XP.Pat

> Maybe DX10 will do something nice or extra with DX9 hardware, but it won't be mindblowing > (like I hope DX10 with DX10 hardware will be!).If you don't have DX10 hardware then DX10 will be doing nothing. If you have DX10 hardware and run a DX9 game then there should be a boost in performance (how much?)