Here's a site that will give you some insight on the different versions of Vista. http://winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_editions.aspHere's the main page for vista. There's some nice beta shots.http://winsupersite.com/vista/.

tdragger has posted some limited info in his blog about the systems that they used for the CES demo...Dell workstations with 2gig ram and ATI 850 video card with 512MB. Running on Vista. The workstaions were "borrowed" from the vista team.Sure that video card is a super trick thing that ATI shipped off to game developers, but not the public. but the rest of it's run of the mill, but up-to-date items.

and where did you get that nonsense?This is direct from Microsoft themselves (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/hardware/vistarpc.mspx):-------------------------------------------------------Windows Vista Capable PC RequirementsWindows Vista Capable PCs need to pass the current certification requirements for Designed for Windows XP logo. In addition, these PCs would need the following combination of essential PC hardware for good overall Windows Vista performance:

As someone else mentioned, the demo PC are supposed to run with all eyecandy on, and Vista has a lot of power intensive shaders and whatnot which is not a requirement for normal operations. The OS will probably run fine on far less powerful PC's as well.

>have a look here>>the requirements to run vista!>>http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/07/vista_requirements/So, will it run on my trusty 80386 with 16MB SIMM memory and a 5 GB HD?! :-hmmmJust kidding! That was my very first PC... and it actually ran the first version of the "New" Windows OS. (Windows 95 -- which btw had system requirements of at least a 486 processor yet it still ran on the 386)I believe the flight simulator I was using at the time was FS 5.1 (which btw was a DOS based version and had to run outside the windows shell for best performance.)Regards,Joshua Robertson (creator of FS Real Time)3D Softworks Design Studioshttp://www.3dsoftworks.net

Sigh, those youngsters and their supersystems.My first was an IBM PC-Portable. 8088 CPU at 4.7MHz, 32KB RAM, 2MB harddisk, and a revolutionary 5.25" DSDD drive.

Totally agree.There is no benefit of buying Vista IMO. XP got quite stable now (I don't want to remember all the pain with this 95/98/ME crap :-erks). Why should I go and by some unstable Vista bloat.I'll get Vista when I have to pay the Micro$oft tax - when buying a new computer.Regarding all the eye candy: This has to be switched off in XP as well. All these menu and cursor shadow stuff cause stutters and delays.Alex

The benefits for current hardware may be minimal depending on the hardware you have, that's always the case.Depends also on what you do with your machine of course, ever more Windows is optimised for multimedia editing and viewing (all those pirated movies...).I'll get Vista for my next machine most likely, which will be one that can probably use the new features (plus I'm doing some software development so I'll want it to test against anyway).For the same reasons my current machine won't be getting upgraded any time soon (in fact it just got switched from Win2K to XP last year, first time installing an OS except on my laptop since Win2K was released in 1999).

A 386 with 16MB RAM and a 5GB hard disk ?!! :-hmmmMy first PC was a 386SX with just 1MB RAM, and a 45MB hard disk....January 1992. I wasn't aware that hard disks of that capacity were available in the 386 era.Chris Low.

>A 386 with 16MB RAM and a 5GB hard disk ?!! :-hmmm>>My first PC was a 386SX with just 1MB RAM, and a 45MB hard>disk....January 1992. I wasn't aware that hard disks of that>capacity were available in the 386 era.>>>Chris Low.>Yep, they did. In fact I remember when I first got my 386 (it was the DX version). I bought it from my employer who had just upgraded their server hardware. At the time, the 486s dominated the market and I was able to pop a Cyrix 486 processor in it. The other thing I remember is that it originally had an 80MB scsi HD which wasn't worth much even then. The first ever computer upgrades I bought were a 5GB HD and the Cyrix 486 processor upgrade from CompUSA. The largest HD they sold was a 10GB which I believe sold for about $300 which obviously was a bit high for my budget so I opted for the 5GB.Regards,Joshua Robertson (creator of FS Real Time)3D Softworks Design Studioshttp://www.3dsoftworks.net