Does anybody know the actual release date for vista yet and how much it will cost in the UK? also is it actually going to be much better than xp?
Vista should be released sometime December. IMO Vista will not be worth the upgrade. You pay hundreds for a bloated (extremely high system requirements) OS. A forum member had a 2GB laptop, and with a fresh install of Vista RC there was about 1GB of it used.
Things that Vista does well: -flashy visuals: If a pimped out look is you're thing this is the OS for you. A strong elegant design with nice animation and transparency effects is sure to impress, though it'll come at a cost in performance for sure. -Searching: XP's search tool was sluggish and not terribly full featured. Vista's is smart, very fast, and you can create "virtual seach folders" to revisit any previous searches. -Networking: Wireless or not connecting to multiple and hotspots is made much more simple. There is also a network map to get an overview of you're entire network and it's connected devices which is a nice touch. -Security: A work not common spoke of when refering to windows, unless you're being sarcastic or negitive. Vista seems to change this and provides much more comprehensive protection, a greatly improved and polished browser and a firewall with outbound filtering. Things that kind of suck: -User Account Control: This annoys most testers more than anything else. It's possible to turn this off but basically you get pop ups with warnings and password requests whenever you go to change settings and features, or even running some apps. This is intended to prevent malware from running though you're system and changing things unchecked or the user from goofing up a thing or two along the way but for most of us it's a highly annoying experience that'll likely drive you insane (until you turn it off). -Backup: What should be a simple but effective program is still a hopelessly limeted ancient beast. You can't back up individual files, or file types. Instead you're limeted to very broad folders and drives only. My Documents or My Pictures is about as specific as it'll get. -Hardware requirements: Anyone with integrated graphics (or even a lower end card) and less than a gig of ram is pretty much in for a rude and unjust awakening. This OS gobbles resources, especially with the new Aero graphical user interface and pretty much makes modern gaming on older systems an imposibility. -Price: There are four versions, Home Basic is worthless as it pretty much is a duplicate of XP with a bit better security. Granted it won't have the jazzy interface to slow it down if you want to look at it that way but for $199 ($100 for an upgrade from XP) it's a horrid deal with so little new in store for the user. Home Premium is much more full featured. It lacks a few more business oriented features with networking and some archival features and remote desktop removed but that's about it. However at a suggested price of $239 ($159 for an upgrade) it's probably the most expensive standard OS ever. Business is what you'd expect, you get all the fancy networking and backup stuff but no media center type programs. It's also even more expensive at $299/199 but it's not really meant for consumers. Though that'd be one very costly company upgrade. Ultimate is kind of pointless. It basically included everything that Premium and Business do but you also get a data encryption option, which business doesn't have. All for just $400/259. Right. If you made it though all that congrats. And in my opinion Vista is not really worth it. It's a lot of money to spend of something that really hasn't come very far concidering how many years it's been in the making. It's not a bad OS but concidering that you can upgrade from a previous version, made over 5 years ago, not that much has really changed. It's more than a prettier XP but it's a bid disappointing really but it's the only way you'll get DX 10 support anyway. If you're really into games than that might be enough as you need Vista to play any games with DX 10 features turned on.
