Comes in 5 new bloated colors

Meant to post this last month, but eh.

For those who care (and most of us don't really) Windows Vista starts shipping next month in November. It comes in 5 exciting new flavors... maybe I should say Xciting... nah lets not go down that path about what a WONDERFUL experience using Windows will be for you.

The 5 versions are: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate (ohhh ahhh)

SRP Pricing ranges from $100.00 for the barest minimum upgrade version to somewhere around $400 for a full blown "ultimate" version.

The system requirements are 1 Ghz processor, 1 gig RAM and 15 GB of harddrive space (good lord!). Not surprisingly it only comes on DVD. We'll see if they break down and offer it on multiple CD's... anybody rember installing Windows when it came on like 12 floppy disks?!?

Pretty much feature wise it's as a typical Microsoft OS - few worthy new features, lots of shiny graphics and some horrendously bloated sounding bits (instant search, superfetch, etc.) that will probably put a choke hold on your system (no wonder it needs a gig of RAM). The only really good stuff would of course been better as an upgrade to the current OS, but that's pretty much the way it's been since 95.

Some of the very things that I found at least interesting on the surface:

* Explorer has a "live" thumbnail showing the actual document as a tiny icon instead of a generic icon which is pretty cool if you were looking through lot sof text documents, .html pages, adobe .pdfs etc. Of course generating all those thumbnails comes at a price in speed.

* Same thing with the task switcher (alt+tab) you get little thumbnails (of course mine already does that thanks to the Microsoft power toys, but hey it's something they should have doen to begin with)

* A better system restore which actually saves copies of the original system files if they are changed. Again this comes at an obvious price - eats up harddrive space.

and my favorite

* You can plug in jump drives and use them to as extra RAM. This is a pretty keen idea and with USB 2.0 I imagine that it actually will work decently enough making it an easy and cheap way to boost your RAM. Everything is becoming more component-ized which makes it easier and cheaper to repair and upgrade PCs. Obviously it's better to add actual high speed RAM right into the motherboard, but I like the idea for it's simplicity.

Other features are hype and outright lies like better security, IE 7.0 (meh), pretty "Windows Aero" graphics fluff, desktop gadgets, easier networking, better security, blah blah blah.

One last thing that I think is... interesting in it's implication is SideShow (not slideshow). It's hard to describe, but basically you could check your email without opening up your laptop LOL. Not sure how useful it is, but it's a unique concept. Wonder if it will be the next MS white elephant. See the concept here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/sideshow.mspx

It goes without saying that anyone worth his salt would recommend never switching to a new version of Microsoft until after the first and optimally the second service pack has been released.

Incidently the REAL purpose of this post is to let you know that Microsoft is getting MUCH more agressive about checking to see if you have an authentic copy of Windows XP installed. Do if you don't, well shame on you and don't be expecting to update your OS again EVER, because if you do your copy will stop working thanks to the "genuine advantage" program which gets rather stealthly installed on your PC. Not that I don't think they are entitled to protect their products... I'm just not keen on the methodology.