hey computer geek... why don't you shrink some of those too-damned-big pictures down a bit (limit them to 800pixels wide) so they don't screw up the entire rest of this page?????????????????????????????

They are planning releasing the RC in May. I guess we'll see if they can work out the bugs. They don't have a good track record and after their failure with Vista, a half-assed release may spell big trouble for M$. I prefer Linux anyway. I don't like Ubuntu and haven't had much luck with opensuse. I usually use either Mandriva or Fedora and occasionally PCLOS.

How about this. the biggest picture up there is :

and i'm copying: 804px × 603px

and I do have a forum name if nothing else.

Amd how about this "Caveman"....once i posted it, i can't edit it after a certain amount of time.

Just to clarify a few things with Linux. 1. You don't need to use Open office. If you take like three minutes and install (Wine) you can use Office 2003 or 2007. Wine also allows you to run a lot of other Windows based programs and some games.
And don't forget, there are a lot of good Emulators for Windows Programs that you can run with Linux.

Also, with Windows 7. With some tweaks you can get a lot of games to play. I know online games mainly MMO type games that use GameGaurd will crash on Windows 7. A lot of tweaking can be done to get it to work. I have 2Moons, Dekaron, Cabal and and a few others running on a PC with Win7. Just testing it out with some of the tech heads I know lol.

I have to say though, My opinion is this. Why on earth would Microsoft want to release a new Beta when there finial release of Vista STILL has issues? And if they keep going the way they are soon, your going to need a BFG9800 GT 1Gig video card just to look at your desktop lmao.

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4602971/Windows_7_Beta_(7000-0-081212-1400)_Ultimate_32_bit_DVD_Public

Vista system requirements:
minimum 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor or higher,
1GB of system memory
16GB of available disk space
support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB memory
dvd drive

for comparison here are the specs for vista:

* 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
* 1 GB of system memory
* 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
* Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
o WDDM Driver
o 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
o Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
o 32 bits per pixel
* DVD-ROM drive
* Audio Output
* Internet access

The only difference I see is the required HDD and frankly the vista requirement of 40 gigs is rather high, one could get by on about half that. SO much for the lowered system requirements that were claimed.

Because the competition will be outmatching Vista very shortly. Let that be a Mac OS or Linux.

MS realizes, that to keep up they must speed up the process to release new OS-es and there are certain things with Vista that cannot be repaired or patched.

Actually Vista has been by and large a big failure for m$. People and more importantly businesses have not been eager to adopt it, so they want to try to distance themselves from without actually putting much more work into it. If they just called it Vista SE no one would want it becuase it has the Vista taint on it. If however they call it something different and say it is something new they avoid the Vista contamination. Under the hood though it still very much Vista.