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Allow me to disagree,
Price might go up a bit, however it will be considerably cheaper than a Vista. Unless those sitting up there in Apple are truly nothing but morons, they would really like to push their OS in the market and bite a nice piece of the cake. Apple proved over the years than their innovative minds were the major reason for users buying their products, while their OS was the thing that held them back a little, due, that is, to lack of software solutions.
 
I think that the moment Apple moves to a more PC-form of hardware, their sales, both OS and hardware, will kick up - simple because people will assume that software (GAMES) will be more available - and I expect it to be so.
 
I do agree with you that OSX will likely still be cheaper than Vista (at least the more expensive versions).  They are going to want to get market share and won't be able to without some sort of price incentive.  
 
That being said, I don't believe that OSX will ever become a viable alternative to Windows (or Linux for that matter) since it is still designed for people who don't like computers.  Gamers are likely to stay with Windows so most games are also likely to stay.  Unless the gamer demographic changes, I think OSX will continue to be useless for gaming.
 
The only users that OSX has been able to get in the past have been professionals that have no computing experience but require computers for their work (musicians, film editors, etc).  Once OSX moves to non-Mac PCs there will be inumerably more bugs with hardware, etc, which will tarnish its image as an easy to use (relatively) bug free OS (to some degree).

You're so full of crap it must hurt.  You are spouting nothing more than fan-boy rhetoric and will OBVIOUSLY disagree with anything negative someone points out about Apple.  There's no point, in discussing the topic with you.
 
I will, however, point out that Vista will NOT cost $519 as you alluded to.  Furthermore, as I have already stated, there is NO justification for Apple's OVERPRICED HARDWARE.  Apple's hardware is >SUBPAR< to >REAL< PC's.  If you REALLY think that the LOWEST end Apple iBook/desktop is better than >MOST< other PC's, you're dilusional.  At the SAME price point, Apple's hardware is LOW-END while other brands are MID to HIGH end.  Apple's LOW-END IS WORSE THAN $99 PC's.  PERIOD.  Stop fantasizing about Steve Jobs and step back into reality.
 
Again, argue all you want.  If you really think GMA950 graphics and 256 megs of RAM is better than Geforce7900GS and 1 GIG of RAM, all at the SAME PRICE, then go ahead and buy an Apple.

I've read through this topic and i agree with alot of people on here. Personally, i'd love to see all the "extras" that were thrown into xp removed - too bad they're only adding more bloatware. I hate the new Aero look, i hate the widgets and the sidebar, i hate the flip 3d thingy... you get the picture. The only improvements I can see are that 'vista' doesn't sound as dumb as 'xp', and, oh that's it.
 
I want my operating system to be like a hub for everything else. It shouldn't be hogging all the resources. I still think xp's requirements are a little steep for an o/s, even though i of course exceed them. But apparently aside from my video card it seems i wouldn't be able to get vista off of the runway. That's funny. I can run ghost recon at medium-high settings but not an operating system. I like the new security features (except integrated drm or whatever), but as i understand it alot of your system will essentially be hidden. Not good. It sucked enough when dos was destroyed in xp, will it be completely obliterated in vista?
 
But really what other solutions do i have? Mitch074, i would really like to know what version of linux you're running, because i'll sign up in a second. About two years ago i tried everything from suse, to mandrake, to debian. I still have nightmares from it. Heh. Earlier this year i had a laptop that decided it didn't want windows anymore and had to use ubuntu. Yes, it was slightly better than those other versions i used a while back, but installing simple programs was still horrible. I was up all hours of the night just trying to get a dvd to play! All those packages, all those dependencies... oh god the dependencies...
I do like how linux uses the command line alot. I like that stuff.
Programs in linux crashed way more often than i've experienced in windows. In fact, i often moved a crashed program to the fourth virtual desktop - and they would just pile up until i restarted the computer.
 
Linux is for linux people. I'll try and hold onto xp as long as i can, until the inevitible like what happened to 98. When that happens, maybe linux will be better. I hope so.

 
Allow me to disagree,
Price might go up a bit, however it will be considerably cheaper than a Vista. Unless those sitting up there in Apple are truly nothing but morons, they would really like to push their OS in the market and bite a nice piece of the cake. Apple proved over the years than their innovative minds were the major reason for users buying their products, while their OS was the thing that held them back a little, due, that is, to lack of software solutions.
 
I think that the moment Apple moves to a more PC-form of hardware, their sales, both OS and hardware, will kick up - simple because people will assume that software (GAMES) will be more available - and I expect it to be so.
 
I do agree with you that OSX will likely still be cheaper than Vista (at least the more expensive versions).  They are going to want to get market share and won't be able to without some sort of price incentive.
 
That being said, I don't believe that OSX will ever become a viable alternative to Windows (or Linux for that matter) since it is still designed for people who don't like computers.  Gamers are likely to stay with Windows so most games are also likely to stay.  Unless the gamer demographic changes, I think OSX will continue to be useless for gaming.
 
The only users that OSX has been able to get in the past have been professionals that have no computing experience but require computers for their work (musicians, film editors, etc).  Once OSX moves to non-Mac PCs there will be inumerably more bugs with hardware, etc, which will tarnish its image as an easy to use (relatively) bug free OS (to some degree).
I think I said most of this earlier. Yes I agree with you, except for one thing.  If Apple WERE to release their OS for any brand PC, Microsoft would more than likely lower the price of their OS to be competitive.  So, even if OSXYZ were to initially be cheaper, I don't think it would be for long.
 
I do however think Microsoft's tiered pricing scheme is very lame.  There should be two versions of the OS: workstation and server.

Good point with the pricing.  I actually hope that Apple comes out with OSX(I?) that will run on any PC, if that will bring the price of Windows down.  Any yes, the pricing scheme is lame.  I think its just an excuse to change a lot for the premium one.  Without the middle ones, it would seem even more outrageous.

 
I haven't used Parallels but people who have reviewed it running Windows on OS X seem to be fairly enthusiastic and it's only a version 1.0 product. Already there are some fairly substantial upgrades in the works. It's free to download and try so anyone could compare them for free.  
 
Xen hasn't been around for a long time and it's support for Windows is very new and, as you note, only avalable on certain new Intel x86 chips. It may be a great technology when it matures but I suspect not for use by the faint of heart at the moment.  
 
From the Xen Wiki:
"The paravirtualized approach we use to get such high performance has not been usable directly for Windows to date. However Xen 3.0 added Intel VT-x support to enable the running of unmodified guest operating systems, including Windows XP & 2003 Server, using hardware virtualization technology. We are working on implementing support for the equivalent AMD Pacifica technology."
 
Novell is at the front of the pack in supporting Xen into Linux. Red Hat won't support Xen until next year. This is all fairly new and is mostly targeted at enterprise servers rather than desktop users. See:
http://www.novell.com/products/ser [...] ation.html
 
And here's what eWeek reviewers had to say about XenEnterprise :
"Xen is a rather young technology, and anyone who's surveyed the current field of Xen implementations knows that besting them is leaping a fairly low hurdle."
(http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2016548,00.asp)
 
For desktop users the most mature x86 technology is VMware Workstation. It costs $189, hardly cheap, but it's a product that was first released in 1999 and is now at version 5.5. See http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/ (OS X version info here: http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/mac.html).
 
Note that VMware's VMplayer software is free as are a lot of premade virtual machines using assorted Linux and BSD distros. If you search Google you'll find a number of sites with instructions on how to create a Windows virtual machine using VMplayer, obviously without all the bells and whistles of Workstation, but maybe with enough functionality for some users.  
http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10 [...] ws-xp.html
http://www.ffnn.nl/pages/articles/ [...] eation.php
 
Sure VMware has been around forever, so its stable, safe and well-integrated. However Xen blows it (and any other similar product) out of the water perfromance-wise. You need to consider if youre someone who needs a comfortable gui or someone who can get their 'hands dirty' with configuring a Xen-based system.  I think if you're the latter, you wouldn't consider VMware unless you had a non-tehcnical or enterprise-level reason.
 
The eweek article you cited seems to be old and focused on Xen's enterprise product v3.0.  It says it can't run windows.  The current standard Xen download is currently at 3.0.2 and can run windows. The 'low hurdle' statement was in comparison to other enterprise-level products like vmware that costs about $500 per install because it comes with all the coprorate support etc. Basically VMware is a slow safe corporate product but for out-and-out techies its a pig in lipstick compared to Xen.
 
The audience of this board are mostly home enthusiasts and aren't probably gonna be paying $500 for any VM software for home use. The reality is that Xen works, is available for free download, and gives you about 5 times the performance of VMware if you have a VT-enabled CPU.

 
XenEnterprise 3 was just released and the eWeek review was from last week. I think the performance difference has to do with the virtualization strategy. Zen uses paravirtualization which involves changes to host OS (unlike VMware): better performance but a pain in the butt to install. And there is only one Linux distro that supports Xen at the moment (SLES 10 -- costs money).  
 
I'm not sure better performance traded off against ease of installation etc. is a selling point to enterprises, who are the primary consumers of virtualization technology at the moment. They want to be able to set up,  consolidate and manage servers quickly and easily. Virtualization makes sense because existing servers are only using a small fraction of CPU's potential performance.
 
Once a standard paravirtualization solution is baked into the Linux kernel the performance and easy of installation  differences between the two will presumably become moot on Linux. See http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/techpreview.html for VMware's latest contribution to on-going Linux virtualization discussion.  
 
Also XenEnterprise is the commercial version of the Xen community release and costs serious money. The community release may be a bit ahead in support for Windows. Also note that  VMware Server is now free.
 
Anyway looks like all this stuff is changing very rapidly and we'll all have cheap or free, easy to use, high performance desktop virtualization solutions on Linux in the near future --probably not great news for Microsoft.

 
I feel you have the same problem adding to that an attitude oproblem and immaturity.  
 

 
I see no one forcing you to discuss it with me, I see no one asking you to as well, you can as well ignore me. Fan boy? I used Mac 3 times, I don't know how can you call that fan boy! Any I wonder since when "Fan boy" is bad word - and I also wonder, could I call you M$ fabboy? you seems like one!
 

 
I see your a big guy who has done all the testing and the benchmarks, I would like you to show us all your artistic scientific work to support your claims. I said "Probably" as "assumable" and assumptions are only assumption. But you are giving facts: so please support!
 
 

 
Here I see the real problem - reading comprehension, I suggest you work on that.
 
Have a nice day – “M$ Fan Boy” – congratulation, your maturity and super natural ability to read behind the lines kick ass in you discussed post! Papa must be proud.

 
Performance-wise, you're absolutely right: Macs are far from scoring as high as PCs do in that area. However, you might want to consider that RAM-wise at least, MacOS X runs pretty well with 256 Mb, while XP struggles quite a lot and Vista won't start. About the graphics card, you're entirely right.
I just want to point out that it's not the only piece of hardware you put in a PC: the motherboard and DVD drive are specifically crafted for each Mac model - this means extra costs. Then there is the design; matters of taste can be discussed ad vitam aeternam, some like, some don't.
Still, if you compare a designer-drawn laptop PC with a Mac notebook, then you'll notice that the price gap has gotten very narrow.
At the same time, a PC equivalent of the Mac mini still has to be widely found; and I must admit that for some, a computer that can be put away in a desk drawer while still retaining a real mouse and keyboard plus a screen on a stand if a very nice thing.
Sure, some Mac models just make no sense now; their laptops have very little going their way - if at all - , for example. Still, they invented the widescreen 15" notebook and PC makers said 'me too'. Should they let go of a product range they innovated in?
That's what Macs are about: innovative, not cumbersome like PCs more often than not are.
Now please note that I don't own a Mac - and probably never will - but I still see that there are good things about those.

 
Allow me to disagree,
Price might go up a bit, however it will be considerably cheaper than a Vista. Unless those sitting up there in Apple are truly nothing but morons, they would really like to push their OS in the market and bite a nice piece of the cake. Apple proved over the years than their innovative minds were the major reason for users buying their products, while their OS was the thing that held them back a little, due, that is, to lack of software solutions.
 
I think that the moment Apple moves to a more PC-form of hardware, their sales, both OS and hardware, will kick up - simple because people will assume that software (GAMES) will be more available - and I expect it to be so.
 
I do agree with you that OSX will likely still be cheaper than Vista (at least the more expensive versions).  They are going to want to get market share and won't be able to without some sort of price incentive.  
 
That being said, I don't believe that OSX will ever become a viable alternative to Windows (or Linux for that matter) since it is still designed for people who don't like computers.  Gamers are likely to stay with Windows so most games are also likely to stay.  Unless the gamer demographic changes, I think OSX will continue to be useless for gaming.
 
The only users that OSX has been able to get in the past have been professionals that have no computing experience but require computers for their work (musicians, film editors, etc).  Once OSX moves to non-Mac PCs there will be inumerably more bugs with hardware, etc, which will tarnish its image as an easy to use (relatively) bug free OS (to some degree).
 
While I do agree that OSX - or more correctly MAC computers - was mainly the tool of "professionals" I think that the Apple - MAC TM is changing direction. Its all a markiting thing, as I see it, when it comes to MAC, and not a quality - MAC computers were always of a higher quality and more innovative - performance, some are better and some are not depends on how much you are willing to pay.
I didn't get your note about gamers, please expand, but please keep in mind, that simple is not a bad thing, and "no computing exprience" is also the state of exprience of many gamers.

It's true was MacOS 8 was nothing but a big bug with a half-fancy UI, and that OS 9 was hardly better. OS X changed that quite profoundly - it's not everyday that a compete OS' codebase can be recompiled on another platform and work as is - like pirate pre-versions of OS X running on commodity PC hardware proved. Moreover, OS X's kernel is a mix of FreeBSD and Mach, arguably amongst the most stable pieces of software in existence.
 
No, frankly, Macs aren't the fancy pressbooks they used to be: they have actually gotten useful.
 
They're still too damn expensive.

 
Fanccccyyyyy - yes they arrreeee   the ONE I have seen is ...
 
Too damn expensive?
Depends on how you look at it - as I tried to explain before, trademarks, brands, make all the difference.
Example:
I can get a Levise, Lee cooper, and some "chinese junk" - all MADE IN CHAINA, the same damn factory, but in quite a difference in price.
Same you can choose to get an iPod, or a sweet, even better, similar machine and pay a lot more for the iPod.
and finally, you can buy an Alienware PC, and discover later on that you could build a pc with the same exact performance for 25% (at least) less.
does that make Levise, iPod or the Alienware pc an "only more expensive full of crap" products?
Can you compare a Benz that costs 30K $ to a Chevi that costs the same?
some can, some can't ... Brand is something that people are willing to pay for, so why not use that? ask Pepsi!
 
but the real question is, is Vista worthy more than a OSX? (regardless of the hardware coz that will be sooner or later irrelevant)

Abstraction made of the hardware, from the way it's built (Unix based, using open standards and open sourced code in several places), and considering its impact on the hardware (needs less RAM to run full tilt), I'd say Mac OS X  is both sleeker and better performing than Vista - due to less code bloat. From what I could see, Apple followed the principles of KISS.
 
On a side note, I'd like to mention that after reading the notes from the Wine project, they think they may be able to implement DX 10 on Linux - and, in the same go, implement DX 10 under Win XP too.
 
If they are successful, then the only reason left to buy Vista is gone.

 
Thank you,
Informative and CORRECT!
 
A bit Ironically, I will keep my XP a bit longer till I make sure my Linux can run all I need... and I am still looking for the full drivers of my MOBO...

 
If they can get DX 10 to run well on Linux, I bet many Windows users will move over to Linux (at least the more technically informed users).  The only other reason to stay with Windows over Linux is just for the wider variety of programs.