I need Ultimate mainly to use 12GBs of RAM (it was either that or business which is the same price). Home Premium limits you to 8. As to the 32/64 divide Ultimate is supposed to come with BOTH disks, and versions with only 32 bit are supposed to be tradable for a 64 bit version easily. I got a version that only had 32 bit Ultimate and couldn't legally trade it in.

As to why anyone would NEED more then 6 GBs, I have a RAM indicator on my G15 keyboard and when just running one instance of some games like Everquest 2 I have RAM utilization of over 80%. It also prob doesn't help that my graphics card alone is eating 2GBs, plus Vista sits on another GB+ even when doing nothing.

Either way, artificial limits on hardware from software is a bad idea. Why not go back to the Windows 95 model where there is Windows 95 and every copy has all the features. Is that too much to ask? I mean I know some of you are MS defenders, but can you at least agree that A)400 dollars is too much for an OS and B) there should be one version of an OS with features for both the enthusiasts and the casual consumers without some kind of 250 dollar upgrade fee?

What is the lesson we have all learned from this conversation? Buy a Mac = :)

LOL... I don't know which company I hate more... Microsoft or Apple.  I'm very tempted to get a Macbook Pro, but they are just so f'n expensive compared to most Notebook PCs that the big-box retailers carry.  Why can't Microsoft just make Windows XP2 like everyone wants?

What seems obvious and fair to you and me and most other people too, Ballmer-boyz won't ever admit, even under torture. Unless obviously MS releases a full-featured version at $99, then they'd go around trying to make people swallow the new Holy Redmond Gospel that MS invented the cheap OS

You need to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley.

I would advise you against a MB Pro ATM. They're basically the same machine they sold last year, just better screen and a slight performance boost. And the unibody, ofc.

Sometime this year they'll update them and it's either gonna be core 2 quads or i7's.

I would second bitmap's urging against the new MBP atm. If you want a new computer I would recomend the macbook currently, or waiting, or the 17 inch version (which is pretty nice). Waiting would be my 1st choice though given the new smaller chip dye with better performance revisions soon to arrive.

In fact it's really a bad time to buy any core 2 or old style quad core system. The i7 is just so superior its rediculous.

As a quick example programs that ran on my core 2 duo macbook pro (mid 2008 version) used up around 70-80% of processor power at times in Vista (which is a processor hog). Doing the exact same things on the i7 computer I bought the processor load is about 15% tops. I have never once seen my processor load going above 30% even playing Crysis or running 15 programs at once. The i7 is quite amazing and buying any computer without it is pointless atm.

If I had to buy a laptop today I would get a refurbished macbook air for 999 dollars and then get a gaming desktop seperatly, but that's just me :D.

Also do watch pirates of Silicon Valley, for one thing the Steve Balmer they have is SPOT ON. For another it really shows the genesis of Windows well. Microsoft promises to make Office, so they get a few pre release macs. They proceed to copy it wholesale and release "windows" in asia first before a release in the US. There's a great scene near the end where Steve Jobs bellows "you lied to me" and Gates equivocates just like he always does.

 A grand on a used laptop?  Are you serious? Also nothing makes me laugh more then mac fanboys fucking complaining about Window's being a copy of the Mac OS.  It doesn't matter... Gates saw the future just like Steve Jobs saw the future with the iPod... they created a more user friendly version of something that already existed slapped a brand on it and marketed the shit out of it.  As for waiting... intel's new chipset that suppose to go upto 16(32? damn I'm dropping out of the loop myself) cores should be releasing in the next couple of years.  You can keep waiting and something better is always going to come out... sometimes grabbing the high end of the last generation can save you hundreds of dollars and get you the performance you need for the next couple of years.  Of course I don't run that arms race anymore as I have neither the time nor the money to keep up with the Joneses.

btw:  Taken (the movie) is f'n awesome!  sorry just came from watching it

Just so you don't miss a nice movie out of misconceptions, Pirates of... isn't pro-apple (neither it's pro-ms).

It is true that computers always evolve and waiting will always yield more performance per dollar... but the current MB/MBP are just rehashes of last year's versions. Slightly increased FSB for a what, 5-7% performance boost? That's all. There's the nicer screen and the sweet unibody, and just that. Macs are expensive and 1500$ for last year's portable standards is sort of meh. By the way, used macs are often expensive...

Impulsivity and me are just saying that if Nightdragon wants an Apple laptop and he doesn't need it right now... well, if you have to buy it... the white macbook they sell for 999$ got upgraded with the unibody macbook innards so it's a very nice buy.

I personally have learned that every version except for the top version in ANY Windows is crap. I only get the top version.

@cueil in what world is windows ever more user friendly and superior? I mean did you ever even USE Windows 3.0? It was horrific. My dad, at the time, ran the education center for Illinois and so had access to a large number of computers of all stripes and I can say unequivically early versions of windows were just awful. The first even functional version of Windows was Windows 95 which came out in 95 "obviously". From System 7 in the late 80s on the Mac OS was very usable and worked great; even the first macs were at least on par with windows 95 other then being black and white (and having VERY limited Hard Drives and RAM).

The idea that there was some call for windows because the mac was hard to use is just insane, really. That's like saying the Internet Explorer was called for because Netscape was a bad browser (it certainly wasn't) or people hate Google and so need Windows Live Search (which they are now paying people to use and even still not gaining traction).

As to paying 999 for a used laptop, macs cost more used (and new) but their total cost of ownership is far lower. If you swap your computer every few years you get much higher resale value with macs, which makes the ocmputer as a whole less expensive. Farhad Manjoo did a great piece on that where he compared purchase price and resale value of various computers and found macs a few hundred dollars cheaper. I have never sold a mac I bought for less then a few hundred dollars below what was retail when I got it two years prior. I bought a G5 mac pro for 2300, sold it for 2000 2 years later, ditto for a more recent mac pro purchase.

It really is like buying a luxury car instead of a kia. I mean if you have a 2004 Lexus it's still worth over 50% of what you paid 5 years later while a 2004 Kia sells on the junk car lot for about 1500-2000 bucks retail blue book. I mean sure the kia cost only 15,000 new, but it was a total loss in value just a few years later (and for those years you're driving a friggin Kia).

  Article here http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2007/11/07/mac_price/index.html