OK no dx10 demo for me on XP or any new games coming for that matter.

and good vid drivers are getting hard to find for my setup so bill you suc big a$$ dude!

anyway, newegg has several versions, been seeing "builders versions" guess that means same machine with unlimited activations?

i know vista is buggy and reviews are low, but have to buy it now while I can and just wait for patches and fixes, drivers.

ultimate version? wtf is that?

$225 is about all i can go for a version of it.

my current os install is trashed as far as getting vid drivers to work right.
activated and all windows updates, my games, mods, maps...
don't wanna re-install, and probably have the same issues.

just need to know what version i should get and i'll work with vista, esp. if the builders version lets you get all the window updates without activation or however it works.

guessing the 64 bit version is good for down the road.

here's the first DX10 game demo I know of.
http://www.lostplanetcommunity.com/demo.php

yeah, so help!

By builders version, I can only guess the egg is referring to OEM copies? I've never seen a windows OS for sale online with builders version in the title or description.

Vista Home Basic and Home Premium have vastly differing features and functionality while Vista Business has slightly varied features over Home Premium when it comes down deep into the features list. For example, Vista Home Basic is exactly that - Vista and IE7. It doesn't include the Aero interface or anything to backup. Aside from the really basic standard OS stuff that is pretty much it. Home Premium includes media centre , Windows Movie Maker HD and premium games, while Vista Business differs slightly by removing the media functionality and adding fax, remote desktop (not included with Home Premium but hacks are around on the net) and complete pc backup functionality.

To put it simply, Vista Ultimate is a combination of both Home Premium and Business.

A run down of all the major features and comparisons between versions is available here at microsoft.com

Vista Ultimate includes the BitLocker feature, however, I remember reading somewhere that parts of BitLocker are hardware dependant. More info here.

At first glance, Home Premium is more feature rich over Business, for home usage at least. If you need more comprehensive backup facilities built into the OS, with remote desktop get Vista Business. However, if you want the media functionality plus the business functionality ... Vista Ultimate is probably the best purchase in the longterm.

You are right to guess the 64 bit version is good for using into the future. Vista x64 hasn't been sprung on the market like XP Pro x64 was. At one stage, microsoft compiled a list of applications that may have issues running on XP x64. New applications that have been Vista certified shouldn't have anywhere near as many problems.

I'm running Vista Ultimate x64 without problems.

there is a lot to vista there's a huge huge website about that has all the vista features listed out and explained (the thing is probably a good 4 hours of reading or more) here that'll explain everything for you. I definately recommed a higher level version that has more of the advanced features. I'm told the firewall on vista is supposed to be rock solid and there is a lot of little maintenance things it does in the background to keep your HDD's fresh as well as your processes higher in the list than it's processes. You'll also want to get a high end data stick for it's rapid cache feature. it's all explained in the link above. Personally, I would get business or ultimate. It'll cost more but it'll definately be worth it especially with DX10 cards.

Though for benching i would keep a clean install of XP, 2k, or maybe even linux in a spare partition. because those still run lighter than vista. (not benched linux but some of those can run really light on system resources so it stands to reason that they run a bench better.)