tatey.com

According to Neowin, Windows Vista will hit the shelves with a $499 CND price tag. That’s for the Ultimate Edition, which is the equivalent of Windows XP Pro. Home Premium and the Ultimate Upgrade are listed at $299. Any reasonable person would look at this pricing scheme in disbelief. You could build your own PC for the price of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Unfortunately, a lot PC gamers will be forced to upgrade if they desire DX10 support. In addition, with the advent of “Home Theatre PC’s” many private users will seek Windows Vista for their multimedia centres. From a corporate perspective, I don’t see any justified reasoning to upgrade from Windows XP/2K to Vista at the moment, at least on workstations.

What can we expect from this pricing? Firstly, it’s going to encourage further pirating which is a trait for [a great majority of] proprietary software - Especially from the gaming community who may posses the technical knowledge to do so. Secondly, I feel that many users will simply stick with 2K/XP labelling them as “Good Enough”. In contrast, I hope that it encourages users to seek out free [or less expensive] alternatives to Microsoft operating systems such as Linux.

I especially like the descriptions of the various editions of Windows Vista on the Microsoft website.

Windows Vista Home Premium
Whether you choose to use your PC to write e-mail and surf the Internet, for home entertainment, or to track your household expenses, Windows Vista Home Premium delivers a more complete and satisfying computing experience.

Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Basic is designed to deliver improved reliability, security, and usability to home PC users who just want to do the basics with their PCs.

They boast that the Premium Edition allows you to write e-mail and surf the web. Fantastic, but where does it leave the Basic edition? Well, it’s designed to deliver the basics. I was under the impression that e-mail and web browsing were already basic? Heh, that said I’m sure I’m just playing on their words.

I have never really been completely satisfied with my computer/study desk setup. I’ve always disliked one or two features of every desk I’ve ever owned. They’ve either been too small, the wrong colour, cramped, or just the wrong style. More importantly, a majority of desks are designed with the intention that the user will only have a single computer monitor. Organisations neglect the owners of multi-displays such as myself, mostly because it isn’t nearly as profitable as the mainstream market. After all, how many people do you know actually have a multi-display setup? Tired and fed-up with my previous computer desk because of how cramped it was, I opted to purchase a new desk… Here it is!

It’s actually quite interesting how the entire situation unfolded. Originally, I went to OfficeWorks in search of new stationary and notebooks for this semester of Uni. Every time I visit OfficeWorks, I always find myself admiring those attractive computer desks that come with a rather unattractive price tag. However, this time ’round the “Arc Workstation” caught my eye. It was ideally sized, a corner desk and consisted of very dark colours with a nice silver contrast. I instantly found myself attached to this desk, and after noting the rather affordable price tag, I was sold.

Now that I had purchased a new desk, I wanted to update the rest of the furniture in my room. As a result, I also bought the “Serrento” single bed from Super A-mart in a similar colour the Arc Workstation. In addition, I needed a new shelf system to store all of the books and other academic papers that had previously resided in the desks of my old setup. Back to OfficeWorks, I picked up a fully height adjustable, chrome steel, five tier shelf stand. Now, all the furniture in my bedroom actually looks attractive together. I also performed a massive clean-up, and ripped ALL but one poster off the walls. I’ve definitely created the “minimal” look, which is far more relaxing and peaceful than my previous “cluttered fit-everything-you-can”. Overall, I can now stretch at my computer desk, and I feel I’ve really made the appropriate choice. After all, you should always feel relaxed in your bedroom, right?