Well, to be fair, you can’t compare a pre-loaded install of XP to a clean install of Vista. The first thing I ALWAYS do when buying/building a computer is wipe whatever crap they’ve put on there and reinstall the OS. And probably any touch screen stuff that you want in Vista has been done before with third party software, though honestly I’m not sure. I’d be happy with it just as a mouse personally.

I agree. the pepper and maemo options will benefit.
skype comes in 2 months for both platforms.

steve

Maybe the PepperPad isn’t looking all that bad now. Just needs a few more programs like Open Office, NVU, and Skype….

Actually I don’t think Vista is a waste of processing power. Memory and disk – definately.

Its interesting with the R2H though. Vista is a much cleaner install than what you get out of the box so if its free, its definitely worth making the upgrade.

Regarding touchscreens. I want all the nice touch elements which you don’t get with XP or 2k. I even want all the nice extras you get with a HID-compatabile tablet device. (Pen flicks, nicer handwriting experience, etc etc etc)

So if you’ve got the memory and disk space, Vista is the only choice in my opinion. This is coming from a man than spent 4 years using a Linux laptop and only recently switched when he realised that for mobile touchscreen devices, MS has the only set of solutions. Vista is the best of those solutions.

Steve.

Simple, don’t upgrade. I know I won’t. I’m still running Win2K, and will be putting it on my UMPC once I decide which one I want. Vista is simply a waste of limited processor power, and offers nothing new feature wise that hasn’t been done before. It’s a complete waste.

I’m not sure about this, but I’ve been hearing a lot about how Windows Vista has huge overhead dedicated to insuring that no one can copy protected premium content (HD-DVDs). It would seem that the issue is not the actual capability of the UMPCs you’re using but rather their use of hardware that does not “adequately” protect premium content. See Leo Laporte’s Security Now Podcasts for lots of detail on this (@ Twit.tv).

Hopefully there’s a registry setting or something to allow the apps to run regardless.
I was surprised my laptop wasn’t able to run Moviemaker as well. It’s a 2+ Ghz machine with 1GB of RAM but it uses the same Intel graphics chipset used in the Q1.

I doubt a lot of people will be adopting Vista right away because of all these requirements.

It also seems silly to me that gamers will be forced to upgrade to Vista to play DirectX 10 games as well.