Plintus, this is your logic:
Random Access Memory Modules are cheap. Since RAM Modules are cheap, we should buy more of them to make up for the high RAM requirements of a new operating system.
Now, if lots of people thought that way (and many do), then the RAM-Making companies would be getting extra money thanks to M$'s crappy programming methods. And M$ would also get more money, since people would buy Vista because it doesn't really slow your computer down if you have the right amount of RAM.
Money in exchange for mediocrity, yeah sounds very logic.
About the looks of Vista: It does look better, but not better enough to actually buy it (At least not to me, perhaps that is relative). It doesn't add anything new besides the looks - unless you count "Support for DirectX 10" and "Support for DRM'd content" as paramount additions.
I'm sure Microsoft will strive to limit as many new technologies to Vista as they can.
About DirectX 10: Limiting DirectX 10 to Vista is an insult to Gamers. Now all the new games (that use DX10) will have to be run in an O.S. that has a crappy performance compared the its ancestor, WinXP - and it is just because M$ didn't feel like letting DX10 run on XP to increase Vista sales.
About the DRM : Newer Blue-Ray and HD DVD (and perhaps other media) content will be DRM'd and will only run in DRM-compatible hardware, such as special readers that will "surprisingly" not work on non-DRM inclusive O.S.s suck as Windows XP or any version of Linux. DRM will be capable not only of preventing you from playing your movies/music in any device you want, but also time restrictions and playtime/playcount restrictions could (and thus, will) be implemented. Thanks to DRM, soon movies and probably even music could be restricted to be enjoyed by the costumer at the time and date the suppliers would want, and only as many times as they'd decide, on the devices they'd see fit.
So, as my Ideology goes against what Vista stands for and it doesn't really have anything to offer to me, I'll keep on using WinXP for games and Linux for everything else. Mac is a decent choice, though they will sooner or later embrace DRM, and maybe even some Linux distributions will.
I do have a computer in which I have Vista installed for testing purposes.
