Microsoft has seen how design has helped Apple over the years, and no doubt would like to emulate that. Their xBox 360 definitely has a much more sophisticated than the old black box. With PCs, though, they have to rely on OEMs like Dell et al. That makes it a bit tougher.

Interesting comments in the article by design guru Don Norman, who thinks PCs should be less high-tech looking and more compatible with a home environment. Remember years ago when a few small firms were putting bulky desktops into wood boxes (or at least veneer or simulated wood)? I haven't seen them lately, but maybe it's time for a comeback. A nice mahogany laptop would look perfect in my den. :)

Having recently bought a new PC it will probably be my last ever true desktop. The next home pc I buy in 3 - 4 years will most likely be a luggable. In the 90's they were "Portable" because technology couldn't make them small - the new Portable's will be big because they will have 19in+ LCD screens and have the full power of desktops. Like the new Dell which uses the hinges as a carrying handle we will be able to take our home PC's anywhere in the house, vacation, or to the office - no need for that remote control software anymore.

Microsoft has been producing guidelines for PC manufacturers for at least 8 years. The oldest one I remember was called PC98 (there might've been a PC95 but I don't remember). That's when we got the different coloured boxes around the ports on the back with the little icons next to them.

At some point it became part of their logo program. If you wanted to put the "Designed for Windows 98" logo on the computer then it had to conform to those guidelines.

Microsoft could stand to better gain from telling manufacturers to not put in a 3GHz processor with 256 MB of RAM. They could also benefit by disabling virtual memory and not approving systems that have less then 1GB of memory for low end lines of computers. Moderate target computers should contain no less then 2GB of memory (in a 2x1GB configuration).

The reason I am saying this is because this would drastically improve the performance of the computers running Vista. Anyone who argues that virtual memory should be enabled does not know how to run an OS. If the user runs out of memory the OS will prompt them telling them their application did not have enough memory to access. The user then knows they have to purchase more memory. With virtual memory the user's computer constantly gets slower and the user will never become aware of the memory issue.

I'd also like to see a lot of the junk disabled by default. Really who here uses remote registry? They should also do away with the retarded ME start menu and make only minor adjustments to the classic start menu.

The lack of the new file system and other cool features reduces the need for an new OS. The only useful feature I can see out of Vista is the ability to control audio levels per application. I however still hope that we will have the ability to manually control each device.

I've also heard that the desktop is now off limits to the barrage of junk icons.

Microsoft should also implement a no-junk software policy for pre-installed Vista computers. If a company wants to install bloatware such as Netscape they should instead install Mozilla SeaMonkey.

Does anyone know how much the networking has been improved? I know you can connect a USB cable between two MACs and they will both instantly display the hard drives of each other in the OS's version of Windows Explorer.

- John

I wonder just how deep this goes. To what extent will this make running other operating systems seem less-than-ideal on a vistaised PC?

"We do plan to incorporate Microsoft's new buttons onto our keyboard when Vista becomes available,"

So - along with the 'windows key' we have more new buttons?

It doesnt sound anything good to me