Where was my head. Mondays.... No...there are separate DVDs for x64 and x86...at least on MSDN. I've seen one custom -built DVD that has ALL versions...but you're not going to see that in the store.

Okay, I'm still confused.

What I want to know is this: if I buy Windows Vista xxx, do I get both the 32-bit and 64-bit products in the same package?

I realize that the answer may be different for upgrades versus oem versus regular editions, but if a guy like me can't make heads nor tails about it, then Microsoft is in for trouble. With something like five or six different SKUs already for the retail package, plus who knows how many different upgrades SKUs, there's going to be a helluva lot of confusion out there.

Note to Microsoft: confused customers is not a good thing. They want to want to buy the product, but they have no idea as to which one they want to want to buy because there are so many different versions of this product, and it is not cheap, so they want to want to want to buy the right version of the product, and will not buy anything as long as they are afraid that they might buy the wrong product.

Get it? Got it? Good!

What I want to know is this: if I buy Windows Vista xxx, do I get both the 32-bit and 64-bit products in the same package?

From what I'm seeing on MSDN...no. There is one dvd for x64 and one dvd for x86. All versions of the os (Home, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate) are on each DVD. I don't know what they're going to do in retail, but that's the way it looks right now on MSDN.

DO YOU KNOW ??? For those of you that know more about skinning and less about computers a new treat with " VISTA " will be that you can simply Double up your RAM by adding a thumb drive ( flash ) of equal ram value or higher by inserting the thumb drive into your USB ( 2 ) speed port , you will get a pop up saying do you want to use this thumb drive as a drive or as extra ram - choose ram and bingo you double your ram - i'm running 2 gigs of ram so a thumb of 2 gigs will give me 4 gigs of ram ( cheaper ) to up your ram this way and easier than buying actual ram - you can get these thumbs for a song these days - Az for me - lucky me because of a work connection I will be getting a Free copy of Vista Ultimate for my duo PC Jan 17 release , i have a media center PC , so got to wait till then . I'm into Movie making and Video editing more so than skinning and this will be a big plus for me in the video editing...hopefully in time all parts of Stardock will work nicely with Vista ]can't wait , more updates to follow at that time ...  .

I'll "need" to go to Vista...no matter what, as Wincustomize.com and Stardock also go to Vista... for Moderation of skins...if nothing else...

Despite my desperate lack of funds, I will end up doing the same.

My main drive is a 500Gb S300, so I'll create a partition on that and set up a dual boot. Vista is no where near ready for me to abandon XP yet, especially for gaming. Maybe add another drive to bring me up to 1.5Tb (you can't have too many back-ups). Plus I'll need to keep XP for moderating XP stuff.

I do have a second pc which will always remain XP (and unskinned). Some games just don't like my dual core SLi pc...

"XP is proven as an unstable OS"

My windows xp is as unstable as train on rails.

Waitamin...

Anyway I use both linux and windows and love em both. I can't wait to have windows vista with new computer.

what is vista really offering over xp exactly?

linux has like 200 distro's, its very difficult for most to sort it all out,some are hard to use, some like suse have full gui, wine and cedega can play pc games
overall theres nothing you cant do in linux.

vista? well theres alot you cant do out of box, some things are not easily removed without deeper knowledge, registry hides so much junk after uninstalling simple apps
it has several security flaws found and its not out yet...say hello to more hotfixes
slight improvements to xp apps...oh yeah, those crappy ones that i replaced years ago with 3rd party apps only to have win apps sit there taking up space, they rarely get updated with any real new features
you'll have to download stuff patch/crack/tweak to do what you want to do with it
many devices still require drivers

linux can be difficult to choose and sort out but it can be sweet too once its set up with the stuff that suits you, its secure cuz few try to hack it like they do windows, theres tons of apps to do anything you want.

meanwhile vista gets bogged down over time, things suddenly and mysteriously stop working correctly for no apparant reason, i cant recall how many dozens of times i rebooted my pc and suddenly media player or some other app malfunctions.
lots of apps will be available for vista like xp but means more poorly coded ones and more malicious ones as well

if companies like dell or hp started customizing linux with fancy gui's and put in the apps that equal or better vista's in some computers...users would be just as happy and moreso if they knew all the problems they missed out on

windows forums are choked..literally choked with error issues/ virus issues...etc and etc, its insane, linux forums are more like..how do i do this or that?

windows you have to download 3rd party apps to fix problems, remove junk, change simple settings, allow this or disallow that, validate everything, format reinstall validate again...oops i already used up all my activations, time to call and spend 20 minutes of my time to activate a $400 product...need i go on?