[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
??? That doesn't make much sense. If they don't want to upgrade, they're not going to buy a new machine.

What about all those business with Software Assurance that have already paid for the Longhorn upgrade? Whoops, looks like new computer for the entire company.

[Eug Wanker]

Man, we don't even have X.4 yet and people are talking about the specific hardware requirements of X.6? As for me, I expect to get a G5 1.8 laptop with Radeon 9700 just to run X.4.

Originally posted by Kenneth:
My friend has a NEC notebook with WinME on it. WinME is a horrible OS ever, but she still sticks with WinME.

So, again, how does this help MS get end users to upgrade to Longhorn? It sounds like people will upgrade when they need new hardware. If that's Win XP SP2 on that hardware, then MS makes money. If that's Longhorn on that hardware, then MS makes money.

Originally posted by olePigeon:
What about all those business with Software Assurance that have already paid for the Longhorn upgrade? Whoops, looks like new computer for the entire company.

Even if that were true, that's irrelevant for MS, because already got the money for Longhorn. Anyways, Longhorn should run fine on any 3 GHz machine, even with crappy video. It's sort of like OS X. OS X runs just fine without a Radeon, but you don't get the benefit of Quartz Extreme.

[itai195]

Most businesses would upgrade their computers every 3 or 4 years anyway... And large ones purhcase their OS licenses separately.

[Kenneth]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
One step at a time young one.

Apple will drop support for Macs without AGP slots first. More specifically, I expect Apple to make a Quartz Extreme video card a requirement. Meaning PowerBook G3s, first PowerBook G4 Tis, Rage 128 iBooks, and all of the G3 iMacs will lose support.

I don't expect Apple to start being discriminatory with the G4 Power Macs (Provided they have QE video) for many years to come.

I thought the TiBook/400 & 500 and all iBooks are AGP-based...
ATI RAGE 128 Mobility 2x AGP on them..

iMac G3 .. Rage 128 is AGP too.. at 2x

[Lateralus]

Yeah, they all have AGP but the stock video is not Quartz Extreme capable.

[Eriamjh]

What's really sad is that Macs may not even be at 4GHz by 2006.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

Aero, which is I guess equivalent to Quartz, needs:
a graphics adapter with full DirectX 9 support, 32MB of RAM, 32-bit color, and AGP 4x support.

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1083874709.html

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by Eriamjh:
What's really sad is that Macs may not even be at 4GHz by 2006.

...why is that?

[soul searching]

Originally posted by PowerMacMan:
...why is that?

I'm being optimistic about it and think that we'll see such a beast from Apple in the summer or fall of �05. However, if the current problems IBM is facing continue throughout this year, it's not hard to believe that we will not see a 4GHz machine until 2006 (because we might not see a 3GHz machine until the end of this year or early �04).

[Eug Wanker]

There might not be any 6 GHz PCs by 2006 either.

Intel is switching to lower-clocked dual-core designs instead.