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- But the problem is that whatever Microsoft comes up with to replace
Vista will be the same resource Hog Vista is now;
- with no substantial gain.

We know this to be true as it has already been stated Win 7 is based on
Vista. So in fact, todays Vista users are Microsoft beta testers.

- Imagine how nice it would be to have a REALLY fast, reliable PC that
ran on Some Future Iteration of hardware

Ubuntu, Fedora and XP.

XP you say? I think slowly Microsoft is getting the message. They dusted
off mothball plans for XP becasue Vista was too fat and slow for Eee PC.
And Eee PC with Linux was and still is selling pretty good. So the choice
was to revivce XP for the Eee PC or not participate. XP will be around for
a long time to come.

- but had Reliable, Familiar Windows XP as its OS

If you know XP, moving to Ubuntu or Fedora is not as bad as it sounds. In
fact, the menus are much better organized.

- tapping into whatever faster Internet / server farm is standard
down teh road.

There is no doubt a Linux based system will do the internet. Virtually
every common internet protocol out there existed on UNIX/Linux before
M-Windows. And even many that most that are not in the internet.