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I wanted one of the 30" monsters as a new primary desktop monitor but none has component/s-video/composite inputs so I settled for the next best thing that had them and made it my secondary computer monitor. In terms of Power-on-Hours, I use it as a secondary display about 70% of the time, with most of the remainder going to my PS2 and Gran Turismo 4 in 1080i. Movies and TV combined currently account for less than 10%. Next year, the PS3's share will increase to 20-40% thanks to Gran Turismo 5.

Did you consider an Xbox 360 with Forza 2 and the VGA cable? Gran Turismo is a decent Pokemon simulator, but for racing on a console you really can't beat Forza's physics system. Sure, GT5 will be a bit prettier than Forza 2, but it's also not going to be out for another year yet, it still won't have damage modelling, and most likely it'll still have the same crap physics simulation that Polyphony has used since GT1.

Just for the record, I'm not too much of a Forza fanboy. I bought my original PS1 for GT2 and I bought my PS2 for GT3 and 4. I'll very likely buy a PS3 in order to play GT5, but probably not until the price drops significantly (most likely just in time for GT6). Even so, I enjoyed Forza 1 much more than GT4 (GT4 got about two months of play time, then Forza shipped and I played that for 2 years), and Forza 2 is just plain awesome.

Where Nissan paid to get some cars added and doing the tournament thing.
http://forzamotorsport.net/nissan.htm

I have been waiting 2 years for the PS3. I loved the PS2 but was ready to use the potential of my HDTV because I'm a hard core Gran Turismo player. Well the new PS3 has been a total disappointment for me. My TV only does 1080i HD, no 720p. The PS3 doesn't upconvert its 720p games to 1080i, but instead down converts them to 480p! So much for next generation. Solution? $1500 external scaler, $2000 new HDTV, or go to the XBOX 360. Next up, I love rumble in racing games, guess what, SONY dropped the ball on that one too. XBOX 360 wins again. Now, there won't be any Gran Turismo on the XBOX, but wait, Forza 2 is coming out, and judging by the track list and car list, GT isn't the only game in town. http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/forums/permalink /23209/21658/ShowThread.aspx#21658 Then there is all the claims the PS3 is more powerful, so the graphics should be better. We all know game publishers are multi-platform these days, so they are going to develop for the lowest common denominator, so that may be the XBOX 360, Madden looks identical on both, Need for Speed Carbon is virtually the same. At least I won't have to deal with 480p in my games on the PS3. Then the best part, its $200 cheaper AND it comes with HDTV component cables, unlike the PS3. The only downsides I can see are you have to play for multiplayer XBOX LIVE, but from what I hear its a better experience.

What I think is odd about this is that the NT architecture has never really even been fully utilized, at least on the consumer side of Windows. In a lot of respects, NT is a pretty clever system, including highly individualizable security for files, processes, etc. It also supports multiprocessing well, contrary to the implication of the article. Point being, I'm not so sure the solution for Microsoft is to throw out NT and move on to something else (Singularity, or whatever it may be). I would suggest they instead look at the features already in place with NT and look at ways to actually enable and present them in a reasonable way in their consumer OSes.

I think the key point to keep in mind here is not that Microsoft is looking for a successor to Windows, but that these statements came from "a program manager for external research programs in the Microsoft Research group". This is what Mirosoft Research does. They come up with blue-sky ideas like replacing Windows entirely, and then the product groups integrate those ideas into real, shippable products. As an example, the "Drivatar" AI used by Forza Motorsport came directly out of MSR. The researchers had grand plans for the technology (get real motorsport "legends" to generate drivatars based on their driving style, learn from the player as he's playing, etc), while the implementation in Forza was more practical (the main AI was based on pre-release training and didn't learn from watching the player, there were no "professional" drivatars, the player had to actively train his drivatar in specific sessions rather than having it learn while he plays, etc). That's not a bad thing, and it's still a damn sight better than most other racing game AI out there (Gran Turismo, I'm looking at you. Damn retarded bumper car AI ...). Researchers are good at coming up with crazy ideas and sample implementations that don't take into account the rest of the system (back to Forza, there's only so much processing available in an Xbox to handle all of the physics and AI, which means that real-time drivatar training wouldn't be feasible). If you know what to look for, you can see many Microsoft Research contributions in shipping products (speech, grammar checking, natural language processing, etc in Office; anti-phishing in the MSN/Windows Live Toolbar and IE7; pretty much the entire backend for MSN/Windows Live Search; and so on), but it's only bits and pieces. Go poke around, look at the many areas of research going on at MSR. Take a look at their sample code. And then remember that when you see a similar but less-grandiose feature 5-10 years from now in a real, shipping product.

Note: I'm neither a Microsoft researcher nor a Forza developer, so all of the information above is what anyone can deduce from the sources I cited.

The other thing I'd like to see Microsoft do is separate out the kernel-level framework (NT system, drivers, etc) from the UI framework, so that it would then be possible to treat those two elements separately, in the same way that Linux has the kernel and X/Window Manager stuff totally separated out.

Microsoft has already done this to a fair extent with Terminal Server. The main thing to keep in mind is that the main bits in kernel space really are drivers, not the UI framework (and even that's changing with Vista). Terminal Server is very much Microsoft's X. Do you remember the "Fast User Switching" feature in Windows XP? Yeah, that's Terminal Server, and what it really means is that every time you use the Windows UI (in XP and 2K3) you're actually interfacing through a local Terminal Server session (just like X!). Of course, TS will have its little differences when running over a network, like not supporting video overlays or 3D acceleration, but in most case