Those boxes are weight... About 15 years back I helped build a very ez (Rutan's design too, btw). Construction was 'composite' materials - a bit of a radical chance from the way folks traditional built aircraft. You cut a lot of foam and put fiberglass and resin on it. The real work was making the jigs to get the right camber on the wings. You had to put weight on stuff to make sure it warped at the correct angle. With some parts, you had to do large chunks in one laying (is that even the right word?) of resin since it makes a stronger bond.
It shocked me a bit, but this is actually a good way to 'mine' for gold. It is far easier to extract gold (and other precious metals) from old electronics than it is to get it from ore. Go figure.
And... if this customer is really not dealing with 'enterprizy' sized data, the free as in beer version of Oracle XE is available for Linux (x86) and Windows, which seems very close to the 'standard edition' in terms of functionality.
If the data can live in this box:
Oracle Database XE can be installed on any size host machine with any number of CPUs (one database per machine), but XE will store up to 4GB of user data, use up to 1GB of memory, and use one CPU on the host machine.
You are golden. If they can't, they can probably pony up for another CPU.
Now you know why your corporate IT department is so reluctant to update software and OSs.
Tis worse - even those of us who have an MSDN Universal subscription - cannot get access to this bloody service pack to do testing prior to the release. Looks the corps will find out what works when the boxes start to autoupdate.
Whether you are buying Benq, LG, Dell, Viewsonic, it doesn't matter. Most of them are 6 bit.... But don't for a minute think all those free Dell monitors bundled with low end PCs are anything better. Hell, even the ones you can pay to upgrade to aren't often anything better than 6-bit.
For those interested in looking up the monitors, here is a handy guide that gives you the inside scoop on most of the Dell flat panels. Also why the the 200x, 240x, and 300x series monitors get the loving they do and were worth the extra dollars.
Sounds like you want an internship or something along that line of thought. You can check out postings at the university, etc, but your best bet is doing a bit of personal networking. Got any friends who already have a job? Check with them to see if there are any intern positions in there shop. Odds are, it will pay peanuts (not even the salted kind), but any 'real world' work experience is going to be worth its weight in gold. Find a job while in school! It will put you head and shoulders above a fresh CS grad who never did anything outside of the classroom.
Odds are, you also won't get to touch any real code for whatever product. Tis OK, you will get to do C++ later. More often than not, internal tools are desperately needed by the business or development - which are just the non-critical things you might get a chance to do. Most everything will start to follow a pattern of User input > mid tier going some munging on that data > stuffing, finding, and retrieving information from a database. I'd pick a platform - Java, Rails, PHP - does not really matter - be able to do web based CRUD operations, and strike when the opportunity rises. Don't be afraid to volunteer time as you build out your first end to end app. Churches, middle schools, etc, all have needs but no budget for anything. Look for non profit groups initially if you can't find an entry level/intern position. Working with a live 'user' where you are trying to sues out requirements and read minds is a valuable experience. Going end to end on something, from white board to running is a huge confidence booster.
A certification, doing self study, is probably worth your time. Again, like real work experience, having a silly cert that says you know the basics of the language (like the Java one, for instance) will help when it goes into interview time. Don't go crazy with this, however, because a full range of certs without experience is worth little (^H^H nothing - a big warning flag). One cert on the language will help with the first couple year job acquisition.
I'm gaming on a single 30" monitor, in addition to using it for work (with another monitor paired up). 2560x1600 with current games does tax the system, but I was able to play most things with a 7900gtx if I turned the eye candy off. Updated to a 8800gts (512), which goes a long way to turning on some of the graphics. I'm in queue with EVGA's setup up program for the 9800gx2, which should be enough for a 'normal' game experience that I have with a lesser resolution.
Not saying that $1200 for a pair of video cards is a good idea (a quarter of that gives a nice experience, half that should make for what I'd call spot on and good for a couple years)- but keep in mind that folks who picked up a 30" monitor already spent more than $1200. You surely don't need that sort of graphics system to run on lesser hardware. A bit more hardware is needed for the higher resolutions, however.
Was not that long ago that a 21" CRT or a 15" LCD went for that price too. All the 'latest generation' stuff tends to carry a heavy price tag on first release.
Years back, Gigabyte released a RAM based SATA drive - the iRAM. This is why folks were excited about it - just honking fast. It had limitations, however. 4x1G max capacity per drive, used (relatively spendy)DDR1 RAM, and apparently did not work nicely in a RAID-0 config when trying to bump the storage capacity. Still, RAM rather than flash is what I was looking for as a primary OS drive.
The next generation of IRAM fixed my major pain point - allowing dirt cheap DDR2 RAM and allowing 8G max storage per drive.... but it never released... (if anyone here knows of such a device, please post or email) Other drives are on the market, but they want 4 figure price tags. I don't get it. For those of us who can deal with having a hard drive that could 'evaporate' if it ran out of juice for one reason or another (disk images)...trading performance for the hassle... why did the DDR2 drives never make it out? Seagate wielding the patent stick would explain much.
I'm getting a little disturbed by the whole "We hate it because the battery's not removable". Even here in the Tom's review they make the somewhat insane claim that the machine isn't portable because you can't swap batteries.
You don't spend near enough quality time on an airplane. Airports - even with a club membership - are notoriously sparse on electrical outlets. While the flight itself may be three hours or so, there is a pretty good change you will spend a good chunk of time at the gate running on battery. Most folks put the extra battery in the carry-on bag. I pack a spare battery with my t60p and would do so with a smaller laptop as well. Battery goes fast when working/coding or watching a movie. The smaller screen gives you a chance to open the laptop if you are not sitting in the front of the bus. An extra USB port or Ethernet port would be nice ~ an extra battery pack is a must.
YMMV, but I just picked up a 12.1" 1.8ghz (Pentium M) / winxp pro / cdrw / 1g RAM / 60g HDD dell referb for $450 for my little one. Thought about the eepc for $350, but the screen size was wrong for her. Might for me with the new cut. Point being, is you get a lot of computer for under $500 these days. A windows mobile smartphone for that price... yikes.
You apparently don't appreciate the payload differences.
Soyuz = VW Beetle Shuttle = tractor trailer
Perhaps a better comparison would be the Proton heavy, which can push 44,100 lb to LEO, 12,100 lb to GTO, 4,850 lb to GEO. The Soyuz is 15,400 lb to LEO. Not all cargo needs to go up on a heavy, however, as the (relatively) cheap Soyuz do the job.
The shuttle, payload to 53,700 lb to LEO, 8,390 lb to GTO. It also goes EOL in two years, with optimistic hopes that the US heavy will actually fly in 2014.
Sounds like they just started leaking info on the new 9" version of the eepc - here. Looks like more or less the same form factor, bigger screen. We shall see on costs.
They could shave some time off of the boarding process - but there is way too little cargo space inside the aircraft. For those who travel often (I'm in a commercial jet more often than my car), the early boarding process gives us 'bread and butter' customers a chance to stow our gear, and those who fly once in a blue moon (usually cheap seats) a longer wait. The inefficiency is a perk, if you travel often.
Sure, they could max/min the time better... but... this is not really something that needs fixing.
I work for a software shop where we can do high availability, but more often than not, folks chose to lower the uptime expectation rather than pony up for the stupid money it takes to have the hardware / software / infrastructure to get there. Most companies know the customer will not pay the extra cash for the uptime, thus... you get what you pay for.
I can guess why... (one of the hazards of doing more than 500k miles a year) Many shoes do indeed have metal in them. I suspect scanners were implemented with this in mind, so one of the more clever tricks you would do back when you could wear your shoes is to shuffle your feet on the ground as you pass through the portal. Tis a bit harder to hide stuff in your socks.
...is that evolution is considered at theory, but Newton's theory of gravitation is considered a fact.
Actually.... Newton's laws of motion are a great example of theory vs fact. Time and space were more or less considered absolutes. They were mostly spot on, until things move at relativistic speeds. The formulas were adjusted with Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Odds are, another insight or observed discrepancy will have us modify it again.
One of the most thrilling parts of science is getting to the point in a field where you look out and say - this is our best guess on *how* things work. The universe is a fabulous puzzle.
I think its fine, don't punish companies for doing what the NSA asks them to do, corporations are not responsible for upholding the rights of individuals.
"Befehl ist Befehl" does not alleviate the person (be it individual or cooperate entity)of responsibility for the crime. They should be dropping Thor's hammer on these folks, and then the folks who asked for the crime to be committed. I don't care what side of the political system you are on - the rule of law must be upheld at all levels!
I disagree - that was apples to app ^H^H^H - a fair comparison. Both were priced with a $1000 SSD drive. Apple gives you the option for a 80GB 4200-rpm Parallel ATA hard disk drive to cut a grand off the price. According to this guy, the SSD drive will be the only option at launch with other options to follow. When they do offer drive options - and they must - I bet they will be SATA based drives like the rest of the Thinkpad series (all of them). Price will drop a grand as well when spinning disk is substituted for solid state.
Additionally, there is a very good chance that the DVD bay is removable, and can be replaced with another 2.5" large capacity HDD.
The options they are packing into the x300 are exactly what I was hoping the mac air ultra portable would have. When they start shipping without SSD's, I'm sure IT will have one waiting for me - with an extra battery back and HDD tray.
I would just like to know, what could the FBI do to make it's spy ware different from anything else out there in the wild?
Were it me... I would have Microsoft sign it and push it to my target IP/MAC as a silent Windows update. Even if you say 'let me manually download them', the updater has an API that will automagically download and install a patch. (noticed that a couple years back when one of the big bugs hit) You would have to have Microsoft's cooperation... but, you know, I'm sure they would be willing to do such a thing. Add in code that would make debugging difficult and use some of the same internal TCP/IP tricks that Microsoft uses for hosts, etc, odd of someone realizing they were tapped would be slim. If you had the private key to sign the update...
Second the x60s with the extended battery pack. Back when I covered EMEA and AP, I had zero issues with it. The power brick handled all sorts of dirty power, much that killed off other devices. You can even open this laptop on an aircraft in coach - important for me as I was doing the Minneapolis > Amsterdam > New Delhi run and back every week and a half.
And yes - mine also survived a fall when one of our TSA folks fumbled it during a screening.
w00t! I know this one. Had the same problem with my mainboards - the C7 processor is i586, not i686. Try the Ubuntu distros - they will work without any work. Gentoo, RedHat derivatives(Centos, RHEL, OEL) default to i686, which will cause all sorts of weirdness like hard crashes and reboots. If you want to get RH to work, you need to set it up with the correct kernel.
(Got one of those $60 'google dev kit' mainboards, and was puzzled when gOS (a Ubuntu variant) booted fine, but Gentoo live distro did not. Same deal for my fanless VIA EPIA 5000)
*If* you go the Server 2003 road - http://win2k3.msfn.org/ has a great starting point for tuning the OS for work/play too. XP64 apparently is based off of the Server 2003 codebase (much like Server 2008 sounds like it might be sharing a codebase with Vista). If if works on one, it will probably work on the other.
As another bit of anecdotal evidence - Vista64 compiled my project in 17 seconds, XP64 in 15 seconds on the new hardware. The old AMD3800+ with XP (x86) took 47 seconds. YMMV. Good luck!
You might be pleasantly shocked by XP-64. I've got an MSDN subscription, so have pick of the litter when it comes to operating systems for kicking around. When I tried XP-64 June of 2005, it was a bit rough. I had 4G of RAM in my work / gaming box and figured it was worth just running the 32-bit version of XP and letting the OS round down to 3.5G.
Parts for my new box showed up this week. This time, 8G of RAM, a dual core (E8400) CPU, nVidia 780i SLI mainboard, and nVidia 8800gts (512M). Since I went nVidia for chipset and video card, all of the 'box' hardware had drivers for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, and Server 2003.
Gave Vista64 (ultimate) a try. Gah...
First, while I'm sure SP1 will probably fix this, the installer failed with 8G of RAM. Pulled out three 2G modules and all extra HDD's, and was able to continue on. OS installed, drivers picked up all of the mainboard/graphics hardware in a reasonable default mode. Had wired network access at that point, so downloaded the current drivers, which picked up all of the 'core' hardware. Plugged in the other HDD's and changed the SATA cabling. Blue screens again. Pull out the drives, put the SATA cables back in for the main drive, blue screen again. Took several reboots before I realized the Plextor DVDR (PX-712A) would cause a blue screen when the tray closed with a disk. Popped in a standard IDE DVDR, and got the rest of the system up and running.
All the development tools and apps worked. Games (CS:Source, Supreme Commander, BFME2) worked OK. A few glitches in BFME on a long game.
The final nail was USB devices. Figured I would blog about he new kit, so I plugged in my USB cord into my camera. Vista recognized it was a camera, but failed to do anything else. No drivers. Same went for *every* USB thumbdrive I owned. (Pics here)
Gave up, after much messing about.
XP-64 installed with 8G of RAM installed. Did not get the Ethernet running, but did mount a thumbdrive without issues. Installed the core set of mainboard/graphics drivers, did a windows update, and everything just worked. Not a single blue screen or crash under XP-64 so far.
Server 2003-64 is also running rock solid. Just work stuff on that drive, however....
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Those boxes are weight... About 15 years back I helped build a very ez (Rutan's design too, btw). Construction was 'composite' materials - a bit of a radical chance from the way folks traditional built aircraft. You cut a lot of foam and put fiberglass and resin on it. The real work was making the jigs to get the right camber on the wings. You had to put weight on stuff to make sure it warped at the correct angle. With some parts, you had to do large chunks in one laying (is that even the right word?) of resin since it makes a stronger bond.
If you'd like to come over with your car-duplicating equipment and make an exact copy of my Ferrari without damaging it, you're welcome to do so.
MacLaren tried that... did not go well.
It shocked me a bit, but this is actually a good way to 'mine' for gold. It is far easier to extract gold (and other precious metals) from old electronics than it is to get it from ore. Go figure.
If the data can live in this box:
You are golden. If they can't, they can probably pony up for another CPU.
Now you know why your corporate IT department is so reluctant to update software and OSs.
Tis worse - even those of us who have an MSDN Universal subscription - cannot get access to this bloody service pack to do testing prior to the release. Looks the corps will find out what works when the boxes start to autoupdate.
Whether you are buying Benq, LG, Dell, Viewsonic, it doesn't matter. Most of them are 6 bit. ... But don't for a minute think all those free Dell monitors bundled with low end PCs are anything better. Hell, even the ones you can pay to upgrade to aren't often anything better than 6-bit.
For those interested in looking up the monitors, here is a handy guide that gives you the inside scoop on most of the Dell flat panels. Also why the the 200x, 240x, and 300x series monitors get the loving they do and were worth the extra dollars.
Sounds like you want an internship or something along that line of thought. You can check out postings at the university, etc, but your best bet is doing a bit of personal networking. Got any friends who already have a job? Check with them to see if there are any intern positions in there shop. Odds are, it will pay peanuts (not even the salted kind), but any 'real world' work experience is going to be worth its weight in gold. Find a job while in school! It will put you head and shoulders above a fresh CS grad who never did anything outside of the classroom.
Odds are, you also won't get to touch any real code for whatever product. Tis OK, you will get to do C++ later. More often than not, internal tools are desperately needed by the business or development - which are just the non-critical things you might get a chance to do. Most everything will start to follow a pattern of User input > mid tier going some munging on that data > stuffing, finding, and retrieving information from a database. I'd pick a platform - Java, Rails, PHP - does not really matter - be able to do web based CRUD operations, and strike when the opportunity rises. Don't be afraid to volunteer time as you build out your first end to end app. Churches, middle schools, etc, all have needs but no budget for anything. Look for non profit groups initially if you can't find an entry level/intern position. Working with a live 'user' where you are trying to sues out requirements and read minds is a valuable experience. Going end to end on something, from white board to running is a huge confidence booster.
A certification, doing self study, is probably worth your time. Again, like real work experience, having a silly cert that says you know the basics of the language (like the Java one, for instance) will help when it goes into interview time. Don't go crazy with this, however, because a full range of certs without experience is worth little (^H^H nothing - a big warning flag). One cert on the language will help with the first couple year job acquisition.
I'm gaming on a single 30" monitor, in addition to using it for work (with another monitor paired up). 2560x1600 with current games does tax the system, but I was able to play most things with a 7900gtx if I turned the eye candy off. Updated to a 8800gts (512), which goes a long way to turning on some of the graphics. I'm in queue with EVGA's setup up program for the 9800gx2, which should be enough for a 'normal' game experience that I have with a lesser resolution.
Not saying that $1200 for a pair of video cards is a good idea (a quarter of that gives a nice experience, half that should make for what I'd call spot on and good for a couple years)- but keep in mind that folks who picked up a 30" monitor already spent more than $1200. You surely don't need that sort of graphics system to run on lesser hardware. A bit more hardware is needed for the higher resolutions, however.
Was not that long ago that a 21" CRT or a 15" LCD went for that price too. All the 'latest generation' stuff tends to carry a heavy price tag on first release.
Years back, Gigabyte released a RAM based SATA drive - the iRAM. This is why folks were excited about it - just honking fast. It had limitations, however. 4x1G max capacity per drive, used (relatively spendy)DDR1 RAM, and apparently did not work nicely in a RAID-0 config when trying to bump the storage capacity. Still, RAM rather than flash is what I was looking for as a primary OS drive.
... but it never released... (if anyone here knows of such a device, please post or email) Other drives are on the market, but they want 4 figure price tags. I don't get it. For those of us who can deal with having a hard drive that could 'evaporate' if it ran out of juice for one reason or another (disk images)...trading performance for the hassle... why did the DDR2 drives never make it out? Seagate wielding the patent stick would explain much.
The next generation of IRAM fixed my major pain point - allowing dirt cheap DDR2 RAM and allowing 8G max storage per drive.
I'm getting a little disturbed by the whole "We hate it because the battery's not removable". Even here in the Tom's review they make the somewhat insane claim that the machine isn't portable because you can't swap batteries.
You don't spend near enough quality time on an airplane. Airports - even with a club membership - are notoriously sparse on electrical outlets. While the flight itself may be three hours or so, there is a pretty good change you will spend a good chunk of time at the gate running on battery. Most folks put the extra battery in the carry-on bag. I pack a spare battery with my t60p and would do so with a smaller laptop as well. Battery goes fast when working/coding or watching a movie. The smaller screen gives you a chance to open the laptop if you are not sitting in the front of the bus. An extra USB port or Ethernet port would be nice ~ an extra battery pack is a must.
YMMV, but I just picked up a 12.1" 1.8ghz (Pentium M) / winxp pro / cdrw / 1g RAM / 60g HDD dell referb for $450 for my little one. Thought about the eepc for $350, but the screen size was wrong for her. Might for me with the new cut. Point being, is you get a lot of computer for under $500 these days. A windows mobile smartphone for that price... yikes.
You apparently don't appreciate the payload differences.
Soyuz = VW Beetle
Shuttle = tractor trailer
Perhaps a better comparison would be the Proton heavy, which can push 44,100 lb to LEO, 12,100 lb to GTO, 4,850 lb to GEO. The Soyuz is 15,400 lb to LEO. Not all cargo needs to go up on a heavy, however, as the (relatively) cheap Soyuz do the job.
The shuttle, payload to 53,700 lb to LEO, 8,390 lb to GTO. It also goes EOL in two years, with optimistic hopes that the US heavy will actually fly in 2014.
Sounds like they just started leaking info on the new 9" version of the eepc - here. Looks like more or less the same form factor, bigger screen. We shall see on costs.
They could shave some time off of the boarding process - but there is way too little cargo space inside the aircraft. For those who travel often (I'm in a commercial jet more often than my car), the early boarding process gives us 'bread and butter' customers a chance to stow our gear, and those who fly once in a blue moon (usually cheap seats) a longer wait. The inefficiency is a perk, if you travel often.
Sure, they could max/min the time better... but... this is not really something that needs fixing.
Because every nine will cause a geometric increase in costs.
This
Uptime (%) Downtime 90% 876 hours (36.5 days)
95% 438 hours (18.25 days)
99% 87.6 hours (3.65 days)
99.9% 8.76 hours
99.99% 52.56 minutes
99.999% 5.256 minutes
99.9999% 31.536 seconds
I work for a software shop where we can do high availability, but more often than not, folks chose to lower the uptime expectation rather than pony up for the stupid money it takes to have the hardware / software / infrastructure to get there. Most companies know the customer will not pay the extra cash for the uptime, thus... you get what you pay for.
IT also has an external VGA port - 1680×1050 max support, if you are plugged in and sitting on a desk.
(still, would like to see 1024 x 768 when they bump up the screen size later this year)
I can guess why... (one of the hazards of doing more than 500k miles a year) Many shoes do indeed have metal in them. I suspect scanners were implemented with this in mind, so one of the more clever tricks you would do back when you could wear your shoes is to shuffle your feet on the ground as you pass through the portal. Tis a bit harder to hide stuff in your socks.
...is that evolution is considered at theory, but Newton's theory of gravitation is considered a fact.
Actually.... Newton's laws of motion are a great example of theory vs fact. Time and space were more or less considered absolutes. They were mostly spot on, until things move at relativistic speeds. The formulas were adjusted with Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Odds are, another insight or observed discrepancy will have us modify it again.
One of the most thrilling parts of science is getting to the point in a field where you look out and say - this is our best guess on *how* things work. The universe is a fabulous puzzle.
I think its fine, don't punish companies for doing what the NSA asks them to do, corporations are not responsible for upholding the rights of individuals.
"Befehl ist Befehl" does not alleviate the person (be it individual or cooperate entity)of responsibility for the crime. They should be dropping Thor's hammer on these folks, and then the folks who asked for the crime to be committed. I don't care what side of the political system you are on - the rule of law must be upheld at all levels!
I disagree - that was apples to app ^H^H^H - a fair comparison. Both were priced with a $1000 SSD drive. Apple gives you the option for a 80GB 4200-rpm Parallel ATA hard disk drive to cut a grand off the price. According to this guy, the SSD drive will be the only option at launch with other options to follow. When they do offer drive options - and they must - I bet they will be SATA based drives like the rest of the Thinkpad series (all of them). Price will drop a grand as well when spinning disk is substituted for solid state.
Additionally, there is a very good chance that the DVD bay is removable, and can be replaced with another 2.5" large capacity HDD.
The options they are packing into the x300 are exactly what I was hoping the mac air ultra portable would have. When they start shipping without SSD's, I'm sure IT will have one waiting for me - with an extra battery back and HDD tray.
I would just like to know, what could the FBI do to make it's spy ware different from anything else out there in the wild?
Were it me... I would have Microsoft sign it and push it to my target IP/MAC as a silent Windows update. Even if you say 'let me manually download them', the updater has an API that will automagically download and install a patch. (noticed that a couple years back when one of the big bugs hit) You would have to have Microsoft's cooperation... but, you know, I'm sure they would be willing to do such a thing. Add in code that would make debugging difficult and use some of the same internal TCP/IP tricks that Microsoft uses for hosts, etc, odd of someone realizing they were tapped would be slim. If you had the private key to sign the update...
Second the x60s with the extended battery pack. Back when I covered EMEA and AP, I had zero issues with it. The power brick handled all sorts of dirty power, much that killed off other devices. You can even open this laptop on an aircraft in coach - important for me as I was doing the Minneapolis > Amsterdam > New Delhi run and back every week and a half.
And yes - mine also survived a fall when one of our TSA folks fumbled it during a screening.
w00t! I know this one. Had the same problem with my mainboards - the C7 processor is i586, not i686. Try the Ubuntu distros - they will work without any work. Gentoo, RedHat derivatives(Centos, RHEL, OEL) default to i686, which will cause all sorts of weirdness like hard crashes and reboots. If you want to get RH to work, you need to set it up with the correct kernel.
(Got one of those $60 'google dev kit' mainboards, and was puzzled when gOS (a Ubuntu variant) booted fine, but Gentoo live distro did not. Same deal for my fanless VIA EPIA 5000)
*If* you go the Server 2003 road - http://win2k3.msfn.org/ has a great starting point for tuning the OS for work/play too. XP64 apparently is based off of the Server 2003 codebase (much like Server 2008 sounds like it might be sharing a codebase with Vista). If if works on one, it will probably work on the other.
As another bit of anecdotal evidence - Vista64 compiled my project in 17 seconds, XP64 in 15 seconds on the new hardware. The old AMD3800+ with XP (x86) took 47 seconds. YMMV. Good luck!
You might be pleasantly shocked by XP-64. I've got an MSDN subscription, so have pick of the litter when it comes to operating systems for kicking around. When I tried XP-64 June of 2005, it was a bit rough. I had 4G of RAM in my work / gaming box and figured it was worth just running the 32-bit version of XP and letting the OS round down to 3.5G.
Parts for my new box showed up this week. This time, 8G of RAM, a dual core (E8400) CPU, nVidia 780i SLI mainboard, and nVidia 8800gts (512M). Since I went nVidia for chipset and video card, all of the 'box' hardware had drivers for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, and Server 2003.
Gave Vista64 (ultimate) a try. Gah...
First, while I'm sure SP1 will probably fix this, the installer failed with 8G of RAM. Pulled out three 2G modules and all extra HDD's, and was able to continue on. OS installed, drivers picked up all of the mainboard/graphics hardware in a reasonable default mode. Had wired network access at that point, so downloaded the current drivers, which picked up all of the 'core' hardware. Plugged in the other HDD's and changed the SATA cabling. Blue screens again. Pull out the drives, put the SATA cables back in for the main drive, blue screen again. Took several reboots before I realized the Plextor DVDR (PX-712A) would cause a blue screen when the tray closed with a disk. Popped in a standard IDE DVDR, and got the rest of the system up and running.
All the development tools and apps worked. Games (CS:Source, Supreme Commander, BFME2) worked OK. A few glitches in BFME on a long game.
The final nail was USB devices. Figured I would blog about he new kit, so I plugged in my USB cord into my camera. Vista recognized it was a camera, but failed to do anything else. No drivers. Same went for *every* USB thumbdrive I owned. (Pics here)
Gave up, after much messing about.
XP-64 installed with 8G of RAM installed. Did not get the Ethernet running, but did mount a thumbdrive without issues. Installed the core set of mainboard/graphics drivers, did a windows update, and everything just worked. Not a single blue screen or crash under XP-64 so far.
Server 2003-64 is also running rock solid. Just work stuff on that drive, however....