I used to host Remote Desktop sessions when I worked from my boss’s place, but he doesn’t have a place here anymore, sooo…really it comes down to XP Mode for me too.

If I didn’t need that stuff, though, it seems that Home Premium would more than suffice. It even has Media Center!

Now the question begs: Which version? The more I’ve been reading, the only real benefit to Professional over Home is XP mode.

I haven’t really messed with my copy of Win7 RC other than to install it and poke around for a bit, but the install was completely painless, even though I was dropping it on a tertiary hard disk so it could dual-boot with Vista. I love the ability to rearrange items on the taskbar — I’ve been wishing for that for years. I am a bit peeved that UltraMon doesn’t seem to work on it (yet).

Decided to go with the 64-bit version. So far, no issues. I keep bumping up against the RAM limit on my current box and the only way out is through, as they say (to 64-bit…and a couple more gigs!).

Oh, and perhaps my favorite part? User Account Control no longer barks a warning every time you do some piddly trifling thing like rename a file in the All Programs menu or anything equally mundane. You can also disable the damnable screen dimming when UAC fires (which sometimes took forever to complete on my tri-monitor system). All of this makes UAC actually bearable for a change.

When the full release is finally here, it’ll be a no-brainer to upgrade from Vista.

Sadly this is how many big consumer-facing corps are geared these days; put the burden on the consumer for as much as possible. Essentially your purchase of the Silverado was your “subscription” to XM — the onus gets put on you to opt-out of it, rather than call them to opt-in. Usually you see this in businesses where they know no one would ever opt-in by choice. ;)

Reminds me of our favorite high school and the bastard trick they pulled on me with the alumni directory. I don’t have Word 1 with them in five years and out of the blue they drop a package at my door. I open it; it’s an alumni directory. So I figure my mom bought it and sent it to me as a joke.

Only when I got the collections notice in the mail did I realize what they’d done — sent me something I didn’t order, which I couldn’t identify until I opened it, and then billed me for it, saying, “Well, you opened it!”

A more perfect demonstration of their epic asshattery would have been impossible.

Glad you finally got XM put in the circular file where it belongs, though. We tried it too; the sound quality was like a 48K MP3, worse if you didn’t listen to one of the first 10 “banner” channels. Eventually we just let it expire.

Well, its not like I announced anything. I’m slowly phasing out my old domain as the hosting cost is through the roof. One of these days I’m going to start working on Wordpress themes…

On an unrelated note, I just stumbled across this site! Happened to see the link on your Twitter profile last night and wondered how I could have missed it. My bookmarks and blogroll have been updated accordingly.