[Aka]

Well you only need the $800 in upgrades if you care about aero. I don't currently, so I wont bother, it runs a touch slow on the machine I'm running it on, but I imagine this is probably due to all the debug stuff being part of the beta. I imagine when it ships it WILL be quicker.

As for the dual monitors, yeah I've been hearing things about it, I've only got a single monitor attached currently, just using the second monitor on my desk with a KVM switch, so my main box has 2 monitors, and Vista only one, but I only have 2 monitors on my desk.

Also, Nef, I think the only real upgrade you need to run it is a video card and potentially RAM. I'm fairly confident that a P4 3 GHz would handle Vista quite fine. That said, I don't have one and can't confirm it, but if my 1.53 GHz AMD 1800+ can run it fine for everyday use type speed, I imagine 3 GHz Intel could as well.

Smoothwall I've heard of, and I've been thinking of using it with my old P166 MHz, but I think when I'm done playing with Vista, I'll install Linux on the same box as I did Vista, and make it my webserver. I'm tired of leaving on my fileserver/webserver, 7 harddrives are too loud to sleep next to.