Why? It's a free preview and Microsoft is a for-profit business. It makes no sense for them in their business model to offer a free version of their new OS to people. What would be nice is to see them offer a discounted version to beta testers in the future. While the specifics are different, Microsoft is far from the only company to offer a trial and implement some sort of measure to encourage purchasing the product after a certain period of time.
As a "benefit" to Vista beta and release candidate testers, Microsoft is offering Vista at the same price as an upgrade. The same price you would get for upgrading XP Sounds like the actions of a desparate company to me! It's not as if Vista has set the world on fire and inspired millions to go out of their way and buy it!
oh wow, nvm, that was me missing pretty much the whole point again. I just thought it restarted every two hours just because it was messed up or something....
That in combination with the reboots will prompt them to either upgrade to Vista or to reformat and go back to XP. Vista looks like the WinME of the NT code. If Vista ended up with all the things it promised from the start, it would be a pretty decent upgrade. As it is, they're using DX10 as a dangling carrot to get people to upgrade. One itty bitty problem is: drivers still suck at this point...which is natural given it's a new OS and driver module. The bigger issue is there aren't any DX10 games out yet. Slight issue there...XP serves me just fine. Say what you will, XP has yet to give me trouble, except when I've had a hardware problem. :x I'm comfortable with Windows, but unless Microsoft makes some major changes in short order, if you're sticking with Windows, right now, Vista can be skipped just because of driver status alone.
