Vista Download

you're in nigeria and you want to download 3gigs of a Release Candidate of vista? wait until january and buy the dvd. or wait till march for the pirated copies!

quite true. vista is a video memory hog, and works best in a DirectX 10 environment(which isnt even out yet) just to sustain the eye candy. me, i personally don't think redmond can come up with anything to trump winxp in quite a while. vista to me from what i've seen, is more like winMCE given a crystal makeover.
but if you have winxp and are gunning for the vista look you can try a shellpack like BricoPacks' Vista Inspirat www.crystalxp.net, and you get a cool vista look that goes great with windows media player 11. if you want that cool AeroStyle tranparency check out Chime's Glass2k www.chime.tv, or Y'Zs Shadow (i use both for transparency and a dropshadow effect. ) which you may have to google (can't remember the site).
complete Vista look with the logon screen and sounds come best in WindowsX's Vista Transformation Pack 5.5 (google or check www.softpedia.com), but it has a faulty uninstaller, so keep your winxp installation disc at hand in case you need to run Recovery Console. if you had a prior ShellPack installed you need to wipe your system or get UXtheme.dll (again, google!) because one shellpack upon another can screw up your WindowsExplorer.exe and some shell32 Dlls. i had that experience and i had to format my system.
if i scared you about shellpacks, style xp has some vista-like msstyles downloadble from www.themexp.org. or you can give WindowBlinds a try, but windowblinds hogs RAM by using resources, unlike style xp. infact, windowblinds 5.1 enhanced togethjer with Vista Transformation Pack 5.5 give you the best vista look complete with that swanky vista window edges. most people can be fooled into thinking you're actually running on Vista whereas it's only winxp.

for Vista look, check these:
1. BricoPack Vista Inspirat. (i give it a score of 8  )
2. Vista Transformation Pack (i give it a 9, one point less for that buggy uninstaller)
3. windowblinds (works best with VTP 5.5. score of 7 because Ram drain)
4. stylexp( a 6, just a theming app without shell modification)

for vista/MacOS X effects check these out:
1. Uber Icon( comes with Vista Inspirat, but freely downloadble www.punksoftware.com. great animation effects when you click on icons! you just got to se it)

2. glass2k (windows transparency just like Vista AeroStyle. adjustable transparency gives a see-through glass effect to any winxp window.-www.chime.tv)

4. RocketDock (vista Inspirat comes with ObjectDock, but i prefer Punksoftware's dock. similar to the Dock in Mac os X. real must-have!.-www.punksoftware.com)

5. Y'Zs Shadow (makes windows and the start menu transparent just like Glass2k, as well as giving dropshadows to floating windows/objects. www.softpedia.com/get/System/ OS-Enhancements/Yz-Shadow, or google it if link broken.)

so guys if you want to pimp your winxp and make it look like winVista then follow the above. hope this has been helpful.