I disagree. The intel G45 has sufficient video power to play even videos (i do that), has no compatibilty issues (unlike older chipsets).
Probably you had bad experiences with non intel chipsets or much older ones which had horrible performance.

You can always disable it if you dont like it and add a discrete graphic card of any kind.
But i would use the pci-express slot for something more useful such as the soundcard or the OCZ Reviodrive/FusionIO (i'm getting the first in 50gb size for installing Vista on it).

Yeah, i dont use autohotkey for instance :D

Unless Roy comes out with some ISO already done, I'm going to try this with a Vista x64 ultimate SP2.

I dont have the technical background to judge this, but I would do an attempt of the engine working at driver level and see if it changes the SQ or not (while still using the ramdisk of course).

Yeah, I have also switched to unattended at last!
Need it until i can get install Vista (getting a Revodrive :D).

Considering that Vista retails for less than 100€ in a shop and it's 100% original, what's the benefit of using 2008 server?

We can disable the graphics anyway in Vista....

I think that the main differences are about graphics and network services - a slimmed version of either vista or 2008 server (not R2) should sound both good.

I definitely decided to go back to Vista, need a SSD, though, i dont wanna load the OS on a spinning disk. 
How is it going, Roy?

I use 1,4 gb with 4 gig total and i'm going to buy more ram :D
Got already two brand new 2TB disks that i'll put in raid1 (that's right).

Still debating with myself whether to get another SSD or the pci-express card (forgot the name), anyway 50-60gb are enough for me for just the OS and basic programs for music and videos.

I use the swap. but I dont have that much time to try

Great finding, but i'm on 2 cores too.
I'll try to lower USB priorities and get rid of the network stuff, that should do another big improvent in my system.

Yes, i never do vista or w7 without a swap of at least half the ram size. Swap is on ssd.

I thought that, but with a very thin linux distro, not windows.

David Garrett - La califfa (from the only cd of his that i have).
to compare to a good track of the same, check the best of Ennio Moricone on the same HDD.

it's not that difficult do apply filters in software, but you must know what you are doing and what you plan to repair.
Easiest things:
-HF rolloff to protect our ears from badly mastered music with violins, cymbals etc.
-peak extend for very dynamically compressed recordings (already done in xxhe)
-soundstage expansion or compression
-many more that you find commonly as VST plugins. Just check sites such as waves.

Peter is on principle against any manipulation, but in the end letting us do it by means of external software should be acceptable and in *some* cases beneficial.
it is impossible to undo all the damage done during the mastering because we dont know what has been done to each recording.

Then dont select the autosave on shutdown. Save it manually, but when you will forget to do it, dont complain to us.

Back on topic now, please.