I received my copy of Vista Business from Microsoft. I bought a couple of hard drives, and I'm dual booting to vista on a 32 bit machine and I also installed a second drive on a 64 bit machine, to install the 64 bit version of Vista. That's my work machine, so I haven't really looked at it much.

At least on the 32 bit machine, I've been using the Vista side most of the time, which is not what I expected. It's stable, it runs Photoshop just fine (my only real requirement), and I've also got Office 2007. Only a few drivers are not available for the system, and the only thing that won't work on it is my old home scanner (Epson 2450).

The graphic interface is pretty. It's also nice that they increased the width of the borders of the windows, so it's easier to grab them and move them. The Aero interface is cute, but it's just eye candy.

I find if I reboot to the Vista side, I have to re-enter the passwords for all my networked machines.

USB drives and devices seem to work just fine.

I have to say that Microsoft actually got it right this time. In time, drivers and such will emerge for the system. It even has a (fairly primitive) boot manager.

Having said all that, I'm not formating the XP side just yet.

From experience, I can only vouch fr the Monaco Optix. It produces excellent results on either LCD or CRT monitors.

There are, however, some cheap old monitors that can't really be calibrated at all. I think that's because they are old monitors with not enough range.

I use a couple of LaCie 321 LCD monitors. Not cheap but VERY good.

And if you want a lot of in-camera sharpening, just turn up the sharpness slider in the menu. But then you get the plasticly look that Canon seems to produce on jpegs.

Shoot RAW and process each image to your personal preferences.

Places like dpreview and others generally test the camera's jpeg quality at whatever the factory default setting is.

The K10D holds back on the in-camera sharpening, which allows the retention of detail. You do your own sharpening afterwards.

The thing to do if you need sharp jpeg right out of the camera is to go into the menu and set the sharpening of the jpegs to high. Then you'll get pre-processed jpegs, if you want.

Personally, I shoot RAW. I use ACR to render my photos.

Adobe Camera RAW 3.7 should open your files for you. It'll even open K10D PEF's.

There are various gadgets that allow you to create a "view camera" effect with a lens and a medium format (or even small-format) back. They basically take the digital back, put it on one end of a belows, and have a holder for the lens in front.

Of course, if I was using a 645 back I'd probably need the image circle of my 6x7 lenses. But I have the Mamaiya lenses to start with, and who knows what the industry will come up with in the next few years?

I'd be happy to retire my RB67 if Pentax came out with a medium format digital that could equal the quality of 6x7.

Given the quality of the 10 megapixel sensor, the 31 megapixel sensor might even let me retire the 4x5!

I'd happily go for a sensor that had a different aspect ratio so that it had the same shape as an A3 size paper.

There would therefore be more effective pixels to use, as you wouldn't have to chop off the ends of the frame for most uses.

There's talk of a 1.3 factor sensor. I wonder if the new 50-135 and other DA lenses would cover it?