Microsoft has announced what kind of hardware you will need for Windows Vista.  The good news -- you won't need much to run it in its most basic mode.  The bad news is that the full Vista goodness will require a very high end system and lots of memory.

CPU wise, only 800Mhz is needed.  Realistically, you should have a 2+ Ghz machine to get the most out of it.  In theory, only 512MB of memory is needed to run Windows Vista, realistically you should have 2 GB of system memory.  It's on the GPU that you will need to have a really beefy setup.  To get the Vista "glass" effects you need a video card with at least 128MB of video memory.

For the official specs, see the linked to CNET article.

The question we asked was, would you purchase a multiplayer only expansion pack that was $20.

Multiplayer expansion are nothing new.  Civilization III had one. Even the original Civilization had a multiplayer expansion. 

My own thoughts on a multiplayer expansion pack are ambiguous. Unlike an EA or Take 2 or any number of big publishers, Stardock's ability to get widespread retail space for an expansion pack for Galactic Civilizations II is a real challenge.

Hence, future expansion packs for Galactic Civilizations II are likely to be digital-only.  This way, the retail version of Galactic Civilizations II can hold on to its space as long as we can and people who want more can come here to get it.

Which brings us back to what exactly should be in an expansion pack.  We plan to make multiple expansion packs. One of the mistakes we made with the first GalCiv was that we only made one and users made it clear to us that they would have liked to have seen more.  So this time we will make sure we do that.

The first expansion pack would come out this Fall.  The second one next year. It would be that second expansion pack that we have to finalize what features for that could potentially be mostly about multiplayer.

When one thinks of an expansion pack, think of is like designing a ship in GalCiv II.  We have 5 slots. Multiplayer would eat up at least 3 of those slots, more likely 4 slots.

So the question really boils down to, are there OTHER features you would prefer to have instead of multiplayer.  This multiplayer poll won't be the last one on the subject.  But the results make it clear that there isn't a huge outcry for a multiplayer expansion.

I think most people are of the opinion that they'd happily by an expansion pack that included multiplayer if it had lots of other features. But that's not how these things work out. Multiplayer is a huge feature so other features would have to be taken out.

Once the first expansion pack comes out, we can then look at what might go into a second expansion pack (including multiplayer) and put the question up as to which features would people want the most.

The June 2006 edition of Computer Gaming World has arrived and in it is the review of Galactic Civilizations II.

If you don't get Computer Gaming World, it's definitely worth it to pick it up on the newstand. This issue has a big article on Spore which is a game that everyone (ourselves included) are very intersted in. It also have the Oblivion review in it. 

The GalCiv II and Oblivion reviews help demo CGW's new review format.  4 pages of review gives the reviewer a lot of space to talk about the game in a great deal of detail. 

For instance, the CGW review talks about Christopher Nahr's Galactopedia and gives a link for it.  It talks about the Starforce incident, it goes into some of the features he likes and ones he misses but also discusses the reasoning that went into what features to include or not include.

The reviewer (Bruce Geryk) also talks about Master of Orion and other games in the genre and how the features in those games helped add to the genre (or detract depending on the game).  He also hammers home that he wishes the game had multiplayer.   Maybe next time.

Andre from Windows Connected has spilled the beans on Microsoft's "Urge" (our NDA wouldn't let us talk about it). 

Urge is a new music service that will come with Windows Media Player 11.  It is a team up of Microsoft, MTV, VH11 and CMT. According to Andre, the goal is to provide a better experience for users to download music with more detail about the content, albums, and artist information.

Another interpretation is that it's a "better iTunes than iTunes" though the model seems to be more akin to a combination strategy where users have the choice of subscribing or buying content per piece.  Other information we cannot say due to our NDA (we can only repeat what's been made public so far).

It appears iTunes is going to have some serious competition. Windows Media Player 11 not only has key features such as this, it also has a streamlined user interface that makes using it far more appealing than previous versions.  The WMP team has really outdone themselves this time.  

We'll have more details on Urge as they're made public.

If you already have Object Desktop you can do this. This week myself, Steve from TweakVista, Nate from Betanews, Bink from Bink.nu (who missed his plane back, tsk tsk), and several others were visiting Microsoft to get some of the latest news on Windows Vista.

While there, we put together a little joke using WindowBlinds + DesktopX + IconPackager + IconX in order to make a Windows XP machine look somewhat like Windows Vista. Using DesktopX we whipped up a fake build number, IconX to get the most of the Apogee icons, IconPackger to apply the icons, WindowBlinds to apply the VistaXP skin (skin not available here as Microsoft requested its removal).

Here's one of the screenshots we came up with.  You can imagine the setting that all this took place in - a couple dozen techies in a room all communicating to each other with IM in the same room.

The original prank was put up on Bink.nu (see link below)

The next major version of Microsoft Office, (Office 2007 but what I'll affectionately call "Office Vista") is the single biggest change to come to Microsoft Office since, well, as far back as I can remember.  The problem the Microsoft team was coming up against is that Office had gotten so complicated, so "bloated" and so complicated that most new feature requests made by users were for features already part of the package.

The new Office includes a new user interface across all the programs that make up the suite.  The title bar has been altered to have its own unique glass style with buttons that make use of the most common features of the application.  The menu bar has been largely jettisoned and replaced by what are being called "Ribbons". Until I saw the most recent version of the beta, I was skeptical as to whether this was going to work out.  But having seen it in action, I am converted. It really is slick.  Gone are the "we know what you want" type UI behaviors and in its place are interfaces that streamline the entire experience.

The ribbons allow users to do the kinds of things that most people want to do with as little work as they need.  Power users in particular can be happy that there are tons of options that can greatly speed up common tasks.

The next version of Office will run both Windows Vista and Windows XP.  On Windows XP, it looks a bit different (and in my opinion) quite fantastic.

As the above screenshot implies, blog posting (source: Microsoft's Joe Friend - not under NDA) is one of the features of Microsoft Word.  While not good news necessarily to the third party programs that allow people to compose blog posts, it is good news to most users.  When  a user decides to create a blog with Microsoft Word, it takes care of the uploading of images and everything else to make the entire thing relatively painless.

And don't worry about what you upload being a bunch of whacky HTML, the Office team is working to ensure that what gets uploaded is the cleanest possible HTML.

The release date for Microsoft Office 2007 has not been announced officially. But beta 2 is due "soon".  I don't know about you but I'm very excited.  For years, Microsoft has kind of sat on its laurels with Office, adding bloat and complexity to it.  Now, Microsoft seems very serious about going back and reinventing the world's most popular suite of office applications.

Microsoft's Sidebar supports "gadgets" and now Google's sidebar supports plugins that have recently been branded as "gadgets".  Gadgets, widgets, oh my. They are everywhree.

So would you guys like us to put up sections to support Google gadgets and Microsoft gadgets? Let us know.

Windows Vista is Microsoft's first real attempt to polish the gaming experience for PC users.  In 1995, Microsoft introduced DirectX to help make developing games easier, but for users, it remained a a hassle often times to get PC games running at times.

With Windows Vista, the game manager can be used to simplify and clean up the gaming experience.  Here are a few of the things you can expect:

• Microsoft Live Anywhere.  Users of Xbox 360 are already familiar with Microsoft Live.  Microsoft Live Anywhere will start to bring that experience to PC users.
• eCommerce, users will be able to purchase "points" to apply to getting games, expansion packs, etc.
• A unified PlayerID that will allow players to have their records at multiple games tied to it (and a bane to griefers)
• Parental controls where the game's ESRB rating can be used to block kids from playing inappropriate games.
• The ability to play Xbox 360 players at common titles (like Halo).
• DirectX 10 which will allow GPUs to handle more of the physics. This will allow for much MUCH better looking games (we saw some videos and they were incredible).

A lot of the nitty gritty details are covered under NDA but suffice to say that there are some really cool things for gamers with Windows Vista.

Windows Vista Beta 2 is coming pretty soon. Microsoft is tweaking UI, working on performance, improving compatibility. Each build gets better.  The question that many of us have, however, is whether there's enough time for Vista to get everything together in time for a November RTM (January for consumers).

Below are 4 screenshots to help show off the UI (so far).  The UI is probably the most noticeable improvement in Windows Vista.  Take a note of the clean and efficient load and save dialogs in there.

There's also two screenshots of the alpha version of "WindowBlinds Vista".   Windows Vista, as cool as it is, is probably going to be a real boon for skinners. There's a lot of new UI and a lot of opportunities to take it to the next level.

The overall user interface feels light and clean. It's a real improvement over Windows XP.  There are nearly a thousand new icons in Windows Vista.  Beta 2 won't have all the icons in yet, there's still a lot more coming in.  The Aero glass (the new glass look) is not final either but it's pretty close (contrary to rumors, it's not going to become some vector based thing).  The performance continues to improve.  However, it's very memory intensive.  We'll be asking Microsoft a lot of tough questions this week about the significant memory foot print and some remaining performance issues.