Okay, lame choice of words for the subject line indeed. :P Anyways, being the geek that I am, I got my hands on the PDC bits of what is going to be the next generation of the Windows operating system which is now codenamed Longhorn. I got it installed on my laptop already and it's still very rough around the edges (why not, it's at a pre-alpha stage right now). Takes up gobs of resources (almost 700 megs of RAM and 3 gigs of HD right off the bat, but that's because this build is running on debug code). Its UI is nothing much to shout about right now as they're still keeping Aero under wraps and is pretty much the same as XP or 2003. The underlying stuff is where things get a little bit interesting with things like Avalon, Indigo and my pick, WinFS. There's also the new programming model introduced, i.e. WinFX. Other new stuff I noticed on it were the new IE (finally with pop-up blocker!), IIS 7, .NET Framework V2.0, that big-assed clock on that sidebar (takes up lots of screen real-estate). We'll see what else we can dig up in the days to come.

Update (1045 hours): OSNews has just posted their preview of Longhorn themselves. My opinion and theirs don't seem to differ much.