Now that anyone can get a copy of Windows Vista Beta 2 (grab the BitTorrent from our friend Chris Pirillo instead), one can see first hand just how much Microsoft admires OS X. I know when I first saw it in all its glory at CES this year, I kept mummering to myself, “That’s from OS X…that’s from OS X…that’s from OS X,” until the Microsoft project manager that was giving the demo told the crowd what hardware demand was needed. Ya, that was all Microsoft.

If you haven’t seen the next version of Microsoft Windows, then Lifehacker has some side-by-side (well, top-by-bottom) comparisons to show you. For those that can remember the ads Apple took out in 1995 against Windows 95 (”if it looks like a duck…”), then you’ll probably be expecting an update to all the papers across America sometime next year.

The irony of Windows Vista isn’t that it uses Gadgets instead of Widgets or Windows Calendar instead of iCal but that all this glass interface and other software applets it uses will have a heavy hardware requirement. While Microsoft will not give out exact specifications yet since it’s still in beta, most estimates are that computers that are of the medium grade released in the last year have a chance. High-end machines from about two years ago could probably pull it off. If you don’t have such a system, start packing it up for the dump now ’cause it ain’t gonna do you no good when Vista rolls out.

As Vista drags on toward its ultimate release date, OS X will continue to grow in market share. With the growing number of daily insecurities of Windows (which has plagued Vista betas as well,) users will soon grow tired of Microsoft and move on. The extra hardware need may be that final straw, to use a cliche. When many see that they can buy a Mac mini at a fairly low price and get all that Vista promises at half the cost of what Vista demands, it may be Apple looking out from the clear mountain tops of Cupertino…well Saratoga at least, in the end.

[tags]windows,mac,os x,osx,apple,vista,microsoft,hardware,mimic,rip,off,demandwindows vista rips os x…and at a great hardware cost (and apple gains in the end)![/tags]