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I have a laptop, in it's 3rd year, with a mobility radeon 9600; not exactly the speediest GPU available. There is one difference: it runs under linux/compiz/beryl. There is no noticeable increase of temperature, battery draw or performance loss.
I would assume that MS also has it's act together and wouldn't need a lot of horsepower to accomplish a few cheap (performance/cycle wise) effects.
Besides, the AERO interface can be shut down.
Multiple desktops would btw be a much better and easier way to attack the well known desktop clutter. It's bene there for years. I wonder why MS doesn't do this..
I've been using a tablet PC running Vista RC2 since November and it works quickly and pretty stably. The battery life went down slightly (10% or so) from XP, but this could also be due to the initial aging of the batteries.
If you ever need to take notes that include non-textual information (like math or drawings), there is no alternative to a tablet. If you want to use the laptop quietly, having a pen is better than a keyboard.
About heat: this can be an issue. Most of the time, when you're using the pen you are not also doing CPU-intensive work, so there isn't much heat being released. If Vista is in low-power mode, Aero stays on, but the transparency goes off, so it no longer uses the pixel-shaders. Also, the main vent on my Tablet is on the top side when in tablet mode, so the hot air goes away from me.



