If you Followed the many posts – the poor little Dell GX620 machine has had each OS on there and I thought I would write a summary of what did what and how well it all worked.

Windows XP
This is a no-brainier Answer, it ran fast enough (it has 2 GIG ram), everything worked out of the box such as Webcam (Logitech Communicate STX) along with Mic which is built in – I could use the machine to stream with if required. If you install Virtual Desktop (Freeware), you can have 4 x Desktop to Quickly switch around. Webcammax, ManyCam etc will allow me to add things but not as well as say Camtwist on the Mac. No BSOD, No Crashes and worked pretty well – boot time was not too bad.

Vista Ultimate 32 Bit
This worked as above had the odd error on various programs – all since adding Sp1 actually. Lot slower on booting and coping then XP by a big margin but Intel 945 with a mere 8 MB ram cold support Glass Interface.

Kalyway OS X 10.5.2
As for the general OS, I had this updated to 10.5.2 with most of the updates installed and working, the screen was running at 1280×1024 as long as I never installed the graphics update. There was screen tearing that noticed with graphical break up – nothing major though. Boot time was very quick, probably the quickest out of all the OS I have tried out there. The first lot of Apps I tried were Soundflower and Camtwist along with Webcam so it could pick up my Logitech and I could stream no problem at all with full video and Audio. Many apps I tried refused to run and iLife was missing – this is not major but means it cannot really be used as a full blown OS.

Ubuntu 8.04
3D Graphics worked right off the mark, the Webcam got picked up and I tested the Microphone (On the Webcam) via Skype and this work – so good so far. trying to Broadcast via Ustream was met with me not been able to select anything but Linux Microphone – so no go on the Audio. The only other way i could pull this off (for a Streaming machine) was to call myself via Skype and use the iMac to capture the image been broadcast or stick to Silent streaming from Linux.

Conclusion
As a general Purpose machine that did everything – I would have to say Windows XP, if we wanted a machine purely to stream me live then the Kalyway 10.5.2 was probably best as I could capture Colloquy for the chat windows and for this part it works well. I am not sure at all which to choose from – all depends I guess what I want the machine to do.