Would seem logical that it would have been more beneficial to Stardock to wait until Deskscape 2.0 for such a contest, that way allowing for a larger group of users/content makers. As for Alienware, wouldn't it have made more sense to hire someone as they have in the past? And if their goal was to get a quality Dream to distribute with their PCs do you believe it to be accomplished (considering the work The Skins Factory has done for them in the past)?
And yes, you're right, the purpose was to make a dream, not being able to run one. At this point I would venture to guess most of this (and pretty much every) community still run XP. However, that doesn't stop them from being able to create Vista content for windowblinds, iconpackager, etc but dreams are a different story. Furthermore, the nature of Dreams really makes them something that wouldn't need to be tested in Vista Ultimate, anyone with a media player who can locate the loop button could have taken a shot at the contest if Dreammaker were allowing.
If you haven't gathered, I still run XP, aside from the all too well-known compatibility issues the main reason I won't run Vista is my PC is a budget rig and the performance hit would be too much to bare with Vista (which I own, used for about 2 weeks, and formatted for XP). I would have loved the chance (and a damn good one it seems) to win a new PC. This contest was so asinine it's almost insulting. But don't take my word for it, the number of entries speaks for itself, contests with $4500 in prizes tend to generate a bit more quality participation than what's seen.
