Eh?

Thanks all for the interest! We're early on so I can't share full specs on the device yet - and lots of our best features are still under wraps. That said, happy to answer whatever I can here. When we launch, I'll be back with all the gory details.

This is probably close to the mark. Here are some new features for Vista:

The Multimedia Class Scheduler Service: basically a service that juggles thread priorities keeping "important" ones (read: audio playback) near the top:

    http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684247. aspx

The I/O system in Vista also has an idea of different priority packets. Therefore the disk read for the next MP3 frame is probably a higher priority than
the read for the next network packet.

    http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/priorityio.ms px

This is complete speculation on my part but I could see how these thing might affect machine performance during audio playback.

Red screens were introduced in '98 to indicate ACPI errors:

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/acpi.htm

I believe the redscreen code is turned off in release builds, meaning you are not likely to see one.