Mauriat Miranda     mjmwired

Windows Vista Hardware Requirements

From Microsoft's own website. In order to run Windows Vista in any other mode than Home Basic (i.e. no effects, and with removed functionality) Microsoft recommends the following:

  • 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
  • 1 GB of system memory
  • 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
  • Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
    • WDDM Driver
    • 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
    • Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
    • 32 bits per pixel
  • DVD-ROM drive

Huh?

Most personal computer manufacturers cut costs by shipping lower quality hardware that runs pretty well (since Windows XP is over 5 years old now). Microsoft has tried pushing their otherwise unpopular Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) and Windows Tablet Edition stimulating different software/hardware usage. But I guess no one really buys it because they don't need it or just plain don't care. Video gaming in Windows hasn't changed much in the past few years (hello Xbox 360!!). And for the most part people don't do much more on their PC's than they did a few years ago. Even video editting was perfectly useable in the pre-XP days (anyone heard of a Macintosh?). The bottom line is that if you bought a new computer in the past 2 years or so it should run Windows XP pretty decently and other than space issues (downloading "stuff", taking pictures, etc.) it probably meets all your needs.

When the Pentium processors came out (1993?) originally people used Windows 3.1 (3.1.1 32bit if you were lucky). Windows 95 was revolutionary in many aspects and finally allowed you to do significantly more from your computer than ever before. So 12 years later ... Windows has not really changed much past Windows 95. Sure there are plenty of improvements, but realistically it is essentially the same. So can this Vista do for XP what 95 did for 3.1? That's easy to answer.

And yet, hardware manufacturers see that people eventually stop caring for the most wham-bam latest-greatest hardware (64-bit, Dual-Core, etc.). A $500 computer from Dell seems to work just fine. Ahhh, so now a new revolution begins. Having unnecessary software just to use your unnecessary hardware. Progress at its finest.

The whole push for obscene requirements just for the basic operating system seems so idiotic it just boggles my mind. Microsoft really has given hardware manufacturers something to smile about. Will this Vista cause sales for hardware and computers to increase? I doubt it.

There's something to be said about innovation. How about - it should be innovative? I know it's wishful thinking.

Posted in: Technology,

3 Comments:

  • thugchigga on February 5, 2007 ~ 03:03 AM

    , quad-core! ;-) seriously tho, i remember givin' whiteboy my old dell 200mhz rig. we used dat bitch as our server back when we lived in huron towers. worked fine. in fact i recall som1 wrote up an online article where he claimed he booted up som'm like win95 on a 386 computer running @ 20mhz. no joke.

  • Venus on February 21, 2007 ~ 08:08 AM

    Computerworld has an interesting article that points out 4GB as memory sweet spot for Win Vista to deliver optimum performance. Article is here - http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011523

    Thanks to your wonderful resource pages - I love my fc6.

  • A.K.Shah on May 5, 2007 ~ 11:11 AM

    Yes, it is innovation at its height! I was using a PIII 866MHz with Windows98 and AceFTP2 to work for my clients in the US. They did mock me for using such old things (I could not tell them that I was using a 386Sx 20 MHz for my accounting) and asked me frequently to upgrade. Suddenly in October 2006, I found that I could not upload to the server, Passive FTP wouldn't even list the server files, Active FTP would give the list but no uploading. The situation kept me pinned for a whole month, no solutions were in sight and the server maintainers were too sympathetic, when I was forced to upgrade to XP and everything started working fine. The old machine used to take 8-10 minutes to boot and shut down and had become so sluggish that I had to upgrade to a PentiumD.

    Isn't FTP protocol designed to work with even the oldest of the machines - shouldn't DOS FTP work as well? The MS server software seems to keep the old buddies out??

    Is this fair? I had to shell out a lot of money just to keep pace! and it has not increased my productivity a bit!!!