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One In Two PCs Won't Run Vista's Interface
ThinSkin writes "While integrated graphics seem to handle Windows XP and 2000 just fine, they won't be able to handle Vista's 3D 'Aero Glass' compositor, which will prevent roughly half of all PCs from running Microsoft's new OS. Performance class cards that can handle DirectX 9.0c are up for the challenge." From the article: "After years of delays and several feature revisions, one of Vista's main selling points is the Aero Glass interface. However, as Peddie notes, users already have the ability to start constructing a PC that should be Vista-ready before the OS even ships. Microsoft also said this week that it would reserve its Halo 2 videogame for Vista."
Did MS ever hear of the bauhaus design theory at all? Last thing I care for is an OS that tries its hardest to blow moonbeams and fluffy bunnies up my ass. If you cant go back to the no-frills win2k classic interface I plan to squeeze every last drop of life out of XP Pro. That is, until M$ does evil things to force people to upgrade, like releasing Vista-specific software and dropping patches for XP altogether.
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
The Intel 900 series graphics chips are good enough to run World of Warcraft. They aren't all that fast, mind you, but it works, I've met a couple people that do it.
I'd wager that at least the GMA 950 will be enough for the more advanced interface, and even the GMA 900 will be.
The point is that one of the big selling points is Vista's new OS X-alike interface. Vista is going to be a tough sell to the mainstream public. Microsoft makes the majority of its Windows sales through computer pre-installations, so they're going to try to work hard to get people to buy new Vista-based PCs despite having missed last year's hardware purchase cycle. A new interface was part of that.
I find it very telling that OS X already surpasses Vista's current interface (what you see in the betas is mostly what you're going to get according to Microsoft) but runs on much less demanding machines, like a Mac mini. OS X Leopard is just going to widen the gap further between Microsoft and Apple in the interface department.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Mac users upgrade within the Mac family, Windows users within the Windows family. In twenty years nothing has changed that equation.
But that's just not true. Over the last couple of years I've seen lots of normal users switch from Windows to OSX, mostly to get away from spyware. I don't think I've anyone go back, nor have I seen any mac users switch to windows (although one thought he was when he bought an XBox).
*sigh* back to work...
And i look towards ditching XP for Mac OS X Tiger at work.
Honest!!!
yesterday we had a major outage in our LAN due to "unknown" factors. As the only iBook user, i saw the traffic that was the result of a worm. It didn't affect me of course, but i saw my Desktop bellyaching.
Wish Apple would push Mac Mini as a replacement to Vista/XP with Virtual PC bundled in for FREE.
It would sell like hotcakes.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer