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."

Comments

Vista != Vista's 3D Interface

[Kelson]

Back in 2004, Microsoft announced that Longhorn would automatically detect a computer's graphics capability and show one of three GUIs: Aero, Aero Glass (the really high-end interface) or a classic Win2K-style interface.

This new article doesn't actually say the PCs won't be able to run Vista, but that they won't be able to take advantage of Aero Glass. It doesn't mention the three tiers of interface, but it does say this:

"When [a] user sees a system running Vista on a PC with integrated graphics, and then sees Vista on a PC with a powerful graphics [board] in it, there will be no discussion -- they will go for the better looking system if they can possibly afford it," Peddie said in a statement.

Sounds like one in two machines will be stuck with classic. Or maybe even some of those will get the mid-level GUI. But it doesn't say they won't be able to run the OS.

Re:Vista != Vista's 3D Interface

[MadJo]

casual computer users (ie- not us) would unlikely notice any benefit of Vista over XP.

whereas we, hardcore computer users, don't see any benefit of Vista over XP. :)

Not necessarily bad.

[DrEldarion]

I say this can be a good thing. We'll finally either:

A) Get some decent integrated graphics systems (or see NForce boards take off in popularity)
or
B) See big computer retailers putting at least adequate graphics cards into their base systems.

This will do wonders for the ability to play games on cheap laptops.

The people with older graphics systems that can't run Vista? Chances are most won't need to upgrade anyway, and XP-compatible consumer software won't be going anywhere for a long time. Sure, they won't be able to run Halo 2 PC, but hell, if they can't meet Vista specs, they sure as hell can't meet the game's specs.

Inaccurate Summary

[DaHat]

Not only is it inaccurate summary, it's pretty trollish too... sure running Aero Glass takes some horsepower, there is nothing preventing a user from turning it off and running it in a more 95/98/2000 style and not have the benefits or eye candy they could have if they had a more powerful system

Hell, go back to 2001, I remember knowing many people whose PC's ran awful slow when running XP in Fisher Price mode, so they'd revert to the classic look and things were fine until they had a slightly better PC a little later.

Same will happen here.

Re:Inaccurate Summary

[Overly Critical Guy]

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.

What does aeroglass DO?

[AmazingRuss]

All I have heard about aeroglass is that it makes the windows desktop look like the OSX desktop. Why does that take so much horsepower? I'm running OSX on an old Imac G3 450.

Why does the desktop requre more graphics calculations than a modern video game? Somebody please whack me with the cluebat.

How this kind of marketing might work

[AEton]

When you're faced with a hostile audience (e.g. Slashdot), it can be tricky to slip your PR messages past the filters. After all, you aren't AMD; you don't want to have your own Slashdot Vendors section to give you a straight feed to the PR bin, since you know that skeptical readers will just ignore your message.

So what you do instead is construct a message that seems threatening for about forty-five seconds -- just as long as an editor will review it in the pending articles queue: you say, hey, my new software product is going to have really stringent hardware requirements. Oh, the editors say, this is perfect! It's interesting, controversial, and definitely front page material.

What they don't see is the second touch: you subtly phrase the article so that the impression left on reader is not that your product is incompatible, but that it is exclusive. Oh, they think -- I have a high-end system! I've got to try out this Vista thing on it!

Suckers.

This is NOT true....

[TheNetAvenger]

This is NOT true, do the Slashdot editors even know people that are in the Vista Beta or have a MSDN subscription?

Vista scales its graphics to three levels, the basic level which still supports all of the WPF applications, scales the OS UI back to look like Windows 2000. This level however does not use WPF effects for the UI, such as transparent 'glass' Window Frames, etc.

The second level is a cross between WindowsXP and the Vista Interface. Again it supports all the WPF applicaitons, however the UI, visually is themed and looks somewhat like the higher level 3D 'Glass' Vista UI.

The third level is the 'high' level 'glass' and basically works on any Video Card that has basic DirectX 9.0 features built in. This level brings the WPF and 3D effects to the UI.

You get Glassy WIndow Frames that not only are transparent but also do a blur effect on the Windowsw Frames with Shading. This level also takes full advantage of your cards 3D Acceleration features throughout the basic Windows UI.

However even in the 'basic' mode Vista will run on ANY video card, Vista will still do amazing looking 3D effects on a crap card with the WPF, and if possible take advantage of any 3D GPU acceleration features in your video card.

For example if you are running a 1998 ATI Rage 128 32MB Video card, you are going to run in the seconde level of quality, and can turn it down to the basic level if you choose. (See, even old cards run in the second level, just like they would be themed in WindowsXP.)

Now even if your video card is only able to run in the second level or lets say, it has no 3D acceleration features, Vista will still properly run WPF and 3D WPF designed applications.

For example the WPF Chess game that comes with Vista, has reflective tile, smooth lines, is a full 3D applciaiton workspace, and runs with or without a 3D GPU in the computer. (The power of software rendering of WPF and DirectX.)

What Vista won't do on older video Cards is map the UI to 3D RAM on the GPU, and slow down your computer interface to display cute animations or glass if your Video card is not fast enough to do that.

So if you are running a computer with a video diplay older than a Geforce FX 5200, then you won't get the pretty UI, but if you have an old FX 5200 you will, and most people can pick this level of card up for almost any computer for like 30-50 US. (You can even buy a PCI version for your 500mhz system that has no AGP port, get the pretty Vista high level Glass.)

There are some recent 'cheap' Intel onboard chipsets that don't support enough 3D to the high level 3D display mode, and there are also some onboard Video that uses shared Memory, etc that won't support the high level Vista display mode.

Sure these people won't get the 'glass' effect, but they will be able to do everything else. And if they want the prettier interface, buying a video card that is considered 'low level' by today's standards is not such a big thing. If these people are playing WoW or any other game released in the past few years, they already have had to buy a newer video card anyway.

And Vista without Glass is not ugly or losing a lot for people, all it means is that Windows itself won't be sucking your GPU power and RAM for 'pretty' effects, when it is not necessary.

This not much different than people turning off themes in XP, expect there is a new level of UI themes in Vista that is a full 3D UI implementation that Windows itself uses for displaying runing applicaitons and the Windows Shell Interface.

If anyone has any doubts or questions go to the WinSuperSite, he seems to have the ability to release information on Vista without breaking an NDA. http://www.winsupersite.com/ (You can even see him explain this, screen shots of the different modes, and why and how it works.) -It is actually pretty slick and smart of Microsoft.

One thing Microsoft if introducing with Vista is a new Display Driver Model Called the LDDM an

Re:dont be evil

[MojoStan]

...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.

Microsoft will continue to provide security updates (part of "extended support") for Windows XP Pro for at least 7 years after Vista's release. So if Vista is released late this year, XP Pro will be under extended support until late 2013. (Note that XP Home doesn't get "extended support" and "mainstream support" ends 2 years after Vista's release.)

Since so many users (especially businesses) will continue to use XP Pro while it's still under "extended support," I'm sure third-party software will continue to be written for XP if many of the software company's customers are still using XP. Only Microsoft has an interest in shutting out a large number of existing XP users (so users will upgrade to Vista).