Slashdot Mirror
Windows Vista Capable Machines Coming
An anonymous reader writes "PC World's Techlog has a short piece talking about the upcoming emergence of 'Windows Vista Capable' PCs." From the article: "The Vista Capable designation doesn't promise that a PC will provide a great Vista experience, or even that it'll support all Vista features or features...just that it'll be able to run Windows Vista Home Basic in some not-very-well-defined-but-apparently-adequate way. At the moment, there are still new PCs on store shelves that don't meet the Vista Capable guidelines--for instance, low-end systems still sport 256MB of RAM in some cases. Wonder if that means that that A) we'll see some cheap systems that still have XP even after Vista ships; or B) the specs on even the cheapest machines will be beefed up; or C) we'll see machines that have Vista preloaded but which don't qualify as Vista capable?"
I think everyone is reading too far into the whole "vista compatible hardware" racket. It will work on current hardware, it may not work well. So it's in exactly the same boat as every other major software product released in the past 10 years.
I want a Duke Nukem Forever compatible machine.
liqbase
D.) We have a huge hardware and software confusion malfunction junction, Joe Sixpack refuses to buy a computer because it's gotten too confusing for him, and Microsoft blames the lack of sales on Open Source Operating Systems.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
There's nearly a year to go before Vista's release to consumers - so I'm pretty sure that pretty much all low-end machines with Vista will be 'Vista Capable' then (i.e. usually adding an extra 256mb RAM).
I bet for b) and c). I think sellers will want to promote "what is hot", so I don't see them selling XP even if it is better for a given hardware. MS licence allows to sell an older version (up to 2 back versions), but this will be used only for very specific needs. Since I predict there will be apps that won't get together well with Vista, maybe the sellers will sell both systems for a time.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Minimum system requirements will not be known until summer 2006 at the earliest. However, these guidelines provide useful estimates:
" 512 megabytes (MB) or more of RAM
A dedicated graphics card with DirectX® 9.0 support
A modern, Intel Pentium- or AMD Athlon-based PC."
Everybody was whining because software companies underestimated the required specs of their software. Now that they provide more realistic specs at the risk of overestimating them, we're taking them litteraly ?
On another side, take also in account that Vista will probably have a lifespan comparable to XP, something like 5-6 years. Every computer will be easily capable of running all the GUI eye-candy in the years following the release. It's a good idea to leave some room for improvement IMHO.
The first time this happened was with regular windows and windows 95... all the machines they put it on were too slow to run it and more than 1 application at a time. That's what they're gonna do for sure. They'll sell you a machine woefully underpowered for the OS, period. No one cares, no one will refund your money, thanks and have a nice day :)
stuff |
Screw M$. We should all stick with a company that doesn't try to move everything to new hardware constantly- like Apple. *comedic failure music*
---Vote None of the Above---
is it like this is going to directly bother any of us (other than in a support role)? i'm pretty sure that most of us tend to build our own machines, and aren't all that interested in getting vista anyway, much less as soon as it's released. as far as i'm concerned, they can continue selling underpowered machines for all i care. it keeps work coming my way, when people phone up saying 'my computer's too slow!'. yeah, it's boring work, but so what? money is money.
http://xkcd.com/313/
Microsoft has to bump up the specs every year because they get most of their new OS sales from new PC hardware. Plain and simple. If Vista didn't require beefed up specs they couldn't spur hardware sales. Everyone knows this, or at least it should be blatantly obvious to everyone.
Having said that though, compared to the launch of Windows XP, there is better hardware at reasonable prices this time around. It would be silly not to recommend having better hardware when it is reasonably priced.
Even still, I know for a fact that a desktop Linux distro runs better on 256MB of RAM than Windows XP does. If Vista is going to bump up requirements to over 512MB simply to get things running out of the box - then Linux has a better performance advantage as a basic desktop PC over Vista IMHO.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
shiny sticker! *drools*
http://xkcd.com/313/
That should be vaporware capable.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's spot on.
I know people who have 1.5Ghz processors and 256MB of RAM who complain that Windows XP runs slow on it - and these are "Windows XP ready" machines.
The machine will run fast enough to get the OS working at a barely reasonable pace, but over time the user will get frustrated with the speed of the system enough to want to upgrade.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I have several instances of Windows XP runing in VMWare with only 128 MB of RAM, despite the "minimum" amount of 256 to be compatable.
These numbers are just to give the ideal out of box experience, so people will be happy with their purchase.
With some of the effects turned down I am positive Vista would run fine on these 256 MB machines.
I assume that Vista has a Win2K mode, that cuts away all the Aero Glass crap and lets me work. Is that was this "Vista-Compatible" certification is? ie. It runs the low quality mode, but not the Toys-R-Us look? In that case, pretty much every machine with 256MB ram and a Pentium 4/ AMD Socket A proc will work
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
So by then we will have seen the fading out of of 256mb machines and gone to 512mb. (Even the cheapest Dell now has that already) Wich is happily the recommended minimum. In fact many Dells already come with 1 gig as do a lot of "cheapo" white brand PC's.
As for CPU. Well thanks to the move to Dual core's in 1 year I think single core machines will be rare. Why go single when a dual costs only 10 bucks extra?
The only real problem may be with the 3D card needed for the new gui. Except that I have been led to believe that it is optional and you can still use the old gui wich does not require a 3D card.
So basically, any halfway decent machine will do but as always you need lots of ram.
So what else is new? This has been true for opensource as well. You are not going to run KDE with all the options on a 486 with 16mb memory.
What I want is a sticker that says wether the hardware is DRM ready. That is the thing I am intrested in for Windows Vista.
Not in the way MS/Intel/etc wants. Just so I know wich products to avoid like the plague.
A nice shiny sticker "Big Brother Ready" so we can let them rot on the shops shelves.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
will they run OS X?
D) we'll see Vista capable machines that don't have Vista preloaded
I see three things resulting from this, and all three are good:
:). With a little luck Xgl or something similar will be a fact within an year or so, when Vista is out. And that thing will allow an ubercool desktop experience on significantly less spectacular video hardware.
1. Old machines that won't run Vista well will be phased out with dramatically lowered prices. So if you're looking for a cheap average computer that runs any OS beside Vista, you'll have a lot of cheap options.
2. Because of the whole Aero interface noise (the toughest part of Vista in terms of system requirements), we're finally going to see mainstream laptop manufacturers putting reasonable videocards in laptops. As it currently stands, it's extremely difficult to find a reasonable laptop with a reasonable (= can play Half-life 2 just fine or better) video card in a sane price range. Right now if you want a good (not even the best) video card, you have to buy a high-end laptop which will cost you a lot, at least in Europe.
3. Behind the ubercool Aero, Vista sounds like XP with a few bugs fixed. Many people with less than high-end computers will be disappointed because they won't be able to run Aero, and will see little reason to upgrade to Vista. Now I finally have a "n00b-obvious" good argument to convinve them to swtich to Linux
This last sentence requires a clarification: Whether Linux's desktop will be able to look better than Vista's will remain to be seen. Probably not at first. I've seen Vista screenshots, and it does look amazingly beautiful, for the most part. The lower requirements, however, are there: Xgl runs beautifully on a 32mb laptop videocard (GF4), while Aero won't, judging from what I've read around the Internet.
"So it's in exactly the same boat as every other major software product released in the past 10 years."
Notice how games and Vista get treated different though. If the game doesn't run well, then people go "Oh well, my fault. I'll upgrade". If it's Vista, then "That Damn Microsoft couldn't write a good OS to save their lives. I should be able to run this on that old 486 I have".
This is great news that new PCs will be "Vista" rated. It means the old ones will go on sale so I can get a loaded AMD X2 cheap to run Linux.
If the average Windows user had 50% the technical knowledge of the average Linux user , you would have 95% less security problems . The problem with security is that the user is not supposed to know what a port or an IP is , but be protected by the OS from the people that do know .
With all due respect , securing a Windows box enough to get it online is 10x times easier that securing a *nix box .
My Starcraft 2 Blog
. . . a Treacherous ("Trusted") Computing Fritz chip for Digital Restrictions ("Rights") Management capability. The Vista sticker will be a handy warning label.
1. vista is basically xp with a pretty face
Have you been paying attention? Much of the code that has been with Win32 since NT4 is being rewritten; things like the networking modules and much of the driver framework will run in user mode (rather than kernel mode), which, for Windows, is quite a leap and a bound. I (like most) am not a huge fan of MS' software designs (particularly Windows), but what you said is wildly inaccurate.
I don't plan to run Vista and I really don't see why a slashdoter /. is now
/. my only option? Now go ahead you windrones,
would want to run it. We don't see stories about new latest
AmigaOS, why all this hype about Vista. Is it that
filled with windrones ? Are those stories just trollish click
baits?
That kinds of piss me off, is there a news site for real nerds
out there or is
mod me down into oblivion. You are still windrones.
There's no point worrying about this. After Vista is released, users will form a consensus about what you need to run it and that will form the basis of 1001 tech articles around the net.
In the meantime, the "official" sources all have vested interests and aren't to be trusted. There is, after all, a big difference between the specs on which Vista will work in theory and those on which it will work without giving the user an ulcer, quite aside from being able to turn on every feature.
I'm more interested in knowing how much the Vista versions are going to cost.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
...looking at current prices, the difference between 256mb and 512mb ram is about 14$ retail. By the time Vista is released, this'll be in the 10$ range. Hint: The low-low-end machines are always underpowered. Always have been, always will be. And with that said, I don't know how it compares to Vista yet but Windows 2000 does everything I want it to. I'm considering moving to XP SP3 when it's out (sometime after Vista) just for staying reasonably current, I'd rather go with the stable OS than the latest. The rest of you may be betatesters for Vista, I don't care. I already got all the hardware to run Vista and presumably the Windows version after that (except for the lack of DRM) but I choose not to.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
On a Pentium-class 300mhz chip, XP is perfectly happy and usable, provided the time-waster services (Themes, Messenger (off by default in SP2 anyway), Error Reporting Service etc are disabled) - although its much happier with 256mb than 128mb.
Obviously you'd never pay duke nukem forever on a rig like that but for most users needs it's not a problem. As a Mac convert from Windows with a 366mhz iBook I can honestly say that XP scales down to older hardware better than the competition.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
1. Vista is what XP should have been, 5 years too late with 5 times the memory overhead.
2. Linux is a kernel, you can't compare a kernel to an entire OS.
3. Pointless without open source drivers for the graphics cards.
The linked article is about the meaning of the term "Windows Vista Capable", not the inferiority of Microsoft software. Seriously, grow up.
cfd39df79bd871b2d18133e71409490d
Is a mode where I can select "Geek, Expert etc" ....
Then all the
- eye candy disappaars ( use Windows Classic etc)
- Popups and nag boxes go away
- does not try to tell me to do
- lets me be in control
- Does not phone home under any circumstances or even ask you if it can
Opps. Didn't I just describe Linux? Oh well...
Anyway. If I can't do the above the I won't be upgrading to Vista.
...we'll see machines that are billed as "Vista-capable" but don't give a very good experience?
,or whether a slot billed as requiring Y MHz will work properly with a new stick marked 1.5Y MHz. After you put it in your machine will start to crash twice a day, and it will take several days of swapping RAM to figure out whether the new RAM was bad, or you needed to buy RAM that was an identical match for the old RAM, or you needed to remove and throw out the old RAM, or whether the empty RAM slot you put the new RAM into is unreliable or has gotten dirty from being left unfilled... and have to start dodging pointed questions from the RAM vendor who keeps asking whether you opened the package while wearing a wrist strap in a clean room, and when your lab last tested your wrist strap.
We don't need benchmarks for speed. We need published, reliable benchmarks to serve as good, real-world guidelines about how much RAM the average user really needs to buy.
System requirements are depressingly unreliable, because it's one place where a company can sweep its underperformance under the rug. It's a soft requirement. Everyone will know whether Vista ships late. Everyone will know whether Vista has the feature they said it would have. But nobody will know whether some round of testing or tightening didn't get done, or whether engineering warned management that the goal for the system requirements can't be met and the requirements need to be bumped up. With the PC vendors pushing for a way to hit low price points for the entry systems...
For me, the timeline has been depressingly similar, over about two decades, in both the PC and the Mac world, whenever a new OS is introduced:
--The stated system RAM requirement is X, the entry-level systems are equipped with X, the midline systems are equipped with 2X. I buy 2X, but all my "I'm-not-a-computer-genius" friends who buy a machine at Best Buy and come to me for advice bought X.
--If you only have X, the system will, in fact, boot and very basic functions like displaying directories in the shell or running trivial programs like Wordpad seem OK. Typical purchased software (Office, Photoshop Elements, etc). seem to run sorta OK, but as soon as you see what they are like on a system with 2X you realize that X was actually underpowered from the word go.
--You can't tell your friends, "no big deal, buy another X RAM chip, it's only $49.95" unless you plan to go with them to buy it and plan to go to their house and install it for them.
--Even if the system works adequately, about eight months after it is released an automatic patch that is billed as "recommended for ALL systems" will, without clear notification, increase the RAM footprint by about 15% of X, which is just enough to push the systems that used to work sorta-kinda-OK into dogs, and the systems with 2X, which really did work OK, into systems that work noticeably slowly. Nothing that you can't fix if you're willing to spend a week or so tuning...
--All the advice articles saying admiringly that the system "loves RAM" and that it will work like a charm if you have 4X in.
--About a year after release, all the add-on software that runs under the OS starts to get point updates, which, unannounced, suddenly require more RAM. If you bought your system with 4X, or have upgraded to 4X, you don't even notice. If you bought even a midline system, you suddenly notice the upgrade has made an application that used to work fine dog-slow.
--About two years into release is your last good opportunity to throw RAM at the problem. If you miss the opportunity, by the time you are in the three to four year period you will find that RAM technology has moved forward, nobody quite remembers what kind of RAM your system needed, or how much you can add
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The worst thing about all of this is that not only does it inconvenience a huge number of people, it does so for absolutely no good reason.
Microsoft have done a lot of stupid things in their time, but Aero really takes the cake as far as I'm concerned. A 3D interface (at least in terms of how they're implementing it from the screenshots) is purely cosmetic...it doesn't offer anything in the area of usability whatsoever. For what therefore is a purely visual touch-up, a lot of people are going to have to shell out large amounts of money if they want to be able to upgrade. Great for the hardware manufacturers; a distaster for the rest of us.
Thanks a bundle, Microsoft.
Vista being so long coming also means that BIOS is still in the Vista plan, which means the hardware will CHANGE AGAIN in about a year to eliminate the old BIOS that's been around for decades.
Don't think I'll upgrade until the dust settles.
What we'll see will be a continuation of what we're already seeing: that PC's running a user-friendly distro like Kubuntu can do everything their Windows counterparts can, at a much lower cost, and more securely. It only takes on brave grandma in the neighborhood to change the whole neighborhood around.
The only people still seriously promoting MS are OEMs like Dell, who want you to need new hardware, tired IT managers who are failing to keep up with industry trends (remember COBOL?), and don't-know-any-better end users.
At least home users can 'just say no', corporate buyers that fall for the MOLP agreement scam, are screwed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Vista Home basic will NOT have the aeroglass desktop OR the HDCP media playback... so any current "budget"machine on the market is compatible... It's a marketing "scam"... Any truly Vista capable machine will have to have a much higher spec than currently on offer in the home end of the market.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I have XP Pro running on a Pentium II (MMX), 266Mhz computer with 128MB PC100 RAM, 3.2GB hard drive, and 4MB PCI Matrox graphics card. With all the visual asthetics tuned down and superfluous features uninstalled, I can safely say it runs well, despite the disclaimers and "minimum requirements" that Microsoft established for XP. So like previously mentioned, it is likely that in comparison, Vista will run fine on current low-end machines, as long as one can tune down features such as 3-D windowing and extraneous add-ons.
Shouldn't it read:
Machine capable Windows Vista is coming?
and likely won't much care. I see a great many people who buy a computer based on price alone. AMD Sempron, 256 MB RAM, 100 GB HD, integrated graphics, running XP Home, Norotn or McAfee, and some form of manufacturer help/care/support software in the background, AOL or PeoplePC on a dial-up internet over copper that is giving them a whopping 24k connection. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge understands that this system will run horribly, but those who buy these systems believe they are experiencing the wonders of technology. How many Wal-Mart ECS laptops with 128 MB RAM w/ integrated graphics were sold running XP Home? There will always be a market for cheap, regardless of the "minimum" or "recommended" hardware requirements.
Embedded Intel graphics are not going to cut it anymore. However, almost every PC sold at big box stores contains this most simple form of graphics processor. Will these machines go away? Or will they ship with XP? Or will Vista be preset into a mode that will be able to handle these low capabilities?
These same machines can have large hard drives, decent processors and good RAM, but still not have any useful kind of graphics card.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Actually, I disagree. The interface is not entirely useless, in that they've used it as an opportunity to fix many of the things wrong with the old Windows UI. The outstanding key issue is resolution dependence - with Vista, a 12pt font should finally be a 12pt font, not "whatever 12pt is at 72dpi, in pixels, no matter what your real display res is". And don't suggest setting "large fonts" or worse setting the font res option to your actual display res - as the rest of the UI is all statically laid out, it chokes rather badly.
A 3D UI also makes doing interesting things with window management easier, or in fact practical.
IMO this is an opportunity for MS to do a lot right, and certainly isn't useless.
Honestly, I didn't start using XP until after SP2 came out. I probably won't buy Vista until I get a 64-bit chip. Just because it doesn't run on every existing system the day it hits the shelves doesn't mean a whole lot; certainly two years after it's released people will have had time to upgrade.
I can't imagine what kind of 3D GUI they're going to have that won't work with a less-than-$100 Radeon. I find it difficult to believe they're going to be using vertex shaders and curved surfaces a whole lot; app screens don't take hundreds of megs of video memory (remember when video memory was a luxury?) either. I remember before Win95 came out (they were calling it Windows 4.0) and I had a 386SX/16 w/ 4MB RAM. I had to buy a new computer to upgrade.
Another point: I'm seeing a lot of people who seem to think that Vista is XP with a 3D GUI; that's not so!
Vista moves a lot of OS software out of kernel space (where it will crash the whole machine if it dies) and into user space. For instance, the networking and driver interfaces. This is good for security, but helps a lot with stability too. In theory, you won't have to reboot if you install a driver, as I understand it.
I use Gentoo and XP. XP is a LOT more stable than Win2k and NT4 were; Vista will be that much better.
I'm not crazy about the way MS designs software (Windows in particular), but they're rewriting a lot of code that has been with Win32 since NT4 (and even Win95 and older). That doesn't mean it will work; but it's a far cry from being XP with a new GUI. Also, Windows XP isn't 64-bit (unless you get the 64-bit version with less-than-Linux driver support - basically XP recompiled to support 64-bit), whereas Vista will probably do some things that 32-bit windows couldn't do, if you have a 64-bit chip.
Of course this will not happen anytime soon. Microsoft is in the business of selling software, so a midrange PC bought today will run Vista just fine.
I'm pretty sure, home basic (without the aero) is the version most likely version to be preinstaled on new machines. Very very stupid idea by Microsoft i reckon. Apple are just going to move in right in this spot with the fancy interfaces that microsoft customers WON'T be seeing. I guess it gives linux a chance too if anyone can come up with something more useable.
As anyone with three brains cells (that's more than the average heat & smoke producing slashie seems to have this morning) could tell you, we will see all three of these. The only possibly interesting question is what proportions they'll be, but even that's only really interesting if you're Dell or etc.
OMG! Did the pink hurt your brains that much, huh?
With respect to the purchase of a new PC; got a few basic predictions.
1) Fully equipped PC's will ship eventually driving the price down on hardware.
2) These fully equipped PC's (may) will cause a shortage on hardware driving up the prices.
Or....
3) The OEM's will ship the new PC's that barely meet the requirements. The only way that these machines will function is by turning off the majority of features that will make Vista, Vista.
Looks like option 3 will be the ticket. No vendor wants to be the first to charge more for a PC. Simply put; the avg consumer is an idiot and they solely shop on price. No vendor wants to be the first and totally equip the machines to fully handle Vista. If they do; their sales will suffer against their competitors.
Ok, to further refine my 900 number skills:
The article doesn't specifically state that the OEM's will ship bare bones PC's. However, the loose guidelines that are being set for will cause option 3 to happen.
You will see:
a) Option 3 will happen
b) Option 2 will follow within the next few years.
I know what you're thinking; option 2 is a simple fact of life; newer, better faster hardware always comes out. My point is that a truly Vista capable machine won't be available for a year to two years after the initial release; which is sad.
As for Option 1; it won't happen or it will have minimal impact. Vendors will slowly incorporate sligthly beefier hardware over time; which may eventually bring down prices. Anyways, feel free to flame me.
Regards,
Anonymous Coward.
Personally, I think this marks the beginning of the end for Microsoft - at least from the point of view of regular OS releases. I've been a Windows user right since 3.x days (fortunately Linux is now my prime OS) but each time I've upgraded to a new MS OS, I have seen less and less reason to do that upgrade in the first place - I've only used XP for the past year now (used Windows 2000 before) and only really used XP because it came on a new PC I bought and I discovered I could ditch the terrible Windows XP UI for the classic Windows 2000 one. But I can't say i've noticed much difference with using it - I found Windows 2000 pretty stable for general desktop use and XP is no different.
From the perspective of Joe Average, I don't see he has any reason to upgrade to Vista. The PC games market is quite clearly slowing down as games producers focus more on consoles and it's not going to be for around 2 years after Vista is released that we'll see "Vista only" games. You only need to look at the rise in Internet gaming to see that the future of PC games is a subscription model where gamers will be paying once for a game that will be something they will play possibly for several years - as opposed to buying a new game every few weeks or so. And if there's only a small Vista user base, games and apps producers will continue to support XP.
I'm sure that businesses will upgrade slowly (because of the licensing lock-in MS has with them) but those of us in IT have all seen the adoption of new OSes by businesses slow down also. Because Vista will end up breaking a lot of existing apps, the business migration is bound to be very slow.
I'm sure MS know all of this - which is why the marketing around Vista seems to be a lot more now than for any other OS they've released. But I really do think that this time, they're going to have real trouble getting this on the same number of desktops as they did with XP.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It doesn't matter what PCWorld says or even what Microsoft says. Computers are sold by salespeople who will usually do what they have to do to move the computers. You can safely bet a lot of boxes will be sold as "sure this Pentium 3 will run Vista just great and dandy, you can trust me!" and customers will believe it.
When it turns out that Vista won't run or runs like a dog, those customers won't blame the shifty salesdroid, they'll blame Microsoft.
Of course, half these customers will try to run Vista will ALL the graphical junk turned on and accept slowdowns are just normal.
Sig for hire.
I use W2K, XP, and OS X. OS X has some pretty graphics effects -- the translucency and all -- and OS X has its advocates, but I don't see it doing anything that makes me dissatisfied with my XP screen displays. Aero is supposed to be ultra-cool, but I will believe it when I see it that it applications can have new features under it.
Just as we are at the point where an 800 MHz Celeron will be adequate for most people besides gamers, I am thinking that we are at the point that XP, OS X are adequate for user displays. Is there some "killer app" that has some functionality that requires in some way what Aero has to offer?
The AMD list includes Sempron.
I've had a PC HDTV3000 card sitting on the shelf that I got in late 2004 during the broadcast flag scare. Recently, I got an "all-shovelware, every-piece-on-rebate" Sempron 3300+, 1/2 gig of RAM and mobo that should be just fine for a PVR because it would have been a fairly kick-ass system in 2004. And it looks like it would be adequate for Vista with a decent graphics card should the desire to install it appear.
All this really demonstrates is that the rate of desktop hardware innovation hasn't slackened.
Easy. 256MB configurations will quickly go the way of the Dodo bird. Retail competes on sticker price for the cheapest thing on the shelf. Some morons come along and buy that cheapest thing, the less moronic allow themselves to be "up sold" into something less incapacitated, while the super moronic hang around to get "up sold" to the highest margin piece of crap displayed on the shelves for exactly that purpose (anyone here like to part with $2k? I've got some *really* **awesome** 24 gauge zipcord looking for a good home).
Just imagine when you go across with the street with your 256MB price check and the oversexed 22 year old slick working there starts giving you the hairy eyeball about "Vista compatible".
Haven't you ever heard the retail lingo "oh, those guys, we get a lot of people in here after dealing with those guys"? That's the sound of retailers driving their own (who don't fall in line) into extinction.
Any store continuing to sell 256MB configurations in the Vista epoch is going to be portrayed by every slick-haired commissioned sales droid within a five mile radius as the fat kid with the black hairs growing out of his pimple.
what will happen is that the specs of the lowest end pcs will be beefed up ( not by a lot ) and also sp1 for vista will probably fix some of the memory overhead that everybody is talking about. I really don't know where you guys get your information from since there has yet to come out an RC for Vista. Beta build might very well still have debuging stuff enabled and that will most definitely eat up huge chunks of memory. Anyway, those of you that remember the pre XP days will also recall that 128mb ram was standard on lowend PC at that time and now it's 256 and up. So going up to 512 is a no brainer. Also sata drives are pretty much standard on any level for the IBM compatible PC. I also seem to reacall that Intel promiced a Vista compatible onboard video solution by the time Vista comes out and I'm sure that others will follow the trend. ( and I am talkign about a gpu that can handle Aero ) Yes the price of the really lowend PCs might go up a little but I really doubt that most people would even feel the difference. After all OEMs are capable of getting MUCH better deals than any consumer can.
Actually there is. If your hard disk activity LED is blinking like crazy when you switch applications, that's a hint that you're dipping too deeply into swap space and need to install more RAM to run the loaded applications smoothly.
Come on guys! My 1300 MHz Duron with 512 MB can run Vista. And I'm lucky 'cause I have a videocard in it that even supports the fancy bits of this OS. But even without that it will run Vista quite well I'm sure. No more FUD please.
-- Cheers!
answer "D" - All of the Above.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
...as soon as the big box vendors just say to hell with it and pick one major Linux distro and start offering it on a joe homeowner/small business desktop. Dell is on the record saying he would do it, (we just had this article a week or so ago), IF the "community" would just indicate a clear cut winner in the distro wars and make sure all the major software for it was easy and worked as advertised with no console hoop jumping. He just doesn't want to be forced to even try to "support" 698 flavors of linux, and I don't blame him one bit..or byte. And if Dell starts doing that, it will have an *amazing* effect on the hardware peripheral vendors, no more redheaded stepchild action for the linux drivers. All the "community" has to do is give an indication of working as a community, not a squabbling chaotic mess.
My guess, and it isn't a stretch, is that ubuntu will get the nod. I am not a fan of ubuntu, but it has enough oomph behind it to make sure it works if Dell actually gave them a contract to be an OEM vendor for them. Redhat gave up on the joe homeowner market, they don't even want your money for even a limited support model,so they are out, they just don't care and don't want it. Suse is a possibility and the serious dark horse in the race, partly because they have some cash and skull sweat to throw at it. Mandriva is collapsing, they are out, gone. You don't even see 1% of the fanboy posts like they used to have two years ago. Linspire or Xandros might get it, but I doubt it, too expensive, limited enthusiast communities, and ubuntu grabbed mindshare with the free cd giveaways and instant organized infrastructure. what will need to change though is the upgrade every few months deal, people DO NOT want to do that. incremental upgrades of this or that app, but NOT this geek fixation on upgrading. People want to settle in and just use what they have for several years, not several *months* or even *weeks*.
Now what WOULD be interesting is if Dell shipped XP or Vista installed, but included the Knoppix DVD, especially if it had been marginally tweaked to be just a tad less obscure and had more docs with it that came up on first boot. That might be an interesting transition model.
What Microsoft is setting customers up for is two hardware upgrades in about 2 years, when EFI bootable VISTA becomes avalable and BIOS gets relegated to dinosaur status.
In effect Microsoft is helping the hardware guys sell a lot more computers in the next 2 years.
Just a guess, but I suspect many VMware users only install memory-hungry firewall / anti-virus / anti-spyware programs in the host OS and keep their guest OS installations lean and mean.
with Vista installed (in 2010 when Vista is ready). If it runs slow install Linspire or other Linux distro and don't worry about anything.
I lost my sig...
Yeh but in practical effect, the only changes for the consumer will be the DRM kinds of stuff they don't want. Otherwise, in practical effect it's basically going to be XP with eye candy. Windows Boredom version.
Most of the compellingly different stuff (like new filesystems) Microsoft decided to pull out of the project.
Maybe you're the one who has not been paying attention.
The "Windows Vista Capable" machines were not available yet!
Seriously, does anyone here know anybody who plans to buy a new computer just for the joy of running Microsoft's latest and most bloated version of Windows?
Everyone who has a computer with XP on it already will keep using it. Anyone who upgrades just to line Microsoft's pockets is a fool.
Phew
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I already have vista compatible hardware
A64 3500+
1GB ram
ATI X800XL 256MB
however I have no intention of signing myself up for DRM.
And the Intel 950 IGA is supposed to have Shader 3.0 support (Pixel Shader 2.0, Vertex Shader 3.0). Unfortunately, the shader support is software based, so while you will be able to turn on Aero Glass, it won't run very fast.
That said, if your graphics card isn't up to running Aero Glass, Vista will just turn it off, it won't refuse to run. There is a TON of FUD about this issue, lots of people claiming Vista won't run unless you have a High End, 256MB Graphics card, which is patently false. Vista will run fine, it'll just downgrade the fancy graphics to something your graphic card is able to display.
> what will need to change though is the upgrade every few months deal, people DO NOT want to do that.
> incremental upgrades of this or that app, but NOT this geek fixation on upgrading. People want to settle > in and just use what they have for several years, not several *months* or even *weeks*.
Right on. Patches are one thing but wipe and reinstall is something totally different. In most cases, upgrading your OS is much better done by wipe+reinstall, rather than "upgrade". For Linux, that leaves 2 options, one at each end of the expertise spectrum...
1) Debian... some people have ragged on Debian about its slowness to upgrade. But that is what a lot of end-users want, i.e. a system you can *USE*, rather than a continuous series of wipe+reinstall.
2) Gentoo... It's hard to explain to non-users, but here goes. Imagine that you got Windows NT4 years ago. You updated/patched every month or so. Today, the code on your machine is identical to what you would have if you went and bought Windows XP SP2. "Rolling Incremental Upgrade" is the best phrase I can think of.
Microsoft has conditioned people to do a monthly update, with a large download, but it's not considered the same as an OS upgrade. You can launch the update when you go to bed. The following morning, or worst-case when you get back from work that afternoon, your update is done. Gentoo is sort of like that. If you do your updates once or twice a week, the downloads and builds will obviously be smaller. Unlike Windows, you also get your apps upgraded, as well as the OS. Also unlike Windows... *IT'S FREE*!!!
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Okay. So if Vista needs >256MB of available memory to run, then you gotta wonder, how much free memory is left to applications? Come on, do we really need such a memory hog of an OS?
I can totally see MS making Vista pre-allocate a huge chunk of memory for "OS Purposes" and then making a hidden API that allows MS-specific programs to allocate from this area, while third party programs will only to work with the resources that are left.
The latest Slackware distro is guaranteed to run on a 486 with 4MB of RAM. :-D
less expensive is not equal to bad; just think of the drop in ram module prices. unfortunatelly, the performance enhancements you get with a hardware upgrade is eventually offset by the "hunger" of the next windows upgrade. then, microsoft will tell you you're hardware is "cheap" and "low-end".
Running OS X on a cheapass Dell or any other low end PC is like guilding a turd!...why not just buy a mac mini and get it over with... who the heck wants to run superior software on junk hardware.
As a tangent from the discussion of Vista...
Here's what I wonder -- and would love to see -- why doesn't Apple really push their Intel Macs in the face of people on the upgrade treadmill?
Why isn't Apple go out and really doing a huge marketing push for their OS, trying to get people away from Windows (or, really, getting people onto their OS)? Take advantage of the long delay between updates, emphasize Microsoft's below-average security and stability history, promise people bigger and better thangs with an easier and less frustrating user experience with Macs, and get people to switch over?
I doubt it'd happen in huge numbers, since Microsoft has people pretty much locked in at this point, but I look at Apple pretty much taking a soft sell approach to the home PC market and wonder why they don't push their PCs as hard as they are their iPod/iTunes? Average people probably know the Apple name from the iPod but I'd bet they'd say "Really? Apple sells computers?" when asked.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
No matter how you look at this, it's a mix of a lot of different factors.
/anyway/.
Functionally, 'Vista-approved' machines probably means that Vista will have all the drivers to make this fully functional -- in other words, that some goon at MS actually tested this configuration (or one very similar to it) and made sure that it would all work.
As far as to what 'level' it will work, I was under the impression that the 'basic' version wouldn't even have Aero. Even if Grandma goes to WalMart and buys a machine that is 'Vista-approved' but not beefy enough to handle that 3d goodness, either she'll be getting Basic or (hopefully) the OS will be smart enough to offer recommendations for appropriate levels of eye candy. The point is that Grandma isn't going to care either way if she doesn't have swishy dialog boxes and shiny translucent things - as long as her email opens (no matter whether it takes one second or ten), she's happy.
Mid-range computer users are going to be smart enough to ask and to look for a machine that will _run_ Aero if they want that, and the power folks are going to go out and build a machine that will surpass these requirements
So in essence, this is more hype over nothing.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
Or D) We'll see cheap Linux machines.
Rethinking email
On one hand, I agree that it's far too early to be making such speculations. Who knows what more than a year into the future may look like?
OTOH, I wouldn't be so categorical about all low-end machines upgrading all the time. Vendors of both software (mostly games) and hardware (all of them) like to push new stuff down our throats all the time. But the insane upgrade reace will have to stop eventually once people realize it may not be worth it. Some of us don't want to, period.
At some point, a software producer is bound to overplay their hand and try pushing consumers a little too far. Will Microsoft do that with Vista? I know I like my low-end desktop machine. It works perfectly well and I does everything I need. Anybody who tries to force me to upgrade anything can go suck on a carrot.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_the_shark and http://jumptheshark.com/
It originally referred to an episode in "Happy Days" where the lead character literally ski-jumps over a shark. It's now become slang for any pointless, spectacular, diversion/stunt by a TV show or company (or whatever) that has run out of ideas, is on its way down, and can only retain public attention via these stupid stunts.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
It just smells wierd that there is so much time and article space wasted on speculated Vista hw requirements. And, besides, it really doesn't matter. We don't need no suggestion and benchmark on how an MS OS will run on some hardware, we'd need benchamarks that show that the how do the apps we want to use perform under Vista (on whatever hw). By the time Vista will be buyable most hw you will be able to buy will be probably fully capable to "run" Vista (it feels fairly peculiar to speakabout how a hw will run an OS).
And besides, why should I be interested in Vista anyway, since other OSes have all the features (and more) that Vista promises to have in a year from now (!). And I also don't care about what new features will it bring for developers, since - wakey, wakey, sunshine - there are other OSes that we can develop for and under.
This whole hype just feels stupid. It will come when it will come, we should _then_ read some reviews, test the latest pre-rtm betas and decide whether we should consider buying it.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
This is badly needed. Unfortunately I can't see them completely fixing it.
...with the exception of some websites where the designers did not exect the text to take so much area in pixels. I once put Windows XP on this monitor at 1600x1200 (for reasons I forgot) and the fonts are waay too small... and no success at making everything scale up and look correct.
I know several people who have LCDs running less than the native resolution in Windows (which looks like shit) because it is the only way to make fonts larger everywhere.
Sadly Mac OSX is not so great with the font scaling either. I have a friend with an iMac G5 (the flat one) that has poor eyesight, and runs less than the native resolution. I tried to make the fonts bigger for him at the native resolution so it didn't look like shit, but it just doesn't work out right.
OTOH I have been using linux/KDE on a 19" monitor for years at 1600x1200 and can make everything great for me
Most other people's computers that I have seen are running 800x600 because font scaling in windows just sucks ass. Unfortunately I have a feeling that even if Microsoft fixes this with Vista, there is likely to still be issues with alot of older programs. Fixing it does not just include making all fonts bigger, because many programs, and parts of Windows too, expect the displayed text to fit in an area of predetermined size (ie. what looked good on the developers machine).
~XeonTux
A person who thinks that they are a Mac user but are really just trying to be. The mistake they make is to try to become a Mac user, when real Mac users are all about not trying to be anything and following your own rules. There is no fashion code to being a Mac user. There are no rules as to what applications you have to run.
Recent converts like you are ruining the old school Mac community because you are posers. Apple releases one OS that popularizes Fitts' law and the Genie effect, and suddenly people assume being a Mac user is all about owning a Mac. But a real Mac user is born, not made. You "switchers" are misrepresenting yourselves and the Mac platform. You're giving people the wrong idea of what Macintosh is.
switcher: shops at hot topic, thinks Firefox is a good Mac app, waiting for OS X port of PayrollPro 2000, follows any hint of a fashion trend (instead of setting them!), wouldn't know Clarus from Carl Sagan.
real Mac user: someone true to who they are--the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world.
None of the Sub $1000 CDN Dells come with anything but an Intel onboard video card. I'm pretty sure those crap cards won't run Aero Glass. Aero glass is the only good feature of windows Vista. Oh, and IE 7, which has tabs. But that's crap anyway, because you could just user Firefox, which has had tabs forever, and has CSS 2 support. There is no reason for the user to run windows Vista except aero glass, and none of the machines that Joe Sixpack will actually buy will even be capable of running vista. And no matter how nice Vista looks, I don't think Dell is going to be able to convince the guy who wants to spend $500, to spend $1500.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Windows Vista Capable Voting Machines Coming and some vague reference to Diebold and California. I think I'm reading too much Slashdot.
Help us build a better map!
Vista hopefully will flopp....
Just because MS releases a new OS, why the fuss ? why the attention and the "gotta have it" ?? Are we really all consumer whores ? Fix the XP failings and keep your "new and Improved" piece 'o' sh*t !!!
I have SLi'd 7800GT's on a 4800 dual AMD core with two gigs ram.
It might run Vista decently...the scene version when it comes out with the crap hacked out of it. None of this File management crap instead of the new File System. MS has gotten enough of my cash. The have sent me underground now. Cheers
Your Windows XP in VMWare also is incapable of doing much else other than the most basic of desktop computing tasks, I'm sure.
The rest of the world tends to use their computer for leisure including but not limited to gaming, which ends up requiring more resources. Your 128MB of RAM is quickly eaten up by the base OS and a few programs on top of it and then it's swap time.
Give me a break, my own personal desktop in XP uses almost 450MB of my 1GB of RAM once the entire thing is up and running, I'm looking at an extra gig real soon just so that I don't have to worry about new games causing me to swap like crazy. And yes I'm serious, after all of my startup programs load along with my copy of avast! the system is using a considerable amount of my memory.
Just because you can get XP running on a machine with such a minor amount of RAM, doesn't mean it's going to be very accommodating to the applications running on top of it.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
You voted Bush didn't you...Take the blinders off.
One thing leads into another..Vista capable, code and hardware.
That last comment you threw at that blogger really got me going...
Seriously grow up ? LMAO, it's all about the money and upgrades...
Seriously get a life, overlook what you deem false, and do like I
did and work for $MS for five years....
Wasn't an OS meant to MANAGE resources, not to CONSUME them?
This may be a bit offtopic but I wonder what would happen if MS decided to break with the 100% backwards compatibility goal with Vista? Sure...the software vendors would moan and bitch but what would they do? It's not like they would jump ship.
I'd imagine it would just delay the adoption of Vista vs WinXP, but it would STILL be adopted.
Following Microsoft's issue of new shiny silver stickers that say "Vista Capable" on the bottom:
Fuzzy Stickerz inc. released a new scratch and sniff sticker that smells like real butered popcorn. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that Microsoft may stage a hostile takeover of Fuzzy Stickerz and add thier popcorn smell technology to the new Vista stickers. While informed tech readers are unphased by the annoucement, tabloid news sites are confused and shocked that Microsoft would demand that Vista will only operate using buttered keyboards.
"It has been three long years to the day since we last looked at that unusual distribution called Windows. Although at that time it was considered by many to be little else than a bizarre joke (who on earth would design an operating system that doesn't provide a way to grep files?), a recent rumour about a new release has piqued our curiosity. Developed by a large group of programmers who, believe it or not, all work in one building, the new version is predicted by some journalists to be one of the most secure operating systems ever created. Robert Storey, our ardent distribution reviewer, couldn't hold on any longer and downloaded the most recent beta version of Windows Vista from a nearby mirror to take a look."
Just upgraded to a Pentium D 3.0ghz with 2 gigs of ram, a 7900GTX Nvidia BFG card, and a 250gig SATA drive. I think I have just enough to load Solitare and Notepad at the same time, I'll let you know when I get Vista.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
One thing that I've been wondering about the Vista is the graphics requirement. Since the OS is actually going to use the video card to render the pretty GUI and whatnot, doesn't that mean the card is going to be stressed continuously? One thing is the noise, as the graphics subsystem is usually the loudest component in the case. The other one is heat. Is it going to be as if you are running a graphic-intensive 3D game when you are just browsing the web and typing in Word?
The samething applies to IE and Firefox..if you use the Firefox preloader it boots just as fast as IE..but because IE has the same api allocation hooks you need more ram to use the Firefox pre-loader!
A hyperthreaded processor is not necessary for Aero. I have Vista 5308 running on an AMD Athlon XP 2200+ and an nVidia 6200 (128MB) card, and it's running the full Aero Glass interface just fine.
Think about it?
1: It hard to be compatable with a wider variety of less capable machines and still provide the best performance on the latest+greatest hardware. It's also very expensive to maintain multiple, incompatible versions (e.g. 32- and 64-bit versions).
2: How many people with older machines are going to pop out another $200-$300 to run Vista slowly on their existing h/w, have to load it and activate it themselves, and break compatability with existing programs -- when for $600 you'll be able to have a faster machine with enough memory, a bigger harddrive, 64-bit processor, AND Vista preloaded?
3: Why is Microsoft worried if you can't run Vista on less capable machines? I don't think they are. You're still going to uh...buy XP from them anyway. They get you coming or going.
Intel finally loves Microsoft again because, for the first time in years, people are going to really have to buy new hardware, mostly with Intel processors and chip-sets, to run the newest killer application.
I doubt that a 32-bit Vista will survive long, given that it ever see the light of day anyway. And if it does, it will be crippled compared to a 64-bit version. I expect most 64-bit processors probably meet the minimum Vista requirement, and those are the people who will be running it.
Will 32-bit systems even still be being sold at the time of this latest slip to January 2007? Will even single core processors be common in new machines?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The only real problem may be with the 3D card needed for the new gui.
I'll bet that the real fun comes when people buy these whizzy new boxen and realize a few months later that they won't play the encrypted HiDef (both standards) on their big-$$$ TV because the HiDef folks insist on an encrypted end-to-end chain, including the viewing device. Your current high-end video cards might do you exactly zero good if your goal is to surpass current DVD viewing quality. And you DID buy that 42" beauty that is compatible with the yet-to-be-finalized DRM standards, right?
Of course, this ain't MicroSoft's issue. But mightn't it be the unmentioned reason why MS is delaying the consumer versions (only) of Vista -- they reasonably don't want to get associated with a major consumer purchase that was obsolete out of the box (not just deprecated).
Takers?
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
"My problem is with the consistently mediocre reporting, when just a little bit more effort would get to primary sources, rather than this persistent blog banality culture."
But isn't "blogs" suppose to be the next newspaper?
I think Vista is supposed to be faster than XP, in much the same way that XP was faster than ME. Applications should run better -- not worse -- on comprable hardware. While some systems are being sold with 256BM of RAM, those systems already perform poorly with XP. I doubt they're perform any more poorly with Vista, and again, some applications may even run better because of under-the-hood improvements. The real kicker for Vista is going to be Aero Glass, which requires a moderately powerful video card. The single biggest problem I see is Intel's integrated graphics not being up to par. At all. They suck, we all know they suck, and maybe Aero Glass will put pressure on companies to find a better budget solution, which would be a good thing. It's also important to note that there's also an Aero theme, which doesn't have all the visual effects, and looks pretty much like XP. I imagine it's going to take about the same amount of resources. (Technically more resources than Aero Glass, because the video card isn't taking the pressure off the rest of the PC.)
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
Prove it! OOo apps are extremely slow not because Windows, but because they basically load the whole suite to open an application. How come OOo is just as slow in Linux then?
All the upgrades needed shouldn't be that expensive, and you shouldn't need latest technology. From looking at the MS articles, it sounds like the minimum processor is going to be a P4 (or equivilant Athlon). Ok, fair enough it's nearing 6 years old, I don't think it's an unreasonable minimum. They then say you'll need 512MB RAM, something which not all P4s shipped with. Personally, I recommend a minimum of 512MB to epopel right now and a gig or more is better as it's not an expensive upgrade. Currently Newegg is listing 1GB of DDR SDRAM as bein $66 for a good brand. PC133 RAM is more expensive, $62 for just 512MB, but still quite reasonable.
The final requirement is a DirectX 9 compatible graphics card. It's not 100% clear, but it sounds like any card that supports that level of DirectX, even if it doesn't support the functionality, will work for the basic interface. For Aero, tha card needs to have PS2.0 or better and 64MB of RAM or more. That a GeForce 6200 ($40-50) or an ATi X300 (also $40-50) would do nicely. Also, new integrated Intel graphics chips (GMA 900s or 950s) fit the bill. Of course older generation cards work fine to, the Radeon 9500 and up and GEForce FX series and up are all listed as compatible.
I don't see anything unreasonable here. New OS should work on almost any system released in the last few years, and should work on systems up to 6 years old with around $100 of upgrades. To me at least, that sounds reasonable, espically since XP will continue to be supported for a number of years.
It means it'll be capable of getting viruses,trojans,worms,malware and spyware just like the older versions of Windows. "Move along people, nothing to see here!" -- Officer Barbrady
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Consumers: Okay!
(6 Months Later)
Microsoft: Sorry, but it's going to take more than we thought to run Vista. You'll have to buy new PCs.
Consumers (angrily): But you said...
PC Vendors (secretly happy): All we had to go with were the early Vista specs. But we'll give you a great deal on a new...
Remind anyone of early HD adopters? I'm sure PC's could be sold Vista ready today, but some of these sound like bare minimum specs to be running Vista. If Microsoft ups the system requirements, somebody's gonna get hosed (and it ain't the PC vendors).
"Wasn't an OS meant to MANAGE resources, not to CONSUME them?"*
Wasn't a CPU meant to COMPUTE, not GENERATE heat.
*You people are so CONSUMED by hate that you make stupid statements, and get modded insightful.
64mb "recommended"
Windows 95 only needed 4 megs to run.
8mb "recommended"
According to the product spec when it was released :D
So yeah... take the "recommended" spec and multiply by about 6 or so, and that's what a semi-useful vista system will need :)
Scary isn't it? :D
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
With inadequate RAM and slow graphics and they'll just put the real requirements as EXTRAS in small print in the footnotes just like they do now.
"Get your Dell/Tiger/HP/Greybox/eMachines....for only $399!! We'll throw in a free printer."
And then you dump an extra $150 in to make it run right.
By the time I upgrade to Vista, the minimum PC specs will be way higher than required and Vista will be at least 3 years old.
/Mad
I have only just moved up (down) to XP