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Microsoft Releases Vista Hardware Requirements
Digital Inspiration writes "CNet reports that Microsoft has kicked off a 'Get Ready' campaign aimed at helping customers prepare for Windows Vista. The site also includes an Upgrade Advisor tool to help people determine just how Vista-ready an existing PC is." From the article: "The marketing programs and upgrade tool are designed to ease some of the uncertainty around Vista well ahead of the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, the two biggest PC selling times of the year. Vista had long been expected to arrive by the 2006 holidays, but Microsoft said in March that it would not arrive on store shelves until January."
But the "features" they are announcing have been in Mac OS X for four years. I'm not seeing anything impressive here... just insane memory and disk space requirements.
As computers advance it only makes sense to use the power that is becoming available.
There is a lot people expect their system to do out of the box. Computers are not going to be confined to one room in a house, they are going to be central to a lot of electronics throughout homes soon. It only make sense, most electronic items these days are very close to computers themselves, just specialized. Look at HD-DVD and Blu-Ray machines.
Hell with the attitude you have why would we have ever wanted more than text based graphics? Let alone more than 640k ram?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They want us to buy the hardware in order to run their operating system, when an operating system is supposed to run our hardware. Like people are going to buy hardware just to run the new Windows. That's like buying an airplane because Geico comes out with airplane insurance. I find that appalling
My name is Wootzor von Leetenhaxor
For once I went to read the fine article, but the page is totally botched in my Firefox under linux client. At least I can see the links and text with lynx anyway.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I'm sure the requirements aren't just to log in and sit at the desktop, I'm sure that the requirements are also so that you'll be able to run most common softwares for the next couple years or so. After all, an operating system is pretty useless if it doesnt have any software for it.
I know I have been trolled, but no, 10.4 runs just fine on 512MB.
iBook G4, 512MB, Firefox, Thunderbird, Safari, Mail.app, terminal all open, all running just fine, quick enough, thank you very much, I have just fed the troll...
When It Counts.
Seriously - 1GB ram (512MB for low end installs) seems like an awful lot to me....
Windows itself doesn't need all that RAM. But if you plan on running 4 or 5 major applications (Photoshop, iTunes, Firefox, Word, etc) simultaneously, you'd better at least have 1GB so as to avoid having to swap to disk/VM, which is when performance really starts to blow.
I generally recommend at least 2GB of RAM for anyone running Windows XP, just to avoid having to hit VM during common usage scenarios. It's not the OS that takes up all the RAM, it's the apps.
I for one will be glad to see Microsoft finally making the RAM requirement realistic and reasonable. When they released Windows 95 and said it would minimally run on something like 16MB of RAM, they didn't bother to mention that meant the system would be constantly swapfiling even before loading up any applications.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Is it just me, or is having stringent hardware requirements for the OPERATING SYSTEM kind of ridiculous?
As opposed to needing an actual Macintosh to run OSX on?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Let's say you're a company. You just bought 500 workstations from Dell last year, they are Pentium IV 2.1 Ghz machines with 512 MB of Ram (plenty for your company). You need to keep up with Microsoft Operating Systems because Microsoft will drop support for the OS version you currently use. Now you have to decide to "upgrade" to the older version of the OS or this new Vista thing. But wait, Vista has more stringent hardware requirements. Now as a manager do you buy more hardware (which has no appreciable value) or do you upgrade to an OS that may drop support in under 5 years or do you switch OS vendors altogether?
It's not as easy a decision as most people think.
crazy dynamite monkey
A majority of folks either have desktops 2Ghz machine. There are plenty of 1Ghz laptops, but not with those video requirements. Then again, most built in video has 64Mb memory (desk/lap). Also, who really has 1GB system memory?--everyone I know has around 512MB (especially laptops). DVDROM? I think most have CDROMs... the list goes on.
In the end, you either are way above the requirements or [i]slightly under[/i]. You either have the bling P4-2Ghz+ $1500 system or laptop already...or there's a 99% chance you'll need to upgrade something (RAM, DVD, Video, HD, or processor).
That is entirely good because you will be running Linux and get a hell of a good box for vanilla prices.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Okay, everybody is missing the point. Vista does not have a HD foorprint of 15GB. Really, it doesn't. Nor does it plan to use 1GB of memory for the kernel.
The "system" requirements are set to provide the average user with a pleasant experience (the use of Windows notwithstanding). That means several applications open and multimedia running in the background and/or foreground. Yes, there will be lots of clock cycles and memory for pretty (and useless). This isn't about the minimum requirements for an OS, its about the minimum requirements for the OS and a typical group of applications.
For you Mac fanboys out there - yes, Tiger will install with 3GB of HD free and will run on a G3. I don't know this as fact, but based on what I know Vista will easily fit into 3GB as well with room to spare. It will also run on an 800MHz x86 processor which...wait for it...came out the same year as the G3 was introduced (1999).
I know it's popular to get your panties all bunched up over the evil empire's latest move to try and get you to pimp your little sister for enough money to upgrade, but this really isn't that bad. I mean, this is the same place where we discuss whether it's enough to have dual 512MB video cards to play the latest game on our machines, right? Are we really that worried that we're not going to have 40GB of hard drive and a gig of RAM?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Some PC manufacturers skimp badly on RAM, even though it's cheap. Insufficient RAM is one of the few things that will make a modern computer perform badly as a desktop. By saying "Windows Vista requires 1GB RAM", Microsoft is really saying "manufacturers, stop giving users only 256MB!" Obviously Windows itself won't use 1GB of memory, but some applications will, and poor performance makes Microsoft (as well as the PC manufacturer) look bad.
As for the 128MB video card requirement, this is another area where PC manufacturers are overly stingy. Developers shouldn't have to worry about substandard integrated graphics chipsets, they should be able to program to a reasonable lowest common denominator. Microsoft wants to make sure no one is below that common denominator.
Basically, Microsoft is claiming as hardware requirements, not what Windows itself needs, but what they think programmers should be able to take for granted. It's all cheap hardware anyways, and it will only get cheaper in the future, so leaving some old systems unsupported is no big deal in the long run.
Providing minimum specs that mean "Minimum for reasonable performance" not "Minimum to make it execute." I remember back in the dark days of DOS games were famous for using the second metric. They'd list a minimum and sure, the game would execute on that system, but it wasn't really playable. I much prefer companies to list realistic minimums that will give reasonable performance. Absolute minimums aren't really useful.
That won't be that cheap. Especially since to add a gig you need to have your 1 gig not spread out over all your memory banks. This is rare.
1gig is a lot for a minimum spec.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Am I the only one who noticed that? "... Adequate graphics memory. 64 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor less than 1,310,720 pixels 128 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions from 1,310,720 to 2,304,000 pixels 256 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions higher than 2,304,000 pixels Meets graphics memory bandwidth requirements, as assessed by Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor running on Windows XP ..."
I guess Microsoft will start asking users to count their pixels one by one.. but what for the bandwith requirements?
Is they don't want people bitching. They want to give you some realistic requirements. If you follow their guide, you'll get pretty good performance including when you are running apps.
Remember the Windows 95 fiasco? MS claimed it required 4MB of RAM. Ok, that's not a lie, Windows 95 will execute on a system with 4MB of RAM... It's just nothing else will. The OS would use all the RAM, and you'd be paging continually, it was too slow to be usable. You needed 8MB of RAM to have a Windows 95 system that could usuably load apps.
These requirements are much more realistic ones. They aren't the requirements to execute Vista, they are the requirements to execute Vista, and things on top of it, which is of course the point to having an OS. Consumers who listen to the guildelines will likely not be disappointed.
As I was reading your comment, I just assumed you were a troll until I read your last paragraph:
You need treatment from the effects of the RDF. So you run a previous version of OS X, without all of the optional eye candy, with more than the "required" RAM for Windows Vista (Basic user interface). Yet you act like Vista's user interface also doesn't scale down with the hardware.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
> Microsoft would negotiate a deal where you had to pay for things you don't > actually need or want, in order to get something you do?
No, it is you will have to pay for things you don't actually need or want, in order to get something that don't actually need or want.
Now now, lets be honest here. Captive-ntfs is slow as shit.
For my purposes it simply won't work at all. I need a shared partition for data. That way I can work with the data with tools from either OS. And I need to write gigs at a time. For instance I do many dvd backup rips. Have you ever wrote 4gigs to an NTFS partition using Captive? Your 15 minutes to rip from the DVD just skyrocketed to longer than the entire rip used to take.
Lets see, the fastest processor ever put in a laptop. HD running at the fastest RPM speed you commonly see in a laptop. Shitload of ram. Yup, that's typical alright. What does it take to make above standard for you? A 20lb gaming rig from alienware?
XP runs as fast as 98 if you give it enough system as well. After all, if you have enough processor to handle all those services and enough ram to preload all the crap it wants to put in memory so that transitions will happen faster and such it better be faster.
A typical laptop is 256mb-512mb ram, 60-80gb 4200 rpm or MAYBE 5400rpm drive, and a 1.6ghz pentium mobile (at the high end, most are running semprons or celerons).
That, and it is about TIME Microsoft released REAL OS requirements for memory, instead of their bullshit requirements...
Windows 95: 4MB minimum, 8MB recommended. Yesh, raise your hand if you actually got anything useful done on Win95 with less than 16MB, especially once the internet got popular!
Windows 98: 16MB minimum, 32MB recommended. Sure, try surfing and writing a document at the same time, and you'll be beggin for 64MB.
Windows XP: 64MB minimum, 128MB recommended, but 256MB if you don't want to pull your hair out waiting for your favorite application to swap in and out of disk cache.
512MB minimum, with 1GB recommended, and the recommened specs are actually USABLE? Now those are specs I can live with, even if they are a bit high.
As stated previously, you can run Vista with much lower specs, you just can't use Aeroglass.
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And occasionally whores for Karma.