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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."
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
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.
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...
Um... dude, they're not building an operating system for RIGHT NOW, for all you early adopters. They're building an operating system for a 5-6 year lifespan. If you go out & buy a new computer or upgrade equipment to run Vista, that's YOUR decision - not them strongarming you. You never had to buy it in the first place.
Thinking that they're doing this to force users to upgrade NOW is a rediculously narrow view. If anything, they're targeting people that already refresh their computers on a regular basis, who will do so IN THE FUTURE, and people that will buy new computers anyway - IN THE FUTURE.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.