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Microsoft Unveils 'Vista Premium' Requirements

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tough-crowd dept.

Graeme writes "Microsoft has finished what some are calling the true minimum requirements for Windows Vista: the finalized requirements for the 'Vista Premium' certification program. The program is used to influence OEM designs, and it gives an idea of what Microsoft thinks Vista really needs to run well, and what they think is in the horizon. The Ars report hits the highlights, and there are some surprises in there, such as a delayed requirement for HDCP. Ars suspects that the slow ramp-up is due to the pact to not use the Image Constraint Token."

17 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. You can see where they're going by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it me, or does this have "DRM'ed Media PC" written all over? Hickup free HD playback, PVP, DVI-D... Yes, by 2007, but, snide comments about the real release date of Vista aside, it pretty much means "Do it now, so you save yourself from refitting it later".

    I certainly forsee computer sales in the first quarter of 2007, when the vendors try to get rid of their soon-to-be not-compatible hardware.

    It's also noteworthy that Vista requires OEMs to have some kind of networking ability. While this is a given by today's standards, I find it very curious that an operating system REQUIRES me to have it.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:You can see where they're going by CastrTroy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, Like I should be required to have all this trusted computing junk on my computer if all I want to do is write an email. You can run windows XP on a Pentium 1 with 128 Megs of ram, and a half meg video card if you want to. You probably shouldn't but you still can. I could see a lot of people getting really mad when they go out to buy the new version of windows only to find out that it won't run on their very recently bought computer. I just bought a computer, and it probably won't be supported by Vista, because I think it's missing some of the features.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:You can see where they're going by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It's also noteworthy that Vista requires OEMs to have some kind of networking ability. While this is a given by today's standards, I find it very curious that an operating system REQUIRES me to have it.
      That caught my eye too. Not just that it requires networking, but it has to be semi-fast networking. But then I thought it through: this isn't a requirement for Vista as such, this is a requirement for "full-featured" Vista. Presumably Vista supports streaming media over your LAN, so you can watch a movie over the Internet at resolution that isn't a joke. You don't have fast networking, then you can still install Vista, but you're missing out on the "full experience".
  2. "plenty"? by Bill+Dog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The 1Ghz CPU and 1GB RAM and DirectX 9 graphics is understandable, but what exactly does "plenty" of video RAM mean? For the full-blown Aero "experience" do I need 512 or 256 or 1024 or what?

    --
    Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
  3. Basic Question No One Has Asked by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 4, Interesting


    The public Beta is out. Anybody actually TRIED running this AND applications on the barebones spec of 800MHz and 512MB of RAM as well as the 1GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM?

    By apps, I mean the current version of Microsoft Office with Word and Excel open at the same time, and the IE browser open, and maybe Messenger, and the usual tray full of crap most people run.

    I want to hear a REAL-WORLD test from the people using the public Beta on REAL machines.

    I find it hard to believe that everybody INCLUDING MICROSOFT was talking about 3GHz machines and 1GB of RAM at a minimum last year, and now suddenly we're down to 800MHz CPUs?

    What's wrong with this picture? Don't blame it on the media because Microsoft ITSELF was talking those specs last year.

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
    1. Re:Basic Question No One Has Asked by ThinkFr33ly · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, kinda.

      I've been running beta 2 on an Athlon 1.2Ghz / 512MB / Radeon 9800 128MB setup. I would consider this pretty much bare bones.

      How does it run? Well, considering it uses about 800 MB of ram just sitting there, suprisingly well. This memory usage is almost certainly due to the fact it's a beta. I remember beta 2 of XP used like 600 MB of ram just sitting there.

      But given the fact that on XP if you're using that much more ram than you have you'd be swapping like crazy, Vista runs suprisingly smoothly. I rarely notice UI lag, even when opening up new applications. In fact, the UI lag on Vista beta 2 is better than on my primary desktop running XP. (My primary desktop has 2 GB of ram, and a 3.8 Ghz P4.)

      The Vista search features are very fast as well.

      Of course, the iffy specs of my test machine cause some things to be painfully slow. Opening an explorer folder with hundreds of videos in it will takes a very long time to render all the previews. (The folder itself, however, comes up almost instantly.)

      Assuming they cut the memory requirements by 50% post beta (which is close to what we saw with XP), Vista would run just fine for "normal" use on that old Athlon. No games, probably no coding, etc.

  4. 1GB of ram for semi-transparent windows? by bogie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow. I'm sure it's not competely fair to say this since both technologies are new and Aero is a bit more than just window borders, but right now XGL is making Aero looks like a slow bloated piece of crap.

    Cue someone pointing to that wikipeida entry which shows all those great features coming with Vista....

    --
    If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  5. hmm... by loraksus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, at least Dell, HP and Acer are happy. Wonder if MS owns any stock in those companies...

    --
    1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/
  6. Re:Haven't we been here before? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    We've all been there, (many times now MS-DOS,win3.1/NT4-Win95/2000/XP), done that. Bring on VISTA baby!


    Honestly, no, I don't remember. I went from Apple ]['s and CP/m to Ultrix and CTSS (on a Cray). Then to SunOS and some NeXT computers when I went back to college. That was followed into a very brief experience with a company running a mixed Win95/Win98/WinNT/Win-ME environment that was the most absurd virus hell I've ever seen and back to a SunOS/Solaris/Apple shop which migrated to a Linux/Apple shop.


    At least in silicon valley it's not unusual to pretty much not have suffered through Windows hell since close by there have always been better alternatives available (Dec, Sun, NeXT, Apple, etc).


    And Vista? No WinFS, no Avalon, no Indigo!? That's looking more and more like the Win-ME of the XP line than any forward progress.

  7. It just occured to me... by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...so the "Vista approved" sticker means that the machine in question has been certified to have a "protected digital path".

    Ok. In other words, only machines that do NOT have that sticker could at least in theory have this piece of DRM-crap NOT installed.

    Thanks for the warning label. I shall heed it.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. Re:You make your bed, you sleep in it... by kfg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm pretty sure that Microsoft feels that they, as the sole OS provider for the majority of the world, are in the driver's seat when it comes to hardware specs . . .

    . . .since they have been since the early 90s.

    If you wish to play the blame game your more appropriate target would be Apple for not adopting an open architecture, creating OEM level competition in hardware.

    KFG

  9. Installable on my Intel Mac? by incorporalis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is a serious question, is this going to be installable on Mac OS X as Windows XP is? Does the Macintosh computer need or have all of these items (such as DirectX graphics card able??)? Or would virtualization software be able to take care of this stuff (Parallels..)?

    --
    I'm a code monkey
  10. Re:Minimum Requirements by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sure, you're trying to be funny, but a Cray-1 supercomputer was only rated at a few hundred MFLOPS. An X-MP was maybe 800 MFLOPS, a Cray-2 was 1.9 GFLOPS, and a loaded Y-MP could do at most 2.6 GFLOPS with 512MB RAM.

    A $100 graphics card would quite literally beat your average Cray from 20 years ago! A $500 graphics card blows the doors off one of those old Crays.

    I was just joking to my girlfriend that my laptop (Pentium M, 1.5GB RAM, 60GB hard drive) has the compute power and storage capacity of a whole supercomputer installation from 20 years ago, and half the time I just use it as a stereo (playing MP3s).

    dom

  11. Sounds like a game console by Jerim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Put all those features into a computer and you essentially have an XBox360-ish looking device. We have known for several years that most of the console game companies want to market their consoles as home computers, but have always been squashed by real computers.

    Instead of making a console system into a PC, Microsoft seems to want to turn the PC into a console. They are quite crafty. If you can't beat the PC market with a console, you just sabatoge the PC market.

  12. The OS is five years old by darthservo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Another point about XP that a coworker and I were discussing this earlier today: We found ourselves surprised by the fact that XP is currently five years old, and will be nearing six when Vista is released.

    For the past five years, most of the MS crowd here have been using XP (except for those who have their feet firmly rooted in the 2k GUI). That's really amazing when pausing to think about it. Were we still using 3.1 when 98 was released? No.

    In the entire time I've used XP on my personal computers, I've found it to be a stable and reliable OS, especially for that long of a timeframe. I don't think it will be too different with Vista.

    --

    Prove it.

  13. What HDCP is about by njdj · · Score: 2, Interesting
    there are some surprises in there, such as a delayed requirement for HDCP

    For those who (like me) did not know what HDCP is: it stands for "High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection", and its purpose is to prevent the PC's owner from using the PC to copy certain media. Fuller and more precise information can be found here. It's basically a component that you pay for, that reduces the capability of your computer. I wonder which consumers are demanding something like that ...

  14. Re:Haven't we been here before? by Cal+Paterson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll point out one thing again you MS apoligists. Beta software is supposed to be pretty good with a couple of faults. That means a few more bugs that need to be ironed out.

    People are not pissed because of a few bugs - people are pissed because the whole fucking thing is fundamentally flawed. You don't fix a crappy permission system in the time between beta and release. No one does. You don't fix the complete lack of drivers between beta and release. Ever see BSD or Linux triple the number of drivers in the time between beta and release? No. You never did.

    Want to know why? Because if you have a fundamental problem in beta, it doesn't get fixed by release. As funny as it sounds, MS are not going to be making any substantial improvements to the number of drivers between now and release. The Hardware companies don't want to write them, and Microsoft don't have the documentation available.