Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Unveils 'Vista Premium' Requirements
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."
In no particular order, these are the notable additional requirements for Premium certification:
Effective now:
* HD Audio support that passes a "high-fidelity audio experience" test (exception: Business class systems have until June 1, 2007).
* Support for Direct3d 9 and DXGI feature sets (Direct3d 10 mandated by June 1, 2008).
* At least one digital output (e.g., DVI-D) for all add-in video adapters (not integrated video: that doesn't change until June 1, 2008).
* 100Mb Ethernet and/or and WiFi (802.11g must be supported; 802.11a can be supported only in addition to 802.11g).
* USB 2.0 ports throughout
* System resumes from ACPI S3 state ("suspend-to-ram") in 2 seconds (does not include user mode initialization, i.e., total "wake" time will be longer than 2 seconds)
That's how we ended up with SQL Server; and no doubt that's how we'll end up with Vista, regardless of any technical merits or issues.
*Windows Vista requirements*
..... 1 ..... 1
Arms
Legs
Insanity.
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.
Protected Video Path" (PVP) support, including HDCP.
... why do they never listen.
the requirement of need a freaking separate hard drive just the whopping size of the install.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
Remember when everyone at work was running NT4 and we went to Windows 2000? Or when home PC's went from Win95/98/ME to XP? Remember all the hype and hysteria about the requirements back then?
We've been here before and I remember a couple of distinctive impacts of upgrading:
1. My desktop was a lot more stable.
2. The computer OS and games actually ran a little faster.
3. Need I remind everyone who's feeding us this info on Vista? The MEDIA. Nuff said.
We've all been there, (many times now MS-DOS,win3.1/NT4-Win95/2000/XP), done that. Bring on VISTA baby!
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
I can't believe that Microsoft expects business and government to be moving in the direction of Vista anytime soon. All the "bells and whistles" of Vista seem very much targeted at consumers, I just don't see any of it being something that justifies even thinking about upgrading any business workstation installations.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Microsoft (the corporation) requires it of OEM's to get the Vista Premium sticker.
It seems many of these specs are for the areo feature. Am I the only one that thinks the whole aero craze is over the top. Is it really that important to be able to see through some of your windows and have them displayed in "3d"? Most likely when I load Vista I look at that feature, say ohh thats neet, then turn them all off mostly because its just a waste of reasorces. Any one else feel the same way?
Eating the brains of your enemies does not make you smarter. But it's still fun.
Don't they mean USB 2.0 High-Speed ports? The USB 2.0 "full speed" scam should have never been allowed to exist in the first place.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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
Tell that to my ex girlfriend... :(
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Sometimes it is hard to tell if this is Slashdot or Fox News.
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!
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
Well, at least Dell, HP and Acer are happy. Wonder if MS owns any stock in those companies...
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
"For the full-blown Aero "experience" do I need 512 or 256 or 1024 or what?"
Yes.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Or when home PC's went from Win95/98/ME to XP? Remember all the hype and hysteria about the requirements back then?
Um.... I went from Windows 98 to Win2000. Stability of NT with Game compatibility of win98. (Just without all the bluescreens)
Everyone who knew anything about computers should have known to put Windows 2000 pro on their computer when it came out and not WinME or Win98.
WinXP got domniance because it was just put on new computers that came out and you couldn't get Win2000 anymore.
However XP had some major glaring flaws (mydoom anyone?) and Win2000 worked just fine for anything I needed included games. Of course these days I use XP because it came with the system and there wasn't any point downgrading because since it was from a vendor all the drivers came with the box and were Winxp certified. (some of the newer hardware gives me grief in finding drivers for my old boxes)
So... I might get vista some day if it comes with a computer, but I seriously doubt it will be any better than Winxp or 2k as far as mind blowing features. It will of course get eventually better because MS will drop support for 2k and XP, but I don't see any rush to upgrade until SP1 or 2.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Doesn't full speed mean USB 1.1?
...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.
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
Im predicting that around 2008, we're gonna see a hugh surge in interest of alternative OS's like linux and *nixs; Coincidently this is gonna occur just slightly after everyone's gets their hands on Vista only to discover that all the DRM'd crap has severly limited what people can do. And their really gonna be pissed of when they discover that everything on their system is just being leased or rented and not really owned by them... Being of sound mind, and a reasonable person; I can see where M$ is headed with all this...Needless to say I wont be installing it EVER (period). Microsoft seems to have forgotten a basic economic principle; in the end the consumer will decide what to consume... Bring it on guys! We're ready...
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
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
I was already confused with all those VISTA editions and now you're talking about bringing on VISTA baby ?
Ok, that was a bad joke.
100% of statistics are wrong.
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.
You're correct. It should specify high speed or specify they have to implement the FULL standard. In reality this isn't much of a concern. I haven't seen a NEW computer in over 2 years that wasn't all USB 2.0 high-speed.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
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.
Why do I get the feeling that Vista is nothing more than Windows Millinium Edition all over again?
Because you get your news and opinion from Slashdot.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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 ...
The Wikepedia article should be updated to point out clearly that the whole part of USB 2.0 full speed is a marketing scam. When USB 2.0 came out initially, theoretical maximum transfer rates jumped from 12Mbs to 480Mbs. The problem was that there were still a huge backlog of unsold systems with the old USB 1.1 ports. Of course, nobody wanted the older, slower standard, and everyone knew to insist on USB 2.0 in their new systems. The industry somehow managed to get the "standard" changed so that what was USB 1.1 could now be labeled as USB 2.0 Full Speed. The new standard became USB 2.0 High Speed. Of course, most computers were labeled simply as USB 2.0 regardless of which they had, which was a huge scam on the buyers. Why there aren't people in jail over this still infuriates me.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
We used to laugh and make fun of programmers that couldn't write tight, fast and efficient code.
Now they promote them.
My old boss used to call it code bloat and would heckle me mercilessly if my code modules were bigger than 32K.
Is that a SCSI connector or are you just glad to see me?
Users who want the "premium experience" (read: Aero interface) will need 1GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and plenty of RAM for that DirectX 9.0-Capable graphics card.
:)
What on earth is it doing using up a Gig of Ram, a 1GHz processor, goodness knows how much video RAM? A 3D game - for sure needs that kind of processing power, but an operating system for goodness sake? Whatever happened to writing efficient, non-bloated, elegant code? What's wrong with writing something that doesn't use more and more and more memory? Why is it that a knackered old heap running KDE or Gnome or whatever looks prettier, works faster and has funkier graphical add-ons than MS bother with? Most of the world uses Windows, why don't they bother making it half-decent?
Sorry I know the answers to this, it just infuriates me that most companies, most users are expected to put up with such mediocre pap. And I have a hangover so I'm right