Microsoft today launched a new website aimed at informing consumers about Windows Vista's hardware requirements, among other things. As we reported earlier, there are two levels of recommendations for Windows Vista, those dubbed "Vista-Capable" and those dubbed "Premium-Ready." Microsoft has now revealed the specs in each category, and here they are:

Minimum Requirements (Vista-Capable PCs): 800 MHz Intel-compatible processor, 512MB of RAM, DirectX 9.0-Capable Graphics Processor, 20GB HD

Recommended Requirements (Premium-Ready PCs): 1 GHz Intel-compatible processor, 1GB RAM, DirectX 9.0-Capable Graphics Processor, with 128MB graphics memory*, 40GB HD with at least 15GB 'free space'

* 64MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor less than 1,310,720 pixels [no more than 1440x900]; 128MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions from 1,310,720 to 2,304,000 pixels [no more than 1920x1200]; 256MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions higher than 2,304,000 pixels [more than 1920x1200]

What's the difference between the two recommendations? Machines that are only "Vista Capable" can indeed run Vista, but as I reported earlier, those machines will not be able to run the new Aero user interface.

It's not like this comes as any surprise. They keep adding in new features that take up more and more processing power and memory. I'm not against that in theory, but they should do a better job of cutting down on the bloat. What they really need is some user-friendly way (like XP-AntiSpy) to disable certain unnecessary features that most people don't need. You should be able to uncheck (if not uninstall) certain things you don't care about. It's possible at times with services, but normal users haven't a clue what to do in there, much less how to get there...

admin> If the bare minimum amount of RAM required is 512MB, then at least 1G is required to run Vista normally and 2G to run it fast.

There's a discussion on the similar thread on SlashDot where people suggest that this kind of memory requirement is M$ suggesting the usual Multimedia/Office programs running on top of Vista and using that much memory. And there's some people saying that this is M$ saying to the system builders "Stop selling people systems with small ammount of RAM" because ultimately for a Joe user when his PC starts to swap cause of a small ammount of Memory the first one to blame is Windows. Or maybe it is just a bare minimum requirement for Vista. Either way, it's bad, right?

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I'm from the old school of being raised on ASM (later turbo c, turbo pascal and delphi), so it's pretty easy to see when bad performance is due to lousy code...

Then you must know why i hate NET so much :). Well here's for the people that don't know what NET is:

When Borland (back then Inprise) introducted Turbo Pascal with it's Object Oriented programming extensions it was one of the biggest leaps in programming. You could do any kind of program in Turbo Pascal (now Delphi) in 10 times less time than with any other programming tool. With the introduction of Delphi 1 (back on 16 bit Win) the concept of VCL (Visual Component Library) was brilliant; Logical, Simple, Powerfull and allowed you to visualy design the user interfaces and set most of the properties at designtime. Even today, Delphi VCL still bases on that 15+ year old concept and still kicks ass.

One day, Microsoft offered the Chief engineer of Borland Delphi one Million (1.000.000) dollars to come work for M$. And so he did. Not long after, a thing called NET framework emerged. It was a framework much like VCL (go figure), but was slow, and used ia shitload of memory because of its' garbage collector and whatnot. Also, a programming language called C# (c sharp) emerged. It was a managed only (NET only) language with C-like syntax but strongly typed and as clean as Pascal. So basically, it's a lousy ripoff (NOT an innovation from M$), and i fu*king hate it. Period.

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Yeah, definitely. They should port DirectX 10 over to Windows XP.

Well, they said they will, but will it be ported as expected?.

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LOL, the same here

8)

Also, i've read that other article you posted, the guy on WIncustomize..I mean, dialogs popping up everywhere means security? 3D UI a more productive enviroment? Heh, in that desktop you spend half of your day waiting for the animation threads to finish (and allocate and free a large chunk of your memory). Well i'm into keyboard shortcuts :wink: . Some of my techno-n00bs friends weep when they see how productive you can be on a tweaked system.

lhay> Windows Vista, Get Stuffed. I took the latest beta for a test drive and...dunno, i'm guessing we're gonna be satisfied with it after a few service packs.

If the bare minimum amount of RAM required is 512MB, then at least 1G is required to run Vista normally and 2G to run it fast. Even WinXP SP2 is pretty greedy :( (eats at least 40MB RAM more than SP1)

MS should hire or contract out a third party coders to code/optimize/rewrite the critical parts of Vista. I really don't like their poorly optimized DLLs. Simply they don't care much about resources. I'm from the old school of being raised on ASM (later turbo c, turbo pascal and delphi), so it's pretty easy to see when bad performance is due to lousy code...

lhay> We'll see how they enforce the platform dependency on the technologies such as DX10 (Vista-only games for instance, and that's really not all), but right now my XP is tuned beyond any Microsoft and i'm sticking with it until i hear praises for the new one.


Yeah, definitely. They should port DirectX 10 over to Windows XP.


lhay>
I'd run the VistaUpgradeAdvisor to give you my results but my PC is .NET-free. Sorry :(

LOL, the same here <grin>

Windows Vista, Get Stuffed. I took the latest beta for a test drive and...dunno, i'm guessing we're gonna be satisfied with it after a few service packs. It is a beta, but as it states that it's a content complete build and i haven't seen anything really groundbreaking in it except for the new iteration of the managed framework with it's B.I.G. memory requirements and a power hungry UI, it's a disapointment. Lots of classic UI changes also, with no place left for innovation all they did was fu*k things up.

We'll see how they enforce the platform dependency on the technologies such as DX10 (Vista-only games for instance, and that's really not all), but right now my XP is tuned beyond any Microsoft and i'm sticking with it until i hear praises for the new one.

I'd run the VistaUpgradeAdvisor to give you my results but my PC is .NET-free. Sorry :(