Windows Vista Hardware Requierments

Windows Vista is not cheap, and it is a real waste buying it without first checking that you have the hardware to support it.

Microsoft has not been making it easy in this respect, for there operating system to look good, and to protect intellectual property, and all that stuff the budget user can live without, compose a system resource monster, the stated minimum memory requirements for windows vista is 512MB, in reality this is for the OS alone, it looks bad on the package if they said you will need a minimum of 1GB RAM to run our latest operating system, but it is true, even if you simply browse the internet and tend to open 2 many windows, 512MB of ram will be your bottleneck (with a simple antivirus software)!

So, what else is required, Direct3D graphics cards is required to run windows AERO (the new graphical interface microsoft claimed that Smooth was its keyword, and then insist its an acronym where they forgot to add an S to ! Windows AERO (the one that allows your windows to have glass in them, remembers how windows look like so that when they crash it would not look like they did, and gives you the ability to stack all the windows in a 3d space on your desktop and use your mouse scroll to look at them all in real time !

A good processor is a must ! they say 800MHZ is enough, this is probably true for i can not blame Microsoft for your other applications performance, yet since i love blaming microsoft, if Internet Explorer (a Microsoft product) attempts to open a big page with lots of tables and formatting, your processor will slow down the page loading even thought it has completely downloaded, also some windows applications will require much more processing power, Not to mention that the kernel (windows itself at the core) will require processor power as soon as other applications start in order to synchronize them, so if you are patient, 800MHZ is probably the real minimum requirement for the processor speed (remember that 800 is referring to intel standards), other systems have different speeds at different frequencies)

What else would you need, Surely if you buy the DVD version of VISTA you will need a DVD drive right ?

Anyway, since Microsoft can't just tell you the truth on the box and tell you your old computer should run your old operating system, the developed a system to shock you so that they will not be liable and you will have more of a thrill installing it :), the Windows Experience Index is your computers capability rating, The index is calculated as follows, 5 hardware capabilities are tested on your computer, and each getting a score out of 6, and then the lowest score of the 5 is your computers performance index ( Windows Experience Index ).

What this number is going to serve is probably this, from now on when you buy Windows Vista Logo compatible software, you will see a Minimum Index on it rather than Hardware requirements, so you don't have to memorize much about your computer when you are out software shopping (i thought we did that online), So, you can see in your system information page in your control panel that your machine has an index of X and then you can see if your machine is capable of running the software or not

But WAIT, there is something mathematically wrong about this ! if your lowest score comes from the graphics card, and the lowest score the software developer has is for memory, then it will give you a false negative on the software, but oh well, that's how microsoft likes it, simpler than it should be, and just when you go i inch deeper things become more complicated than they should be... i guess that's why they have the number one selling OS (Go linux go)