Posted on 06/09/2006 9:35:53 AM PDT by MadIvan
Microsoft has opened up its new work in progress operating system Windows Vista Beta 2 for public scrutiny. However, be warned. You'll need pretty highly configured hardware to run it and a very fast internet connection to download the 3.5GB 32-bit or 4.4GB 64-bit version, unless you want to order and wait for the DVD kit which costs US$6.
In its product blurb, Microsoft has been very careful to stress that users will need the appropriate hardware to run Vista. The blurb distinguishes between a Vista Capable PC and Vista Premium PC.
From the sound of things, a Vista Capable PC won't do the trick for any users at all. It's just the old minimum requirement that allows you to load the product without being able to run it with any measure of acceptable performance or functionality. In fact, one of the snazzy new features, the Windows Aero interface, that has all the nice things available in Mac OSX, such as translucent windows and animations, will not be available at all. Therefore, the Vista capable PC requirements listed as: a modern processor (at least 800MHz); 512 MB of system memory; and a graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable, are basically meaningless. No one with any sense would try to load Vista onto such a basic system.
For an acceptable installation, Microsoft provides a second list of specifications which designate what is termed a Vista Premium ready PC. The configuration given is more like what is required to actually load a fully working version of Vista. However, one gets the feeling that if you stuck with the following minimum requirement specs you would have a system that runs like an ageing dog:
Based on what Microsoft developers have said to date, Vista is memory hungry so, at a guess, a 2GB system is probably the real minimum and who only has a 1GHz processor these days? In addition, Vista is supposed to take care of all its fancy graphics on the graphics card, leaving the system RAM free for running applications. Therefore instead of 128MB get 256MB of graphics memory. In short, double all the Microsoft minimum requirements to get the real minimum requirements.
Having said all of the above, unless you're a developer or an insatiably curious journalist, it's probably not a good idea to install Vista Beta 2 at all on any machine that is doing useful work. Anything as unstable as the Beta 2 version of a totally new Windows product could easily cause havoc.
Microsoft is encouraging users who need to buy a new PC prior to the release of Vista with labels that say Vista Capable or Vista Premium. Anyone who buys anything less than a Vista Premium configuration is probably not serious about running Vista and may as well stick with XP. The bad news for those who do intend to upgrade to Vista is that it's going to cost you big time. Exactly how much is still a secret. Steve Ballmer is reported to have said that you'll pay about the same for Vista as XP if you want to do the same things. Now that's clever. Ballmer knows very well that people who upgrade Vista will want to do a whole lot more. Taking an intuitive stab in the dark, US$300 to US$400 comes to mind.
Regards, Ivan
Tech ping.
Ivan
Vista=
RAM Hog
Processor Hog
Cache Hog
Storage Hog...........
I had a Linux laptop, and was happy with that, so I put the same distribution on this desktop machine. It runs beautifully now.
Regards, Ivan
Microsoft=self-distributing memoryleak.......
You are correct. It is a truism that software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
What this tells me is that the business community is going to greet Vista with a great big yawn. Just looking at the requirements tells me that every single one of those low-end Dell Dimensions that business is so fond of buying is going to have to be replaced (since many of them don't have an AGP or PCIe/X slot) in order to run Vista acceptably.
Regards, Ivan
Many of them over here eventually upgraded to XP for various reasons, but that usually didn't involve a new hardware investment.
Vista will, and I think its going to go over about as well as ME did.
On top of that, a lot of stuff isn't going to be Vista-compatible, or so I understand. Since this is essentially a platform change anyway (new machine, new OS, new software), a lot of people at large companies are wondering if now is a good time to switch to *nix or Mac OS X - since they're going to have a high initial cost, might as well save on the ongoing maintenance and upkeep costs (TCO).
This, with a more advanced OS, runs all the OS's eye candy just fine with 512 MB RAM and onboard shared-memory graphics.
Modern business grade machines without an AGP slot?? You're kidding me.
I got a Mini last September to replace my aging G3 - what a great little machine! Blazing fast.
No way anyone will ever need more than 640k of RAM.
:o(
Well, "doesn't need" a thing is a far sight from "we'll be damned if we allow you to install" that thing. Seems like an AGP slot would be a pretty minimal expense to Dell, even if you don't get a card with it on the low end machines.
What wasteful Assembler programmer could use up more than 64K? Let alone 640K.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a time machine so you could go back and grab expert byte-counting assembly programmers from the old days and show him this modern stuff? Their eyes would roll back in their heads and down they would go. I started out with Z80 and 6502 stuff, and have even written chained Basic programs to run on a 5K Vic-20 with a 3.5K TPA after the OS loaded. "hmmm, I need to shave 500 bytes off ... where, how???"
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