Windows Vista Capable Machines Coming

An anonymous reader writes "PC World's Techlog has a short piece talking about the upcoming emergence of 'Windows Vista Capable' PCs." From the article: "The Vista Capable designation doesn't promise that a PC will provide a great Vista experience, or even that it'll support all Vista features or features...just that it'll be able to run Windows Vista Home Basic in some not-very-well-defined-but-apparently-adequate way. At the moment, there are still new PCs on store shelves that don't meet the Vista Capable guidelines--for instance, low-end systems still sport 256MB of RAM in some cases. Wonder if that means that that A) we'll see some cheap systems that still have XP even after Vista ships; or B) the specs on even the cheapest machines will be beefed up; or C) we'll see machines that have Vista preloaded but which don't qualify as Vista capable?"

Why not check Microsoft rather than two blogs?

[Bushcat]

You could save yourself a pointless tour through two blogs simply by checking the Microsoft site (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/winxp /VistaBeta1FS.mspx [microsoft.com]) which says:

Minimum system requirements will not be known until summer 2006 at the earliest. However, these guidelines provide useful estimates:

" 512 megabytes (MB) or more of RAM

  A dedicated graphics card with DirectX® 9.0 support

  A modern, Intel Pentium- or AMD Athlon-based PC."

Re:Reading too far in...

[y86]

Basically, it will work on any recent machine with a decent 3d accelerator.

Low end hardware w/integrated crap graphics will not work. Even high end hardware sold by certain OEMS (say dell) that uses this onboard intel/via/s3 crap graphic chips won't support it.

I think Joe sixpack is going to have a drunken fit when he finds out the 2000$ computer he bought, 6 months ago from dell, WILL NOT run vista or Nascar 2006.

I don't think the issue is that it will run terrible. It's that so many computer CANNOT, ever, run Vista even though they were expensive and have good cpus/ram, but the vendor cut corners on the graphics card, so now the customer is screwed.

Re:Why not check Microsoft rather than two blogs?

[RonnyJ]

There's another article here [microsoft.com], 'Windows Vista Capable PC Hardware Guidelines', which goes into a bit more detail (and is probably more up-to-date, the other one looks like it was written when 'Beta 1' came out).

Re:Reading too far in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any application that is developed that does not leverage the Registry properly i.e.utilize all user specific settings in HKEY_Current_User and Machine specific in HKEY_Local_Machine would not pass.

And all of those apps that foolishly stuck to the Windows developer guidelines, even where it went against common sense, are finding their methodology to be deprecated [yafla.com]. The programmatic, non-system use of the registry was one of the worst mistakes of the Windows platform.

Re:Reading too far in...

[rikkards]

I never said it was right just that there was a point to the sticker unlike the Intel Inside which was pure marketing.

You make a good point but give credit where credit is due. At least they are admitting that sometimes, the simplest way may be the best way.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[T-Ranger]

Just for the record, the Pentium Pro did not have MMX support. Said instructions were introduced in the (supprise) Pentium MMX processor, about two years after the Pro.

Re:Joe Average Won't Be Buying Vista

[NutscrapeSucks]

This is your generic slashdot wishful-thinking post.

The fact is that Joe Average didn't run out and upgrade to XP either. Routine PC turnover happens, and that is always the primary way that the latest preinstalled MS OS gains marketshare. Eventually Vista will have 70% marketshare just like XP does today. It is inevitable.

If there is an upgrade hook for Joe Average, it's probably going to be the Media Center features moreso than the flashy new shell.

It needs to support Shader 3.0 for Aero Glass...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Intel 950 IGA is supposed to have Shader 3.0 support (Pixel Shader 2.0, Vertex Shader 3.0). Unfortunately, the shader support is software based, so while you will be able to turn on Aero Glass, it won't run very fast.

That said, if your graphics card isn't up to running Aero Glass, Vista will just turn it off, it won't refuse to run. There is a TON of FUD about this issue, lots of people claiming Vista won't run unless you have a High End, 256MB Graphics card, which is patently false. Vista will run fine, it'll just downgrade the fancy graphics to something your graphic card is able to display.

remember people!

[smash]

Windows XP only needs 32 megs to run.

64mb "recommended"

Windows 95 only needed 4 megs to run.

8mb "recommended"

According to the product spec when it was released :D

So yeah... take the "recommended" spec and multiply by about 6 or so, and that's what a semi-useful vista system will need :)

Scary isn't it? :D

smash.