Let's see...50% of computers are not ready for an Operating System thet currently holds 0% of the market (Vista Beta's are not deployed as the backbone of any network. If they are, the IT people are nuts to depend on pre-RTM products, be it prototype hardware or beta software)...Vista will not arrive until early 2007, so what's the problem? By then Intel will have its Woodcrest CPU (servers) and Conroe CPU (desktops), AMD will have its new 3GHz Opterons and AM2 socket processors...and who knows what else? GeForce 8 series is rumored to come out soon as well.

Many companies/networks still run Windows NT 4.0 on 266MHz Pentium 2 workstations. Anyone unable to run Vista due to system requirements isn't that concerned with upgrading anyways. This is silly.

Does the "half" include my 486 that has troble running Windows 95? If so, maybe 1/4th the market isn't ready for Windows XP yet! There's a few of those around too. Pentium 2 and early "Coppermine" Pentium 3 systems still flood the industry. Most don't run XP on those systems or only recently upgraded to XP, so why would they rush to Vista?

IBM has the right strategy. They are migrating all of their internal applications to the Eclipse rich client platform. It runs anywhere you can run Java. Looks the same on Visa as it does on OSX as it does on XP as it does on Ubuntu. If you don't like Java there is XUL and many other platform independent rich client environments. Smart companies don't set themselves up to be battered by the s***ing strategies of one software vendor.

Its usual whine, and its all hype.

The OS is driven by customer demand, not by profits. People are their own worst enemy.

I hear it all the time "I wish the OS would support this, I wish I could install this.. I wish.."

Sure MS will profit from people giving them ideas, but people keep coming up with grandious ideas to make their investment with the OS that much better. They have to keep up.

There are enough people slamming Windows, if they didn't push the envelope and at least make it APPEAR they are trying to appease the public, they would get passed (but not by Linux)

I totally agree with your assessment of Vista. Its not improved and its not anything to get all hyped about. I think this is why Microsoft pushed the date back, there is virtually zero interest.

Everyone is getting excited about a product, for what? Because it has a couple more balloons? Better graphics? I have plenty of utilities that are FIANLLY completely compatible with Windows XP. I for one, don't want to start all over again with a new OS.

Vista, is for the new machines, if it comes with your machine, and you like it great. If not, I see no reason to buy it.

Your comments about the installed customer base is DEAD ON. People do complain, that's why Vista is coming out in the first place. Customer needs. Yes, MS needs to come out with new products to remain profitable, but they have enough new stuff, a NEW OS isn't a priority..

BTW, I tried the OSX on my machine, but I use NTFS, so I can't dual boot.. So unless I want to run Windows XP in a virtual PC window under OSX, I won't be using it.

Rich kid? 1GB of RAM costs no more than 100 $, a Pentium 4 processor at 3.0 GHz no more than 220 $ and a motherboard (945) something around 60$ depening on the brand... THe graphics adapter you can get GeForce 6600 (not GT) with 256 MB RAM for 70 $or less... And soon enough, cards like the 7200 and 7600 will be counted as mainstream... So much for Vista in late 2007 1 GB of RAM in 2007 will be more like 256 in our days
...

* Rich kid? 1GB of RAM costs no more than 100 $*

Maybe for generic memory, but if you are going to go SLI, and high end Dual core processor, you are not going to go with basic 3200 memory, you will want the faster 6400 memory, which is beyond the 100 dollar threshold.

So these specs are BASIC, not GAMER. Vista is appealing to the high end user, not the average Joe.

Im not worried at all, since my PC is powerfull enough to handle it it, nd i doubt everyone else should be worried too. The demand for hardware for vista should bring a wave of vista ready hardware and with the extra volume sales should drive down prices. You can of cource dissable anything that is causing your system to be slow, but i really think that its good that the OS is using the extra power most gaming machines have to drive the OS.

"While nearly every current PC will be able to run Windows Vista, only half will be able to take full advantage of all of it's features, ...."

Its not a forced upgrade, only users who want it and have a powerfull machine are likly to install it anyway initially. I personally turn some of the eyecandy off, but what the hell maybe the new vista engine will be nice to leave on.

Well your machine may be able to handle it, but I for one don't want to start all over with drivers, program compatibility, tweaks, patches, and all that other stuff the comes with a new OS.

Besides the fact, I *still* (keep asking this over and over and no one can point out one feature in Vista that worth my time to switch in the first place) dont' see a reason to use Vista.

I was excited to move from Dos to WFW 3.0 (went back to dos and QEMM/Desqview, but that's another story). I liked going from Windows 3.11 to NT 4.0. Then from NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 and subsequently to XP.

Each one has its merits and advantages, but it has seemed to have stopped.

Hardware isn't these huge leaps in performance anymore. 486 DX with 50 mhz, doubled was 100% increase in performance, but the gains now are like.. eh.. I will keep what I have, and save 200 bucks. Why am I spending 200 bucks on a processor that only gives me like 7% increase in speed? I really won't notice it.

And you are right, its not a forced upgrade. And yes, only users that wan it.. that's a very good point. WANT, not NEED!

If you don't need it, don't worry about it. Vista isn't going to give much (if any) advantage over XP.

My old Celeron 333 laptop with 256MB of PC133 RAM and a 6GB hard drive was able to successfully install and run Longhorn build 4074.

Well there you go.. it should be fine. Other companies are trying to make themselves look go to their advertisers, by announcing that "Vista needs more than the minimum".

The specs for Vista are the same minimum requirements as that for XP.

Bill Gate try to give their customer to Linux and Unix ?lol!!! Maybe he try to get the $$ from hardware company. As we knew there alot company's model is not update fast as the OS does. Vista is a toy for rich kid.

ITs not Bill Gates. The announcement came from several magazines, trying to encourage people to buy more hardware..

So blame the magazines for bloating Vista, not MS.

Get your lies straight!

Why worry ? Vista will never be adopted by any large corporation on a a major scale. The migration costs will be an economic burden in the economic climate forecast for the period when Vista is released. AMD is hedging their bets that Vista will be a bust as Me was. I work for a a major Italian corporation (ENI)and our feasibility studies have shown us that migrating to Vista would cost us millions of euros. We are quite satisfied with XP and since we have adopted AMD processors we feel comfartable in our situation

Upgrading from XP to Vista is a simple task, so I dun see the "migration" problem.

*Upgrading from XP to Vista is a simple task, so I dun see the "migration" problem.*

Your migration, is JUST beginning... there will be a snafu, I will guarantee. Its ALWAYS there, some driver, some program, some tweak, won't work like it did in XP, and then it will cause problems..

That's why we aren't switching..

Beta boards are full of problems with utilities fo Vista not compatible with XP utils.

"The firm said it would not provide guidance for AMD yet as enterprise adoption of the company's chips have been rather slow."

This sounds like just another Intel PR firm making an excuse not to include AMD processors in their testing.

Also, it's still very much in the air on how DirectX v7-9 games will run on DirectX 10. If MS hoses support for anything less than v10, they will find few adopters of Vista by gamers.

Roll back on the think tank.
Remember when XP first came out. Was really fast.
Then, service pack 1 came out: Everyone wanted to go back to 98SE or upgrade to a faster computer.

So what has change with "The Really LongWate err I mean Horn"?

Vista gives these min requirments, just enough to get Vista on a machine that can barely handle it then???

Your guess is as good as everyone elses. And then with some 50 million lines of code to tackle with %60 rewriten. It is no wonder you need 2 gig of ram and soem of the fastest video cards out there.

They can keep it.

*Roll back on the think tank.
Remember when XP first came out. Was really fast.
Then, service pack 1 came out: Everyone wanted to go back to 98SE or upgrade to a faster computer.*

Your memory is wrong, that was ME, not XP.

XP was good, not perfect, but good.

Everyone is blowing the specs out of proportion, next it will be 4 gig of ram, a quad processor, and 4 video cards.

The specs are nominal, they are normal even, and you are reading a site with recommended specs, not minimum.

mininum specs are the same as XP. Recommended of course, go up with the applications, not the OS.

I already figured I would need to build a new pc for Vista. I'm going to include 4gigs of memory cause apperently i will need it. You got to just hate microsoft. And I am pro-microsoft most of the time. I'm curious at seeing how Vista will use this large load of resources. Will it be a real improvement or just bloat. Honetly i am not looking forward to Vista. It seems the most negative of all Microsoft's operating systems.

For those that haven't bothered to read beyond the above article to actally read the report itself, Gartner's advice is for a) Business Users, not consumers, and b) it's meant for new computer purchases for the coming years... not just for the reqirements of today.

So before you go whining about how whacked out on dope Gartner is or how bloated Vista is, try learning to read carefully AND understand what you read.

The advice given is essentially saying that if you want to run well, the integrated video cards of yesterday (32-64MB of shared memory) are insufficient.

i have ati radeon 9000 pro (64mb)...ati has decided to not include support for my card on vista...so i dual boot with xp and vista, but i never go in vista, since it's all dark and i have no way to fix the brightness/gamma etc.

booohoooo :-(

There are things that id like to have on Windows but somehow i have the feeling Vista isnt going to provide them.

I just hope its not slower in "classic mode" than what XP is now. Its hard to believe that theres new amazing features that would be worth it.

What are you talking about when you refer to "Classic" being slower than Luna in XP?

If I were to answer the question for you, I would suspect that you simply put it in Classic but didn't bother to turn off all the animation eye-candy. If that's the case, "System" control panel, Advanced tab, Performance Settings button... and try reducing the amount of eye-candy effects you have turned on.

If that's not the case, please enlighten me oh guru of UI wisdom!

imaturby suggests two Vista versions. Microsoft is planning at least five! We will need a 'dummies' book just to choose the right one.
-SantaRosa Steve

Aero sounds like the interface from hell.
Just what I need, more crap that needs to be removed before my system becomes user-friendly again.
Why not have 2 versions? One for dummies and one for people who don't need animated dogs.

Windows Classic.

You can disable Aero as easily as you can disable XP's theming.

It shouldn't be too hard, even for a furby. ;)

I think you're mis-understanding imafurby...

The technology is there, M$ just hasn't used it before. It's not gonna bog down your system like this article makes it seem. It's a nicer interface and runs faster cause of new technology. If M$ tried to do all these flashy things with the current OS, then the proc would be trying to do everything, then it would REALLY bring your system to it's knees.

Instead of using the proc. and software to render the standard windows, it uses hardware.

Anyone else try the beta? Notice a slow down? I was running it on a Radeon 9600. Ran fine. Looked great too.

I think you're mis-understanding DJOmegaRush...

Using a current example...power users will see approximately a 400% drop in efficiency if they use a mac, yet still be about 400% more efficient than the average mac user. Now windows is getting a lovely similar interface, so we can look forward to doing things slower and more prettily.

I didn't upgrade to XP because it slowed me down too much over Win2k. I want all features of my computer accessible via hotkeys in 1-3 seconds, and if your OS can't provide that then it isn't for me.

Check out the next Windows Server. It should be more componentized, so you might be able to gut all the junk out(IIS, 20 useless services and processes... Explorer).

Furby? Wasn't that a Wendy's gimmick back in the late 80's?

...

Hmmm...

Just be glad you don't know. They're only fun if you upload an AI named Erwin to them.

I really don't get this. Computers and OSs were invented and meant to help us to get our jobs done faster and easier. but nowadays it's all about how fancy the icons and GUIs are. I am sure a lot of people will spend the money for the fancy GUI of Vista. I don't know does it really worth it.

This is the problem with listening to feedback from end users, and always trying to give them what they think they want.

"OMG! Mac OS is so PRETTY! I want my Windows to look like that! Why can't Windows make a GOOD interface like Mac?!?!?!?!?!"
followed by:
"OMG! Those jerks stole the Mac OS interface!!!! Those thiefs!"

I'm not saying that customer feedback is a bad thing... it's just important to weedout the bad feedback. :)

And when XP came out half the computers werent XP ready. Not to mention Vista is still around 8 months from RTM and about 18 months from any major role out in businesses (at least on current hardware, new hardware is a different story, but then new hardware will be Vista ready so it doesn't really matter).

Pointless story.

God this has got to top the most moronic statements by gartner.

What business really *needs* the aero interface?
Therefore most businesses are vista ready.

You misunderstand. The Aero interface enhances CPU performance. It's all the other bloat they pack around the sides that will add 1.5ghz of overhead. ;)

Kramy,

Have you even used the Beta yet?

The beta doesn't really represent Vista though. It's in debug mode, so it's much slower than it should be.

Ofcourse not. The ;) did denote a joke though.

No MS OS has ever had 1.5ghz of overhead. It seems to cap off at around 100-200mhz for XP. If you have an old PII though, then it's extremely noticible on an nLited XP when you try to play videos and compare to before.

So... HALF OF PC's Are Vista Ready! You know the glass is really half full. I suppose your next headline will read. "Used Legacy PC's not Vista Ready" First MS get's hammered by providing legacy support unmatched by any other software maker, and now they get hammered for having some modern hardware requirements. Once again....can't win with win.

If you have a 5 years old PC (about 1.5GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM) Windows Vista will fly (go fast)!
And remember that current build is not optimized and it's compiled in debug mode so it takes a lot of memory due debug data.

I don't know if I would go as far as to say it would "fly" but you are correct that it will run and run well. While it might not be as snappy as XP is on the same hardware you can't expect it to be. After all XP wasn't as snappy as 2000 was on the same hardware.

Well, ok so you need better hardware.

At least it will be very bloa.... err i mean feature rich.

I can't wait to try it, just to get my hands on it and hac.... err i mean optimize it.

Now, go f... err i mean have a nice day!

More bloat and junk no doubt... At least hardware prices will come down for a while as maufactures ramp up to try to outcompete each other for the mass consummer's green... Just think of all those pre-vista machines taking up landfill space leeching their toxins into our rivers and lakes... But the new ones will have a sidebar and better eye candy! BONUS!!

With the release of Boot Camp, allowing Mac users to install Windows XP on their Intel-based Macs, I would think that releasing Vista with such high hardware recommendations is a grave mistake.

If 50% of computers are truly incapable of running Vista, it will inevitably cause those users to choose between never upgrading, running a handicapped system, or purchasing a new computer.

With users looking to buy new PCs in order to stay current with technology, Apple's marketing and the appeal of Apple's equipment and reputation will furthur spike their sales as users choose to jump ship on the PC platform.

And then what if the press' reviews on Vista are low and Apple continues to be the media darling that it is? A few bad news stories juxtaposed with comparisons to Leopard (or Puma or Kitty Kat) will definately cause users to jump ship.

I'm an avid PC user and have no reason to purchase a new machine. I used 2000 until XPSP1 was released. Based on this, I would see Vista as being something I'd consider a year or two after release. My current specs are a Mobile P4 2.0GHZ with 1GB of RAM and I would seriously like to squeeze every ounce of speed and performance out of my laptop for the sake of my own productivity.

If Vista requires that I buy a new computer, I will be buying a Mac so that the investment actually does something more than allow me to run the new MS Operating System. I'll have a sexy notebook that can run both.

The only feature I want Vista to have would be increased performance, a smaller memory footprint, and for applications such as IE to be completely modular and not integrated into the OS so that I can properly configure my PC and make decisions about what features I would like to run.

If you don't know about this already, you may like it: http://www.nliteos.com/

I'm currently running Win2k because XP is slower. I'm sure if I had a 64bit processor I would see performance gains, but not as it stands on an old Athlon XP. Short of using a finely tuned linux, Win2k is the most efficient NT OS for 32bit.

My computer boots in 15 seconds - that says it all. You can compare my machine to one of those spiffy macs where you press the button and it's ready. :)

I've tweaked a lot though, and my goal is to get Windows 2000 to use under 20mb memory and under 200mb HD space before programs are installed.

you should read these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/...es_new_to_Windows_Vista

OK, these recommendations are plain WILD!

You don't need 2 gig. I question whether or not people even utilize 1 gig to the fullest extent. I myself run many, many beta programs, games, windows blinds, desktop imaging programs, utilities, I hardly close anything on my home machine, and I have 1 gig. I still have over half of my memory Free.

2 gig? Ha! Don't waste your money, even though memory is cheap.

The chip set is only going to matter if you use Vista for games.

You don't need the 3 gig SATA drive, DDR2 6400 memory REQUIREMENT to run Vista. Yes, it MAY give a slight boost, but its not going to be an overwhelming difference.

I use DDR memory, even though my board supports DDR2, but I have Sandra, and I do bench mark testing. My machine with a 3 gig process (not dual-core) is just a couple of clock ticks behind the newest processors with DDR2, and SLI.

Maybe my hard drive speeds are not as fast, but my machine is plenty quick.

I still don't see a need to move to Vista in the first place, and I have yet to have ANYONE show me a single iota that Vista is anything other than an evolutionary move. Give me a feature I can't live without, and I will think about it.

I have read the articles.. I see nothing that will convince me (or my company) we need it.

It looks prettier. Beat that! ;)

I have the requirements, but I'm in no hurry. You won't catch me in line at the store at midnight. I'll wait until ultimate is at the company store, and ask for a favor. I hate to say it, but even Blue Badges can't recite what's so imperative about this.

Easy:

Solitaire.

The number one "most-used" feature of Windows is now a DirectX app.

Oh yeah, baby. You know you want it. ;)

Upgrading to Windows Vista is as major as switching from Windows 3.1 to Windows NT. Windows Vista uses a completely different kernel than Windows XP so Vista is faster and much more secure.

That's not completely true - Vista is on the same evolutionary line. It would be more like comparing Windows 3.1 to Windows 98 SE. Still a huge difference.

When I'm visitting sites in Firefox and chatting on my instant messenger(Trillian), my system approaches 128mb memory usage.

Actually, right now Firefox is eating up 73mb while I'm at 123mb memory usage. This is with quite a chopped down Win2k though. To run Vista I'm sure that I'll require an additional 512mb ontop of my 1gb in order to use Acrobat Reader 8.0's preload every single file on your computer for no reason feature.

No, in fact.

XP and 2003 Server branched. Different code-bases. Vista is 2003 Server Based, and therefore not a direct desacendant of XP.

Of course, much of the 2003 codebase has been rewritten for Vista as well, so any resemblance there will be minimal as well.

Vista is much different beast than most people here seem to think it is.

I know the OS has some features, but let's consider here - why is it that an OS is pushing hardware so much? It's because OS overhead is massive.

Someone needs to remind Microsoft that the OS is *supposed* to be the underlying agent that allows you to run software. I'm not trying to say that innovation, etc., is bad; I'm saying that it should be software in general, and not OS's that push hardware requirements.

@drumcat
You're forgetting all the people that want bubble icons and ect. After they drive their VW Beatles to the office, they want a nice screen that looks pretty! :)

It's actually better cause you can have a low end video card (DX compatible) and still have a nice gui. Then your video card is taking the load off the CPU. Current and past guis make the proc. do all the drawing of windows and so on (and your vid card doesn't really do anything about it). Now windows sees the window as more of a 3d object. (Just a plane that you can rotate and so on).

It was logical for M$ to move to the new interface. The hardware does some of the simple operations the CPU was doing, only faster. Most people have AT LEAST a DX9 compatible card. There's not alot of 3DFX Voodoo 1's out there anymore ;)

Same thing with the old video cards and win95. In safe mode, it droped to 16 color just for backwards compatibility. Now with Win XP, it tries to do what it can, 800x600x32 bit or whatever cause everyone now days has a video card that can AT LEAST do that.

MACs have been using this technology for at least 3 years now, haven't heard of big hardware compatibility issues.

I've noticed everytime a new Win ver comes out, people get all crazy over the hardware it needs.

Truth is, it's not as bad as what people think it is going to be.

It runs OpenGL in a 40% speed emulation layer that will have a major impact in games, unless you disable the Aero interface and flip it back to the processor.

g** d***, you think they could do something right? ;)

I want XGL so bad.

"PC_Tool
...Wow. What IT Manager is going to be installing Vista any time soon? Especially on PCs being ordered now..."

Gartner is recommending this even if IT managers are not immediately ready to upgrade. The company said many PCs would be in service well after the eventual ship date, and it's likely they would be upgraded to Windows Vista some time within their expected lifespan.-

The Tool also spaketh:
Besides, even if they do, the Aero interface is probably *not* going to be the default interface for any "business" install for quite a while."

The Tool also also spaketh:
"Any PC purchased from Dell for Business now meets those specs anyway... (GX520/GX620)"

Helps if you read the whole post. :)

I don't know about upgrading my pc or buying a new one for vista anymore. Because since you can install XP (soon there will be probably possibility to install Vista on MAC I think) on MAC now so I'd rather just buy a MAC someday.

Assuming the drivers become available, Vista will definitely run great on a Mac -- at least the MacBook Pro, which has ATI's top-of-the-line graphics chipset with 256MB of video RAM.

"In turn, the firm is urging IT managers to take caution when ordering new PCs."

Wow. What IT Manager is going to be installing Vista any time soon? Especially on PCs being ordered now...

Besides, even if they do, the Aero interface is probably *not* going to be the default interface for any "business" install for quite a while.

Any PC purchased from Dell for Business now meets those specs anyway... (GX520/GX620)

Is this really news?

I don't know how it will be when Vista will be there (?); but for sure, I'm actually selling computers which are able to run Vista ... but nothing really more. I mean that 'my' computers (~P4.3400-i915 / AMD64.3700-nforce4 / 1Gb) are unable to run smoothly Vista (at least for beta versions). Don't know where they find half of PCs vista ready.

Please try and remember that the word "beta" denotes an unfinished product, people.

Comments like the above show *zero* understanding of this fact.

Most beta Software, Vista included, contain debug code that dramatically slows down the response of the system and can make it seem sluggish and slow. This is in there to help Beta testers (ya know, the guys who actually *should* be using this beta?) and Microsoft figure out what happened when something goes wrong.

This debug code is removed (or turned off) when the product is released...usually well before, such as in a Release Candidate.

"Beta" does not equal "Preview".

mmmmkay?