Microsoft, having given Longhorn a far more marketing-exec friendly name in the form of Vista, has now revealed just how powerful computer needs to be to run this all-new version of the Windows operating system. Surprisingly, the spec is actually far lower than the system inside my Dell laptop which died unceremoniously just last week (out of warranty, of course, but only 26 months old).
Would you be surprised if this new spec were not up to actually running Vista though? Of course, not. Throw a CAD program, a tabbed browser, and maybe some DVD burning and the kind of spec MS suggests as a minimum is going to grind to a halt regardless. So, inevitably users will find themselves having to ditch perfectly serviceable and adequate computer equipment and replacing it once again with the next great chip and googol’s of RAM just to get their software to run.
Anyway, this is the spec:
Minimum processor clock speed: 800MHz (recommended 1GHz 32 or 64 bit), System memory (RAM) 512MB min with 1GB, Graphics card needs to be DirectX 9 capable to run all the new 3D icons in the Windows Aero interface and have at least 128MB. You will need 15GB of free space on your hard drive.