(Image shamelessly stolen from Gamespot - Copyright them and Microsoft)

With Microsoft announcing that the highly anticipated release of its newest Operating system named Vista, is to be held back, one would be forgiven for thinking that it would be for crucial testing. Well sadly you may be slightly off the mark.

MS is instead designing "Windows Vista Capable" stickers for PCs in anticipation of the release of the 50 million lines of Vista code to business users (end-2006) and consumers (probably beginning-2007). Well at least they have their priorities right. Although the stickers will obviously be there to tempt new users into an early update, the stickers merely say that the PC is capable of running an incarnation of Vista. Microsoft is keen to point out that some PC?s may only be able to run stripped down versions of Vista and not the full blown package.

QuoteAccording to sources, a PC can get the sticker only if it has a "modern" CPU; is able to run - to competently run Windows XP, 512MB of RAM, a DirectX 9-class graphics processor, and optionally support Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) so as to take advantage of Vista s improved graphics.

So those of you wanting to purchase ?budget? systems, may find that your new rig can only run a minimalist version of Vista. God I?m glad I don?t work in support.
Source: TechTree


For more info on some of Vista new funky Features look Here
And for an insight into the future of Direct X as we know it, see Here

i.e anyone with a PC less than a year old will have no problems, less than 2 years old should work fine and over that _might_ have issues.  

still not gonna upgrade until i have to though   :mrgreen:

Im not buying it either

you need DX9 capable graphics hardware to run it?

ITS AN OPERATING SYSTEM FFS!!!!!

Oh btw, when WinXP becomes non-viable, I intend to go linux only.

Quote from: MongooseOh btw, when WinXP becomes non-viable, I intend to go linux only.

I ran Win3.1 for at least a couple of years after they stopped selling it, guess Im going to do the same with XP and when I cant Ill be moving to Linux too

Might leave my games machine with Windows but thats it.

after everything they have stripped out of Vista, it is pretty much a GUI only upgrade; hence the minimum gfx requirements.

Obviously there are some *cough* security updates and performance enhancements but, imo, all of the _woo_ factor has been pulled and will be released at a later date in service packs.

I would like to say that I wont be rushing out to upgrade but given that my job is developing Windows software I am not going to get much choice. At least thats the excuse I am sticking to

Just another add on to Windows NT.

Quote from: brummieJust another add on to Windows NT.

still, could be worse, everything before 2K was just an add on to DOS

Quote from: Mongoose

Quote from: brummieJust another add on to Windows NT.

still, could be worse, everything before 2K was just an add on to DOS

your right that would be worse :-)

I ranw98se for a long time (I can still boot to it on this machine  )  DOS had some good points though and one can still access a XP installation that does not work from DOS using NTFS pro, all stuff possible to do from Hirens bootCD is done from DOS