Yes, you heard right. Yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the minimum requirements for its upcoming operating system.
To summarize: you need an 800 MHz CPU, with 512 MB of RAM, at least 15 GB of hard drive space and a video card that supports DirectX 9. That means my state-of-the-art Pentium III 1 GHz Linux box is capable of running Vista. Not bad. Would I want to? No. Ever try running Windows XP on a similar configuration? It’s as slow as molasses.
So, that brings me to the next point — the premium requirements. 1 GHz CPU. 1 GB RAM. 128 MB dedicated graphics memory for the Aero experience. 15 GB of free space. Ooooh, I’m impressed Microsoft. 15 GB of free space?!? Interesting. The reality is that you will need to double each of the premium requirements for the ultimate Vista experience.
Hardware manufacturers: rejoice.
Update:
According to Jim Allchin (Co-President, Platforms & Services Division), Vista will run on machines with less than 512 MB of RAM, but performance will increase with more RAM:
“Our performance analysis today says that on low-memory machines, XP beats Vista, and the more memory you give it, Vista beats XP…”