Vista Hardware Requirements

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EYO’s Guide to Vista Hardware Requirements




Windows Vista has arrived!

Are you itching to upgrade? Well first of all you need to have think about whether your hardware can cope, whether you need to upgrade, and what version of Vista is right for you.

Windows Vista comes in no fewer than five bundles – Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate.

For any home user, unless you’re running a business then don’t worry about Business and Enterprise. They have been optimised to run in a large corporate network rather than a home environment, and don’t include many of the funky new features. Home Basic is actually a little too basic. It’s a worthy upgrade to Windows XP, but it doesn’t contain any of much-advertised new Vista features like the Aero Glass transparent desktop, DVD creation or Media Center. Home Premium has all of these things, and this version is the one most people will think of when they think of Vista for home computing. It has great new applications and functionality like Aero Glass, Mobility Center and Tablet functions for laptops and tablet PCs, scheduled backups and great new games. Home Premium will be the best choice for pretty much any home PC, but if you’re an extreme power user then Vista Ultimate might be for you. Ultimate combines every feature of every version of Vista into one huge package, but all that functionality comes with a hefty price tag attached.

Should you buy the full version, upgrade version or OEM (pre-installed)?

It depends largely on how comfortable you are with installing Windows. If not, then a pre-installed version of Vista on a new computer is definitely the way to go. If you’re willing to have a crack at installing it yourself, then the upgrade option is actually a very good one. In the past performing a Windows upgrade was messy, complicated and never producted a good result. However Vista’s upgrade option is the smoothest and most straightforward we’ve ever seen. So much so that it’s seriously worth considering. It’s cheaper too! However, you can only upgrade from XP, so if you’re running Windows 2000 or earlier, you’ll need to go with the full or OEM version.

Decided which version is for you? Now you need to think about whether your machine will run Vista, or whether you’re looking at an upgrade.

In spite of reports to the contrary, Vista will run reasonably well on most hardware platforms up to a couple of years old. Of course, the more features you want to enable and the more applications you’re going to run, then yes you’ll need some pretty good hardware. A good rule of thumb is that you’ll need a decent processor – Intel Dual Core or equivalent or higher – 512MB RAM and a SATA2 hard drive. You don’t actually need a dedicated graphics card unless running Aero Glass and the latest Vista games is important. In which case, a good 3D graphics card with 256MB RAM will do the job. Check out our great range of Vista ready systems -

Conclusion

Regardless of whether you’re buying a new computer or installing Vista onto your current machine, it’s very important to look at any existing hardware you want to run with Vista. Microsoft has released the Vista Upgrade Advisor (

) and you should definitely run it. Some hardware manufacturers have been slow to release Vista drivers for their products, and you don’t want to upgrade only to discover that your printer or scanner no longer work. This is especially true of 64-bit systems. Vista runs very well on systems with 64-bit processors, but 64-bit drivers take even longer to be released. It could be well worth waiting to upgrade until you’re sure that everything will work the way you want it to.

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