A white paper published this morning by hardware analysis firm iSuppli, based on its studies of Microsoft Windows Vista running on multiple grades of computer hardware, has concluded that the software publisher's stated minimum requirements for the system - which include an 800 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 35 GB hard drive - may not be nearly enough. "Despite Microsoft's claims that Vista can run on such trailing-edge systems," writes Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms research, "iSuppli believes the reality is quite different."
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Member since:2006-02-04
You make a good point regarding game companies. What MS is doing is saying you can boot Vista on that minimum requirement. They didn't say that it would run well.
Game companies often do the same thing. You can run a game on the minimum spec machine, but you have to shut ever little detail off and even then, it still runs horrible, but it runs.
Ignore minimum requirements and look at the recommended requirements as a minimum for acceptable performance.
Member since:2006-10-08
"What MS is doing is saying you can boot Vista on that minimum requirement. They didn't say that it would run well."
They even don't say you can use it for any purpose. In most cases, you don't use an operating system (directly), you are using programs. That's more system load than just the GUI effects. If you set "Vista" on load using some application while running on the real minimum hardware, you can welcome every pixel on the screen personally. :-)
(The minimum makes "Vista" surely run as fast as Geoworks Ensemble on a 286/12 with 1 MB RAM...)
"Game companies often do the same thing. You can run a game on the minimum spec machine, but you have to shut ever little detail off and even then, it still runs horrible, but it runs."
Same thing there: "runs basically" vs. "is playabe". The game runs, but you hardly can play it.
Member since:2005-07-12
Member since:
2005-07-23
Good on them for saying so. According to Microsoft, you can run XP on a 233MHz machine with 64MB RAM - but 300MHz/128MB is recommended. Yeah, that'd work really well...
To be fair, they're hardly the only ones - a lot of game manufacturers have pulled similar tricks in the past. You get used to taking the recommended and adding a chunk, but I'm sure lots of people will get caught by this.