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What the Vista?

Updated from post of November 19, 2006

If you haven’t heard of Vista, you will be soon. On January 30th Microsoft will release its updated Windows Operating System.

It’s classified as an upgrade of Windows XP, but a replacement would probably be a better term for it. Windows XP is five years old.

Vista will be issued in a few different versions. The right Vista version for you would be the one that best fits your needs.

The announced versions from their website are ;
Home Basic (For Basic home needs such as email and Internet access)
Home Premium (For the best home computing and entertainment)
Business ( For small and mid-sized organizations)
Ultimate (For work and entertainment, this is the most complete edition)

There is an upgrade for users of Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Any other version would require purchase of the full product, although systems running those versions probably wouldn’t be able to run Vista anyway.

What do you need to use Vista?

While Microsoft does say that if a PC was purchased in the last 2 years, it may run Vista they never claim that it will. What they do give you on their website is the minimum requirements. They use two different levels.

The Windows Vista Capable PC
A Modern processor (at least 800MHz)
512 MB of system memory
A graphic processor which is DirecTX 9 capable

A Windows Visa Premium Ready PC
1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 GB of system memory
Support for DirecTX 9 graphic with WDDM driver, 128 MB graphics memory
40 GB hard drive with 15 GB free space
DVD-ROM Drive
Audio Output
Internet Access

Obviously the better the computer system the better it will perform under any operating system. My recommendations for a possible Vista system are;
1 GHz processor
1 GB system memory
DirecTX 9 capable graphic processor
80 GB hard drive with 30 GB free space
DVD-RW drive

The offical site for Vista is at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

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