What Will You Need For Vista?

By Peter Hagopian

August 7, 2006

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Although Microsoft's Windows Vista is still months away from general release, your customers and users are most likely pounding you with questions about the new OS now. In this article, I'll offer some answers to help you (and them) plan for a smooth transition to Vista.

In this article, I'll cover the known hardware requirements for the upcoming OS, what components you need to be looking at for the new systems you'll be building, and what updates are likely to be needed for existing systems to run Vista at its full potential. I'll also walk you through installing and running the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to get a better sense of what version of Vista will be best for your customers.

But first, there's the timing issue. Namely, when will a final version of Vista ship? Well, Beta 2 was released in June, and Microsoft now says final Vista products will be available to businesses and OEMs in November. General release to consumers, Microsoft says, is now set for January 2007. But some industry analysts say a more likely ship date is mid-2007.

Regardless of when Vista is finally released, there's enough available now to examine Vista's major selling points: ease-of-use, top-notch security, robust search, and improved management functionality. Microsoft has posted a good summary of Vista's features on this page.

For example, on the ease-of-use front, Vista's user interface has been redesigned to be intuitive and visually appealing -- taking a cue from Mac OS -- and it also features a slick new graphical user interface (GUI) called Aero. But Aero is optional and isn't even included in the base version of the OS. Still, it's certain to be one of the reasons that people are drawn to the Vista in the first place. Aero looks great, with lots of rounded edges and translucent windows. All this beauty comes at a price, however; Aero requires some hefty graphics horsepower.

On the security side, Vista is more tightly integrated with Microsoft's anti-malware tools than WinXP is.

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