How Vista will affect notebooks

Microsoft is signalling the arrival of Vista as the biggest change in operating system technology since Windows moved from 3.11 to 95.

However, due to Vista’s hardware demands, many of today’s laptops won’t be able to support all the features Vista has to offer. Microsoft has announced two editions of Vista, each of which has minimum hardware requirements.

To be ‘Windows Vista Capable’, a notebook or desktop must run a nominal operational processor frequency of at least 800MHz; have 512MB of Ram and a graphics chip that is DirectX 9 capable.

Many laptops already meet this specification and will therefore be able to benefit from Vista’s advancements in organising and finding information, security and general OS stability.

However, ‘Vista capable’ is a minimum specification and doesn’t mean you’ll be able to run every feature of Vista.

What you'll need
To fully profit from the advancements, including the graphics-intensive Aero Glass interface features, ‘Windows Vista Premium Ready’ computers will need the following:

1GHz 32bit or 64bit processor
1GB of Ram
Graphics chip ‘compatible with Windows Aero’
128MB of dedicated graphics Ram
40GB hard disk with 15GB of free space
DVD-Rom drive
Audio output capability and internet access.

What’s more, other features that Vista will offer, such as the ability to watch and record live TV, will require suitable hardware.

While many notebooks will be able to tick a few of those boxes, the memory, processor and graphics requirements could conceivably impede those who bought a budget laptop in the past year or so from installing the Premium version of Vista.

And with notebooks being not as simple to upgrade, it could mean forking out for a new system.

Hybrid hard disk
Perhaps the most significant issue to date is the Windows Vista Premium logo requirement for a hybrid hard disk, which is a hard disk with built-in flash memory that helps reduce overall power consumption and extends battery life.

These disks are required for certification of notebooks that sport the ‘Premium Ready’ logo, although Vista Premium doesn’t actually require one to run.

A telling point is that, although Vista is just around the corner, only one notebook in our group test – the HP – carried the Vista logo. And this was only ‘Capable’ rather than ‘Premium Ready’ although it should be perfectly capable of running the Premium version – no doubt partly due to the lack of hybrid hard disks at the moment.

It’s a labelling system that’s going to confuse a lot of people, so watch out for more coverage.

This article is part of a group test of £1,599 laptops
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