Buying a computer for Vista ... and beyond

The Vista factor

When you stare into your crystal ball trying to divine what hardware to buy this year, you're likely to see something odd. That 800-pound gorilla staring back from inside the globe is nothing less than Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, and it can't help but affect your decision.

If most accounts are to be believed, Vista is a frightening monster that will place more demands on your hardware than any other operating system you've ever encountered. Some analysts have claimed that you'll be shelling out around US$3,000 for equipment to meet the formidable burden Vista will impose. They claim that practically every piece of hardware you own must be dragged down to the recycling center and be replaced with the latest and greatest stuff from which computers are made, lest you find yourself overcome by the beast that is Vista.

Urban legends are great things, aren't they?

Make no mistake, there is some semblance of truth wafting around inside all the hype. But, as with most legends, there's also a significant amount of fearmongering (not to mention the hope of sparking a round of high-end PC sales).

Vista is not King Kong. It is a handful of monkeys with a couple of great apes thrown in at the high end. There's nothing to fear when buying hardware this year -- it just requires a little planning, and that's nothing new.

Let's take a look at Microsoft's minimum supported hardware requirements for running Vista:

• An 800-MHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 512MB of system memory
• An SVGA (800x600) graphics processor
• 64MB-256MB graphics memory with bandwidth of 1.6GB/sec.
• A 20GB hard drive with 15GB of free space
• A DVD-ROM drive

Look around you. Do you own anything that doesn't greatly exceed the majority of those specifications -- except maybe that four-year-old ThinkPad you've been using to even the coffee table legs or the desktop PC you "donated" to the kids in 2001 so they could shove peanut butter into the optical drive and not destroy your data?

If you ratchet up to what Microsoft calls a Vista Premium Ready PC, which can take advantage of advanced Vista features, including the Aero interface, you get this list:

• A 1-GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1GB of system memory
• Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128MB of graphics memory (minimum), Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel
• A 40GB hard drive with 15GB of free space
• A DVD-ROM drive
• Audio output capability
• Internet access capability

Again, with the graphics specification excepted, most of that still isn't very attractive for a PC you'd like to hold on to for the next four or five years. Of course, marketing comes into play here. Microsoft wants you to purchase as many copies of Vista as you possibly can. There's nothing inherently wrong with that position; it's just business. Still, for it to happen, Redmond wants its product shown in its most attractive light. Translation: It shouldn't look like it will cost you a fortune to own and use.

But there is truth in the nonthreatening system requirements Microsoft touts. Vista is self-acclimating. While everyone running Vista will benefit from its beefier security regimens, the operating system will tune its display characteristics to fit your hardware's profile. At worst, you'll end up running something akin to Windows XP protected by Smith & Wesson. At the upper end, you'll experience the full range of Vista's eye candy extraordinaire.

All of this leaves computer sellers with a great deal of room for interpretation, and that's never a good thing for computer buyers. The moral of the story is that if you're looking for longevity in a PC, don't simply accept what the computer seller offers by default, even if it has "Vista Premium Ready" stamped all over it or comes with Vista preinstalled.

So, now that you're back at square one, trying to decide what your hardware configuration should be, what do you do? Obviously, you keep reading.