System Requirements and More
Not surprisingly, as it has been several years since the last release of Windows, Microsoft has let Vista grow into the expanded memory and processing power of newer computers. Microsoft has divided up the system requirements for Vista into two groups: a minimum requirement to run Vista at all, and an expanded requirement to use some of the more advanced features (mainly the full Aero features).
Basic
Expanded
It's worth noting that by finally moving to a GPU-accelerated desktop, the video requirements are the most increased of all. To balance this out with the abilities of low-end hardware, Vista will come with several different desktop modes that require various amounts of video functionality.
With the new Aero interface, GPU acceleration of some kind is required to use it. For high-end systems with PS2.0 support and the power to run the desktop compositing engine backend required to use Aero, it will be available in its full glory including scaling effects, transparency, rotation, and other graphical manipulations that are best done on a GPU. Aero is pretty hard on a computer's GPU, as each window means a new polygon and texture to store in memory, so even though a system may support PS2.0 it may still not have the memory or rendering performance to effectively run it; users with modern discrete graphics cards shouldn't have anything to worry about, but IGP users might. For those users who are right on the border, some of the advanced effects such as transparency can be disabled, which will improve performance slightly. Because of some compatibility issues with Aero, it is sometimes automatically disabled and switched out for Basic if Windows detects a program that it knows has a problem with the advanced features of Aero. Users of those programs who want to use the advanced features will need to track down updates to these programs in order to get proper Aero support. For anyone with knowledge of Mac OS X Tiger, some of the parallels here with Quartz Extreme should be pretty apparent.
For those systems that can't offer any real GPU acceleration at all, Vista is capable of also dropping back down one to two interfaces that use just the GDI+ functionality, and are intended to replicate XP and 2000 abilities respectively. Basic is intended to be the XP-like rendering mode for Vista, and while it currently uses a Vista-styled theme, this theme is going to be replaced for the shipping version. Classic will be the 2000-like mode using the 2000 interface style and rendering features. Because neither of these modes use the compositing engine, they drop the GPU requirements significantly (down to practically those of Windows XP/2000), but in the process lose the benefits of using a fully accelerated desktop rendering system and bring back the drawbacks of GDI+, such as higher CPU usage in some situations.
There will also be some differences in Vista based on whether the x86 or x64 version is being used. As Mac users may know by now, Microsoft has only implemented support for the new EFI standard in the x64 version, opting not to bother with the x86 version. The fact of the matter is that unless you're a Mac user, you're probably not even using an EFI-based system, so it's not going to be much of a problem; any new system that ships with EFI will ship with a 64-bit processor, and of course will require an x64 version of Vista.
Of greater importance though is the difference in how drivers are handled. The x64 version will by default be locked down to only accept kernel mode drivers which have been signed, and while this can be bypassed by tweaking Vista a bit, it's not a very easy thing to do at the moment and there is no guarantee it will stay this way. Ultimately, Microsoft sees this as a move towards ensuring better drivers, but as we've seen with WHQL certified video drivers, there are a lot of things that can slip through the cracks of Microsoft's testing. It is also not clear, even within Microsoft, whether developers who need to write kernel mode drivers (drivers which effectively have full, unadulterated, operating system level access to the hardware) will be allowed to sign their drivers using 3rd parties like Verisign. Giving developers this option would offer support without WHQL tests, but would almost defeat the purpose of the requirement (which is to ensure the integrity of the system).
If only a Microsoft signature is to be allowed, hardware manufacturers will be at the mercy of Microsoft, who may not sign legally questionable devices such as DVD emulators, but at the same time may also not sign malware such as the overambitious anti-piracy toolkit StarForce or Sony's CD rootkit. In general we're concerned that with the other Digital Rights Management technologies going into Vista such as HDCP, Microsoft is going to lean towards the side of only avoiding signing obvious malware and software that sits on the "fair use" side of the IP/copyright fence (while still signing items like StarForce). However, we won't really know what kind of a stance Microsoft is going to take until Vista ships. At any rate, we hope they leave in the ability to disable driver checking, even if it's only something technical savvy users are capable of doing.
Also, Vista x64 is implementing a couple of security features not found on the x86 version. Vista x64 will load critical system files at random offsets in the memory, versus the current method of using a predetermined location every time. The idea here is that by using offsets, certain classes of attacks such as buffer overflows will fail since they will not know where the component they want to affect resides. Vista x64 will also have a new feature designed to prevent malicious software from modifying the kernel (a requirement for implementing a rootkit), although the full details on how this works are light at this time.
Lastly, driver support for Vista seems to be pretty good considering it's still in a beta state. With a common base between the x86 and x64 versions, unlike XP where the x64 version was actually running on top of the Windows 2003 Server kernel, the x64 driver situation seems much improved, with most companies having released drivers for both versions and done so simultaneously. Other than for video drivers, which are a special case (more on that later), the driver structure hasn't changed too much between XP and Vista; we've heard numerous reports of XP networking drivers being used with Vista, for example, so driver support should be pretty good when Vista launches.
Not surprisingly, as it has been several years since the last release of Windows, Microsoft has let Vista grow into the expanded memory and processing power of newer computers. Microsoft has divided up the system requirements for Vista into two groups: a minimum requirement to run Vista at all, and an expanded requirement to use some of the more advanced features (mainly the full Aero features).
Basic
- 800mhz Processor
- 512MB RAM
- DX9 "capable" GPU with 32MB video memory
- 20GB HD
Expanded
- 1ghz Processor
- 1GB RAM
- DX9 PS2.0 GPU with 128MB video memory
- 40GB HD
It's worth noting that by finally moving to a GPU-accelerated desktop, the video requirements are the most increased of all. To balance this out with the abilities of low-end hardware, Vista will come with several different desktop modes that require various amounts of video functionality.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
With the new Aero interface, GPU acceleration of some kind is required to use it. For high-end systems with PS2.0 support and the power to run the desktop compositing engine backend required to use Aero, it will be available in its full glory including scaling effects, transparency, rotation, and other graphical manipulations that are best done on a GPU. Aero is pretty hard on a computer's GPU, as each window means a new polygon and texture to store in memory, so even though a system may support PS2.0 it may still not have the memory or rendering performance to effectively run it; users with modern discrete graphics cards shouldn't have anything to worry about, but IGP users might. For those users who are right on the border, some of the advanced effects such as transparency can be disabled, which will improve performance slightly. Because of some compatibility issues with Aero, it is sometimes automatically disabled and switched out for Basic if Windows detects a program that it knows has a problem with the advanced features of Aero. Users of those programs who want to use the advanced features will need to track down updates to these programs in order to get proper Aero support. For anyone with knowledge of Mac OS X Tiger, some of the parallels here with Quartz Extreme should be pretty apparent.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
For those systems that can't offer any real GPU acceleration at all, Vista is capable of also dropping back down one to two interfaces that use just the GDI+ functionality, and are intended to replicate XP and 2000 abilities respectively. Basic is intended to be the XP-like rendering mode for Vista, and while it currently uses a Vista-styled theme, this theme is going to be replaced for the shipping version. Classic will be the 2000-like mode using the 2000 interface style and rendering features. Because neither of these modes use the compositing engine, they drop the GPU requirements significantly (down to practically those of Windows XP/2000), but in the process lose the benefits of using a fully accelerated desktop rendering system and bring back the drawbacks of GDI+, such as higher CPU usage in some situations.
There will also be some differences in Vista based on whether the x86 or x64 version is being used. As Mac users may know by now, Microsoft has only implemented support for the new EFI standard in the x64 version, opting not to bother with the x86 version. The fact of the matter is that unless you're a Mac user, you're probably not even using an EFI-based system, so it's not going to be much of a problem; any new system that ships with EFI will ship with a 64-bit processor, and of course will require an x64 version of Vista.
Of greater importance though is the difference in how drivers are handled. The x64 version will by default be locked down to only accept kernel mode drivers which have been signed, and while this can be bypassed by tweaking Vista a bit, it's not a very easy thing to do at the moment and there is no guarantee it will stay this way. Ultimately, Microsoft sees this as a move towards ensuring better drivers, but as we've seen with WHQL certified video drivers, there are a lot of things that can slip through the cracks of Microsoft's testing. It is also not clear, even within Microsoft, whether developers who need to write kernel mode drivers (drivers which effectively have full, unadulterated, operating system level access to the hardware) will be allowed to sign their drivers using 3rd parties like Verisign. Giving developers this option would offer support without WHQL tests, but would almost defeat the purpose of the requirement (which is to ensure the integrity of the system).
If only a Microsoft signature is to be allowed, hardware manufacturers will be at the mercy of Microsoft, who may not sign legally questionable devices such as DVD emulators, but at the same time may also not sign malware such as the overambitious anti-piracy toolkit StarForce or Sony's CD rootkit. In general we're concerned that with the other Digital Rights Management technologies going into Vista such as HDCP, Microsoft is going to lean towards the side of only avoiding signing obvious malware and software that sits on the "fair use" side of the IP/copyright fence (while still signing items like StarForce). However, we won't really know what kind of a stance Microsoft is going to take until Vista ships. At any rate, we hope they leave in the ability to disable driver checking, even if it's only something technical savvy users are capable of doing.
Also, Vista x64 is implementing a couple of security features not found on the x86 version. Vista x64 will load critical system files at random offsets in the memory, versus the current method of using a predetermined location every time. The idea here is that by using offsets, certain classes of attacks such as buffer overflows will fail since they will not know where the component they want to affect resides. Vista x64 will also have a new feature designed to prevent malicious software from modifying the kernel (a requirement for implementing a rootkit), although the full details on how this works are light at this time.
Lastly, driver support for Vista seems to be pretty good considering it's still in a beta state. With a common base between the x86 and x64 versions, unlike XP where the x64 version was actually running on top of the Windows 2003 Server kernel, the x64 driver situation seems much improved, with most companies having released drivers for both versions and done so simultaneously. Other than for video drivers, which are a special case (more on that later), the driver structure hasn't changed too much between XP and Vista; we've heard numerous reports of XP networking drivers being used with Vista, for example, so driver support should be pretty good when Vista launches.
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Pirks - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Windows driver support and OSX driver support are quite different, in Windows you usually need a driver CD or download, while with OSX there almost nothing to do - plug the thing and enjoy it - hence the need for certified hardware - you need someone in charge of hardware approval to get that level of smoothness with hardware & other stuff. Apple can't provide this level of service IF they can't stamp their logo on something, while Windows can't provide this level of service BECAUSE they can't stamp their logo - feel the difference here :)) There's no such thing as "certified Windows hardware that you can just pop in and enjoy" - put all the WHQL/XP/MS logos on a Chinese card from newegg - and you still have to download and setup drivers yourself - which sounds like an insult for any Mac guy, hehe ;-)Locutus465 - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Not neccessarly... Hell, at work we started using signature pad software in conjunction with an active x control to provide digital signature functionality... I ordered a Topaz signature pad, it got to the office, plugged it in the USB and wouldn't you know it.... Windows found the device right away and it worked. To be fair, microsoft supports a huge number of the box... They just can't support all of it... Heck, I didn't even *need* to install any system drivers with vista, it found all my nForce4 devices and Gefore 7800GT just fine... I chose to becaues I'm guessing nVidia probably did a better job with thier drivers than microsoft did with their generic ones.Pirks - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
This is what I'm talking about - noone can support everything out there out of the box but a MANAGEABLE subset of hardware, like most popular video/audio/TV/RAID and other cards - that's a piece of cake, and now you are right, Vista will support a lot out of the box but LATER maybe in a year or two a lot of new devices start to appear on the market that Vista will not support out of the box, and the problem is NOBODY cares whether user has to download a driver or something, nobody cares about setting up some automatic update site driven by MS and maybe some other big PC vendors together (joint MS/newegg site would be ubermegacool!) which says "IF YOU GET CERTIFIED HARDWARE FROM US IT'LL WORK MAC-STYLE" meaning that if this card has a special logo - you know you pop it in and nothing else - Windows automatically locates driver online and downloads/installs it - Mac OS X style. Just forget about this thing unless you get a Mac - somehow MS and other can't realize many users would love such a feature - very nice choice - if you're a pro - go to newegg and get nice cheap stuff and install it yourself, but if you're a noob - here's your WinHardware.com, get there, choose a card, order it, pop it in and just FORGET about everything else - no drivers no other sh1t to worry about - well, all AT/DT readers won't care about that, I know, but for noobs/general public I think that's a boon, all my Mac owning buddies LOVE that feature of Macs - hence it's a good idea to adopt something similar for Windows, don't you agree?Locutus465 - Saturday, June 17, 2006 - link
What you don't seem to realize is that Windows has such a feature called Windows update. Microsoft does continuously update their in house set of available drivers. The main thing is that Microsoft tends not to do as good a job optimising drivers for *performance*. What microsoft want's are good solid drivers that don't crash your system, as far as their conserned performance is a distant second. This is why most users in the know specifically tell Windows *not* to locate a driver for their new hardware (unless it's something simple like a USB/Firewire harddrive etc) and proceed to download drivers from the hardware manufacturers website.Pirks - Saturday, June 17, 2006 - link
Ever tried to install Audigy 2 or X-Fi on XP? Ever tried to pop in Nomad Zen in 2002 or so... rings any bells? Or not?Well, if not, here's an explanation for you - your Windows Update is just this - purely WINDOWS update, and nothing more - the problem is - Windows Update is not concerned with a lot of new hardware coming out (Nomad Zen back in 2002, X-Fi, many other examples), there's not even an idea of certifying the new piece of hardware and submitting drivers to Microsoft where they are put online with WHQL logo on them. See the difference? In Macs it's a rule - got a new fresh driver for Mac OS X for your card? Submit it to Apple NOW! In Windows? Who cares about this in Windows? Windows PC makers do not care whether their customer can or can not install drivers - here's your PC, bye now. You wanna install X-Fi? Well, you're on your own. Get a nerd or something. Yeah, this works, but why not to go one step further and do it like this - Creative makes new flashy X-Fi - IMMEDIATELY submits drivers to MS - MS quickly tests them and in a week or two there you go - you pop your new expensive X-Fi in your PC and MAGICCC!!! PC GOES ONLINE AND DOWNLOADS/INSTALLS DRIVERS ITSELF! Why? Because X-Fi has this logo "Just Works in XP". You wanna get third party hi-perf drivers and apps/tuning utils? No problemo - go get 'em. But if you're a noob and dont' know what a driver is - this is a boon.
So far no enthusiast understood me when I mentioned this idea - and this is normal - enthusiasts do not need this kind of service. What is more interesting is why a major Home PC brand still doesn't have this kind of service. My guess this is because quality Home PCs come pre-assembled with all the drivers, but still - this service is an interesting approach to clone from Apple.
After all Vista cloned a lot from Tiger - why not clone other things from Apple like this service?
Will it hurt anyone?
Or will it make PCs more noob friendly and hence better competitors for Macs which constantly boast this "Just works" attitude? I mean this is nothing major, this is just a little service - but this Dashboard and Expose and other things - they are also little services, if you think about it. Is Vista actively cloning this stuff? Sure it is, everybody loves eye-candy, Spotlight and stuff like that - so why would anyone NOT like this additional automatic hardware configuration service?
I feel this is a thing of the future, and should appear sooner or later.
Any other opinions on that?
Locutus465 - Saturday, June 17, 2006 - link
Yes, but perhaps what you're missing is Microsoft will update their own in house drivers for hardware they consider essential to Windows functioning properly. The fact that microsoft doesn't try to control the PC market in the way Apple controls the Mac market has made the PC significantly more cost effective than Apples platform, while still allowing for a very high degree of innovation. The IBM PC has always been about economics, which is why no one (including IBM) could control it the way in which Apple controls the Mac platform. So apparently the answer to your question is yes and no.Yeah, there does need to be a service to update driver critical to the functioning of modern PC's automatically (in Microsoft's case, Windows Update). But no, in order to retain the economic's of the IBM clone market, there needs to be no such Apple like control over the market..
Pirks - Sunday, June 18, 2006 - link
Excellent point - total Apple-like control of the hardware turns PC into Mac, which is obviously not what users need and want (excluding zealots, of course). However, my point was not about turning PC into Mac by introducing total hardware control over every PC out there, Apple-style, it was rather about creating a special BRAND of PC, obviously a Vista-based PC, which should retain best features of Vista and Mac from the point of view of a noob. This means: a Vista PC which has similar subset of applications as OS X Tiger, and which also behaves like a Mac when you pop a certified piece of hardware into it - it goes online and downloads/installs drivers quietly and user just enjoys the device without any thinking - it "just works".Naturally, there is no need at all to convert all PCs to that ideology, one brand would be enough. Who is the best candidate for that? Probably an alliance between Dell and MS, or something similar.
I heard a lot of talk about Microsoft's iPod Killa coming out soon, not sure these aren't just baseless rumors but... let's imagine for a sec MS is going to try and kick Apple a little in DAP market - how'd they do that? Obviously by cloning and amplifying strengths of iPod. What are these? Tight integration and control of course, especially on Macs - on Mac the OS itself plus iTunes/iPod/iTMS work seamlessly together. Maybe MS can leverage some of that by creating its own PC brand (together with Dell would be the best) so that when there's someone thinking about bying a Mac just because it's so noob friendly, he/she can reconsider - hey, wait, don't buy a Mac - see, there's similar MS PC, which also accepts a subset of certified hardware, just like Mac and because of that is as easy and stable as a Mac - this is its strength, this is why it can compete with Macs on their turf.
In other words, if Apple pushes personal computers as easy to use, utility devices, and if MS also kind of succeded with its console (which is also utility device - plug and enjoy) then, maybe, it's time to attack CORE Apple market - those utility PCs called Macs. MS has attacked Sony market with game console - why not attacking Apple market at some point by creating similar PC clone of Mac, which is also controlled by one company and hence easy and stable etc.
Seems like a viable business idea to me, well meybe not at this point in time, maybe we should wait till Apple share of US home computer market grows to, say, 10 or 20% - but EVENTUALLY MS might be just FORCED to go Apple way - tight control over hardware and such - while leaving current free PC market intact of course - as I said it should be just another PC brand, nothing more.
stash - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Because that is a nice gaping vulnerability.
If you notice, there are two large buttons (sleep and lock) and a menu containing restart, logoff, shutdown, hibernate, etc. Sleep is a faster and more efficient method to shut off a computer, since it combines standby with hibernation. So machines will shut down much faster and startup nearly instantaneously, right where you left them. They will also use less power, since resuming from sleep uses far less power than a cold boot.
This is not MS's behavior at all. All of these things are tested extensively in useability studies by thousands of (non-Microsoft) users. The UX and UI changes in Vista are a result of these studies, not some artibrary decision.
JarredWalton - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Sleep and standby are not "more efficient" as they continue to draw power. (If fact, even shutting down will still leave the PC drawing 5-10W on most desktops.) The best way to totally shut off a computer is to shut down Windows and unplug the PC (or turn off the PSU switch). If by more efficient you mean that it starts up faster, then yes, but that's really more convenient, not more efficient.Locutus465 - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
So far, sleep doesn't start up my computer any faster than a cold boot with vista. In fact... Some times it doesn't start up my computer at all! I do like the general idea that you can put your computer into a sleep mode and still have it continue downloading data etc. Hopefully MS will get this worked out.