[olePigeon]

According to Microsoft, these are the recommended requirements for Windows Vista (it didn't say what the minimum was).

CPU: Pentium 4 or equivalent with HyperThreading, Dual Core, or Dual Processor.
RAM: 1GB DDR3 for 32-bit, 2GB DDR3 for 64-bit. (yes DDR3, not 2... which isn't scheduled for 2007?)
HDD: SATA2 (not SATA)
BUS: PCI Express (not AGP)
VID: Nothing spectacular. Though if you want to watch HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies on your computer, you're SOL (and this goes for the Mac as well.) The HDCP encryption downsamples HD content on anything that can't process the HDCP encryption.

However, I expect that VLC will have an HDCP emulator or something by 2007. Surely, at least a month after we really start seeing 'em "DVD Jon" will make something useful.

[jasonsRX7]

I've seen the beta run decently on a 1.1ghz Duron, with 512mb on an nForce board with integrated video. The UI is flat out fugly, though.

[olePigeon]

These are the requirements to "experience" Vista in all its... err, glory?

You can run it on worse hardware. I don't know what the minimum requirements are.

[alphasubzero949]

Ha.

[TailsToo]

One wrod - B L O A T !

[teney7]

1 GB of RAM....? I wonder what percentage of Windows users anywhere have 1 GB of RAM... I don't even have one in my 12'' PB...!

[EFFENDI]

When did Microsoft release these? They seem unreasonable to me.

[jasonsRX7]

Most of the desktops at work are Optiplex 1ghz P3s with 256mb ram. I'm going to install it on one of them and see how it runs. I have a feeling I'm going to be upgrading them all to 512mb when Vista comes out. For what our users do, 512mb will be enough.

[olePigeon]

Oops, forgot link. Sorry guys.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/09...hardware_reqs/

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by jasonsRX7

Most of the desktops at work are Optiplex 1ghz P3s with 256mb ram. I'm going to install it on one of them and see how it runs. I have a feeling I'm going to be upgrading them all to 512mb when Vista comes out. For what our users do, 512mb will be enough.

At work we have the Microsoft Advantage program. You get a big ass fat CD folder with every single Tech Update and version of windows since 2000.

We just got the Vista Beta in the mail today. On a 1.6GHz Centrino with 512MB of RAM, it had some serious work just trying to refresh the window screen.

My coworker, a Windows nut, said it was way to slow for his laptop. However, he said he'd buy just for the file transfer window. It actually shows the speed of the file transfer and how long it'll take to transfer, WITH an actual progress bar instead of giant blue blocks and a piece of paper flying from one folder to another.

Other than that, he though Vista was just XP with some long awaited fixes (like the file transfer window.)

[EFFENDI]

So it looks like there will be Vista in different flavors...of graphics modes that is:

Classic Mode: For lower-end machines, notebooks with low-performance integrated graphics chipsets

Aero: For midrage computer systems, reccomended display memory is 128MB, higher end notebooks, low-end desktops.

Aero Glass: Will utilize all the graphics features on the desktop and in applications, reccomended for graphics chipsets with 256MB of video memory,...and get this....or more!!!!!!

As far as the steep RAM requirements, they are doubled to 2 GB (for 64bit systems) from 1 GB (or even 512 in a 32bit environment), since a 64 bit environment needs double the memory (bigger chunks of information).

SATA-2 Harddrives, not THAT unreadonable, simply because they approach SCSI transfer speeds, and are/will be fairly affordable. Hopefully Apple adopts this standard as well.

Still, I won't be buying a new PC just to run Vista, I will be switching soon, and I am positive that anything Apple has by the time Vista is released (when will Leopard be released?) will be far superior. If anything, these requirements are going to help push Apple hardware further (ahead of PCs).


Those are "reccomended" specs, and plus they are reccomended by an Austrailian Microsoft Strategist, I doubt it very highly that Vista's minimum specs would be much more than a current $500.00 Dell.

[olePigeon]

Something tells me Windows Vista's GUI isn't very well optimized. Why in hell does it need 256MB video card?

[Hawkeye_a]

Whoppie. making it even more complicated for developers and end users.

Apple's approach:
Quartz Extreme enabled or not. Developers code to the same API taking advantage of the same features. If the apropriate hardware is available it takes advantage of it. And the basic requirements are no where nearly as rediculious as those of Vista lol.

Also 64-bit addressing is CAPABLE of addressing a lot more memory, it doesn't 'need' all that memory to be available. Obviously the more memory you have the better but even suggesting 2GB of DDR3 memory is way over the top imo.

Also, i think the better question for users/developers is. what advantage does Vista have over OSX ?

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by EFFENDI

SATA-2 Harddrives, not THAT unreadonable, simply because they approach SCSI transfer speeds, and are/will be fairly affordable. Hopefully Apple adopts this standard as well.

No it doesn't. That's based off of Burst Rate Speeds, which is data transfered directly to/from the cache. So if the HDD has a 16MB cache, that means you'll get close to SCSI performance for a whopping 16MBs.

Sustainable transfer rate is significantly slower.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Also, i think the better question for users/developers is. what advantage does Vista have over OSX ?

Games. And crap software that relies on ActiveX.

[Athens]

Originally Posted by teney7

1 GB of RAM....? I wonder what percentage of Windows users anywhere have 1 GB of RAM... I don't even have one in my 12'' PB...!

80% of my customers, and most new machines I build have 1GB of ram these days.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by teney7

1 GB of RAM....? I wonder what percentage of Windows users anywhere have 1 GB of RAM... I don't even have one in my 12'' PB...!

My AMD-based PC has 1GB, and like with OS X that RAM boost made a huge performance difference. But I'm running XP on it, not Vista. And I'm thinking I'm not going to run Vista on it, either. Vista seems to have more hype than substance, and if I want a cool interface (on my AMD hardware) I can play with Linux and the various GUIs that work with it.

What's the word I'm looking for......Oh, yeah! "Relevant." Vista isn't.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by olePigeon

At work we have the Microsoft Advantage program. You get a big ass fat CD folder with every single Tech Update and version of windows since 2000.

Same here. If it runs well on our Optiplexes, then it'll be worth it to continue Software Assurance. If not, those systems will just get upgraded to XP.

Originally Posted by olePigeon

However, he said he'd buy just for the file transfer window. It actually shows the speed of the file transfer and how long it'll take to transfer, WITH an actual progress bar instead of giant blue blocks and a piece of paper flying from one folder to another.

Tell him to try TotalCopy. I've been using it for years for those very reasons, and it's free.

[EFFENDI]

Originally Posted by olePigeon

No it doesn't. That's based off of Burst Rate Speeds, which is data transfered directly to/from the cache. So if the HDD has a 16MB cache, that means you'll get close to SCSI performance for a whopping 16MBs.

Sustainable transfer rate is significantly slower.

I never said SATA2 was as fast as SCSI, read my post again. SATA2 is close to SCSI speeds, but not all SCSI drives are the same. Bottom line, SATA2 is as fast as the majority of SCSI standards, except some of the Ultra2 and Wide Ultra2/Ultra320 drives.

But, SATA2 shares some of the other advantages that SCSI drives have, and parallel and SATA1 drives do not.

SATA2 is still markedly faster than current EIDE drives that Apple is still using. The gains over SATA1 are also fairly noticeable. SATA2 also has NCQ support (when used with a motherboard that supports it) and this is undoubtedly a "better" way of optimizing use of the actual *hardware* of a SATA2 harddrive, rather than in the currently linear fashion in which SATA and PATA drives do. SATA2s are still fast enough for even the most demanding users. (SATA2 drives scream when in RAID-0). In addition to all that, they are extremely affordable, and have higher capacities for less money than SCSI.

Again, SATA2s greatest advantage is cost. An 80GB SATA2 drive is around $100.00. Show me a Wide Ultra2 SCSI/Ultra320 that is less than $200.00 and then you can argue about performance.

[Kevin]

I wouldn't own a computer with less than 1g of RAM.

[Salty]

Oi vey... OS X still runs fine in a 350Mhz iMac G3... how the heck does Microsoft manage to get away with this crap?

[baw]

Originally Posted by ghporter

My AMD-based PC has 1GB, and like with OS X that RAM boost made a huge performance difference. But I'm running XP on it, not Vista. And I'm thinking I'm not going to run Vista on it, either. Vista seems to have more hype than substance, and if I want a cool interface (on my AMD hardware) I can play with Linux and the various GUIs that work with it.

What's the word I'm looking for......Oh, yeah! "Relevant." Vista isn't.

And XP was hype as well. W2k was probably the best version of Windows Micro$oft put out.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by baw

And XP was hype as well. W2k was probably the best version of Windows Micro$oft put out.

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by Salty

Oi vey... OS X still runs fine in a 350Mhz iMac G3... how the heck does Microsoft manage to get away with this crap?

No kidding. ive got a 4 year old PowerBook G4 w/ 512MB RAM and OSX is cruizing along just fine. And thats with all the features Vista claims to offer and then some.

[olePigeon]

I'm anxious to see speed comparison of Vista and Leopard on nearly identical machines.

[meelk]

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Something tells me Windows Vista's GUI isn't very well optimized. Why in hell does it need 256MB video card?

because vista is now going to draw everything on screen as a vector graphic apparently, so its completely scaleable. very nice.

[Salty]

Hmmm wonder if Leopard is going to have a fully vectorized interface? Would make sense, I'd love to see icons be done with vectors. Like have the ability to include bitmaps and stuff, something like Macromedia Fireworks' way of handling things.

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by meelk

because vista is now going to draw everything on screen as a vector graphic apparently, so its completely scaleable. very nice.

Lol...u mean like what Quartz Extreme on OSX can do with a 32MB video card ?

And yes i too am very curious about speed comparisons between Vista and Leapord on near identical hardware.

[Salty]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Lol...u mean like what Quartz Extreme on OSX can do with a 32MB video card ?

And yes i too am very curious about speed comparisons between Vista and Leapord on near identical hardware.

To be fair yes OS X is doing nice stuff with QE but it's not a vector drawn interface. Apple I think was hoping on getting that into Tiger but it didn't work out. This would actually be something MS was ahead on the curve for... that said who knows if they'll do anything impressive with it like I'm sure Apple would.

[olePigeon]

Vector can be pretty limiting and may not translate very well to a bitmap screen. I haven't had a chance to use Vista Beta on a computer with a 256MB video card, because I don't think a single computer in our entire district has a video card with 256MB of RAM.

When you're ordering 200 computers for a school and you can choose between a 32MB video card or, for $250 more per computer, you can get a 256MB video card... you tend to go with the 32MB video card because you'll save $50,000.

I don't know what Microsoft is smoking. I really doubt your average computer will have a 256MB video card even by the end of 2006. I could be wrong, but most cheap PCs (especially in the education market) have a whopping 32MB. I can see them maybe jumping to 64MB, maybe even 128MB, but certainly not 256MB.

I just don't see it for educational or corporate environments.

Of course, that could be the whole catch. If the "minimum" requirements to experience Vista is a 256MB video card, that's an extra $50,000 for Dell. Knowing my colleagues who are Microsoft nuts, they'd find someway to justify it.

We have brand new laptops for every teacher in our district on a lease until late 2007, early 2008. When I see Vista struggling to draw a single window on those things... *shudder*

[Salty]

If you do vectors with things like feathering and what not you can do almost anything you'd do with bitmaps with vectors.

[Hawkeye_a]

I havent worked with QE (or its APIs), im mostly into OpenGL myself. But if i remember correctly, Quartz is based off the PDF spec, and if im not mistaken, PDF is vector based, isnt it ? Thats what leads me to beleive that Quartz is vector based, and Quartz Extreme being hardware(GPU) accelerated. But im not completely certain as i havent thuroughly researched the matter.

Also just from looking at OSX desktop i think its apparently vector based. The dock scales beautifully, Expose, the genie effect. i dont see how they could gett hose production values without vector based graphics.

[Jan Van Boghout]

Tiger already has the necessary developer hooks for resolution indepent drawing, and Leopard is supposed to expose this functionality as a user feature. Lots of non-image drawing in the OS X Graphics APIs will scale perfectly out of the box, like gradients, text, etc. Just export a PDF and realize that the drawing system already handles that. There's really no reason to require a 256MB card for that.

[ReggieX]

Originally Posted by olePigeon

When you're ordering 200 computers for a school and you can choose between a 32MB video card or, for $250 more per computer, you can get a 256MB video card... you tend to go with the 32MB video card because you'll save $50,000.

Well, I doubt a school needs the latest flashiest crapola to work with, all the bells & whistles are for the uber MS geeks and gamers, the ones who will go out and get the absolute fastest video card as soon as it comes out.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

I havent worked with QE (or its APIs), im mostly into OpenGL myself. But if i remember correctly, Quartz is based off the PDF spec, and if im not mistaken, PDF is vector based, isnt it ? Thats what leads me to beleive that Quartz is vector based, and Quartz Extreme being hardware(GPU) accelerated. But im not completely certain as i havent thuroughly researched the matter.

Also just from looking at OSX desktop i think its apparently vector based. The dock scales beautifully, Expose, the genie effect. i dont see how they could gett hose production values without vector based graphics.

With high resolution graphics. PDF and Quartz support vector drawing, but they also support bitmaps. All of the graphics in OS X are bitmaps. Try opening up the icon for any of the apps in your dock in an icon editor. You'll see that it consists of a bunch of different bitmap images for different resolutions — 16x16, 32x32, 128x128, etc. The dock, if I recall, always uses the highest resolution available so it can to its scaling smoothly.

[wataru]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Lol...u mean like what Quartz Extreme on OSX can do with a 32MB video card ?

Edit: Wrong. I wrote an explanation, but Chuckit's is much better.

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

With high resolution graphics. PDF and Quartz support vector drawing, but they also support bitmaps. All of the graphics in OS X are bitmaps. Try opening up the icon for any of the apps in your dock in an icon editor. You'll see that it consists of a bunch of different bitmap images for different resolutions — 16x16, 32x32, 128x128, etc. The dock, if I recall, always uses the highest resolution available so it can to its scaling smoothly.

Oh ok. i understand. That makes sence for the dock/icons as i have created a few icons myself in PS7. So basically QE scales from doing only bitmaps upto vector graphics. Right ?

Im surprised that all of OSX UI elements are bitmaps though. they look mighty smooth scaling more so than graphics on WinXP which are noticeably bitmapped.

[wataru]

Where have you seen scaled versions of the OS X UI elements?

[Hawkeye_a]

Fonts, a window being minimized and maximized, expose. I doubt you can do all that with just bitmaps. Also....quartz(the drawing API for everything you see on your screen) is PDF based. PDF is not just bitmaps.

Also speaking of the dock and icons....theyre bitmaps, but they scale beautifully, when compared to scaling of icons on WinXP which appear blocky unless theyre of resolutions 8X8, 16X16 or 32X32(i think).

Now i distinctly remember at one of the WWDCs i attended, at one of the QE sessions i think, they mentioned that when windows are minimized/restored, the entire window is converted into a texture and scaled using openGL. If they ae using openGL to scale and move a window....you need more than just a bitmap program, and chances are you are using vectors to store and calculate positions.

Therefore from my OpenGL point of view, whenever you have things moving, animating, scaling, rotating, etc.... you are using vectors as opposed to static bitmaps.

EDIT>>where have i seen scaling of UI elements ? Interface Builder

[MrForgetable]

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Vector can be pretty limiting and may not translate very well to a bitmap screen. I haven't had a chance to use Vista Beta on a computer with a 256MB video card, because I don't think a single computer in our entire district has a video card with 256MB of RAM.

When you're ordering 200 computers for a school and you can choose between a 32MB video card or, for $250 more per computer, you can get a 256MB video card... you tend to go with the 32MB video card because you'll save $50,000.

I don't know what Microsoft is smoking. I really doubt your average computer will have a 256MB video card even by the end of 2006. I could be wrong, but most cheap PCs (especially in the education market) have a whopping 32MB. I can see them maybe jumping to 64MB, maybe even 128MB, but certainly not 256MB.

I just don't see it for educational or corporate environments.

Of course, that could be the whole catch. If the "minimum" requirements to experience Vista is a 256MB video card, that's an extra $50,000 for Dell. Knowing my colleagues who are Microsoft nuts, they'd find someway to justify it.

We have brand new laptops for every teacher in our district on a lease until late 2007, early 2008. When I see Vista struggling to draw a single window on those things... *shudder*

i actually think a lot of schools are on integrated graphics.

[wataru]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Fonts, a window being minimized and maximized, expose. I doubt you can do all that with just bitmaps. Also....quartz(the drawing API for everything you see on your screen) is PDF based. PDF is not just bitmaps.

Fonts don't count because they are vector based, and simply rendered as bitmaps of whatever size when they're drawn to the screen. I'm talking about UI elements; things like buttons, icons, etc.

Yes, Quartz does use PDF drawing commands, but that's meaningless when what you're drawing is a bitmap. Consider, for instance, a PDF containing a bitmap (like a JPEG or PNG). Try taking a screenshot and converting it to a PDF in Preview. Now zoom in. It's ugly. Yes, of course it's ugly because you started with a bitmap (the PNG file). But that's just an illustration of the problem.

If OS X's interface was vector-based, I imagine we would be able to take screenshots to a vector image format, like PDF. (Yes, earlier versions of OS X defaulted to PDF format for screenshots, but those PDFs contained bitmaps, not vectors.)

Also speaking of the dock and icons....theyre bitmaps, but they scale beautifully, when compared to scaling of icons on WinXP which appear blocky unless theyre of resolutions 8X8, 16X16 or 32X32(i think).

They scale beautifully because they only scale down. That's easy to do. The strength of a vector-based interface is that it can be scaled up to any arbitrary size. That's what's hard to do, and to date OS X can't do it.

Now i distinctly remember at one of the WWDCs i attended, at one of the QE sessions i think, they mentioned that when windows are minimized/restored, the entire window is converted into a texture and scaled using openGL. If they ae using openGL to scale and move a window....you need more than just a bitmap program, and chances are you are using vectors to store and calculate positions.

Yes, but again, that's scaling down. If you ever scaled up, things would immediately get either blocky or fuzzy, and either way it's ugly.

EDIT>>where have i seen scaling of UI elements ? Interface Builder

There is no scaling up of anything in Interface Builder. You can enlarge things, but that's not scaling.

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by MrForgetable

i actually think a lot of schools are on integrated graphics.

Ours definitely is. A few have video cards, but only because the onboard video died for some reason or another and the machine is out of warranty.

Microsoft isn't dumb, they obviously have something up their sleeve. It's just hard to see how Vista would appeal to a budget concerned school district or business. So now I just found out that there are going to be seven (that's right, SEVEN consumer versions of Vista.)

Starter Edition
Home Basic Edition
Home Premium Edition
Professional Edition
Ultimate Edition (Uh, yeah.)
Small Business Edition
Enterprise Edition

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Oh ok. i understand. That makes sence for the dock/icons as i have created a few icons myself in PS7. So basically QE scales from doing only bitmaps upto vector graphics. Right ?

Just for clarification, Quartz Extreme isn't another name for Quartz. Quartz is the drawing engine, while Quartz Extreme is a specialized compositor that handles window layering (i.e. sticking it on top of other windows) after the window has been drawn. It does this by drawing every window onto an OpenGL texture so the compositing can be offloaded onto the graphics card.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Im surprised that all of OSX UI elements are bitmaps though. they look mighty smooth scaling more so than graphics on WinXP which are noticeably bitmapped.

The dock scaling used to look worse in the Public Beta, but they got a better algorithm since then.

By the way, you probably the scaled GUI elements with Quartz Debug, which allows you to use the OS's (not ready for prime time) UI scaling feature.

[Amorya]

Originally Posted by wataru

Fonts don't count because they are vector based, and simply rendered as bitmaps of whatever size when they're drawn to the screen. I'm talking about UI elements; things like buttons, icons, etc.

Yes, Quartz does use PDF drawing commands, but that's meaningless when what you're drawing is a bitmap. Consider, for instance, a PDF containing a bitmap (like a JPEG or PNG). Try taking a screenshot and converting it to a PDF in Preview. Now zoom in. It's ugly. Yes, of course it's ugly because you started with a bitmap (the PNG file). But that's just an illustration of the problem.

If OS X's interface was vector-based, I imagine we would be able to take screenshots to a vector image format, like PDF. (Yes, earlier versions of OS X defaulted to PDF format for screenshots, but those PDFs contained bitmaps, not vectors.)

Actually, you can. It requires a bit of hackery. You need to open the .nib file for the app, and add a Print button, linked to the window. Then run the app, click the button, and choose Save as PDF. There you go - a vector screenshot!

Sure, some interface _elements_ are bitmaps, but they're composited in a scalable co-ordinate system which keeps track of PDF and postscript data. A vector based interface does not necessarily imply that all the button images are vectors - the fact that our co-ordinate system is no longer based on the pixel is the crucial point IMO.

The strength of a vector-based interface is that it can be scaled up to any arbitrary size. That's what's hard to do, and to date OS X can't do it.

It bloody well can! The app I wrote recently, iBell, used Cocoa's graphics APIs. It can scale its interface with no quality loss to any size, because I drew things using vectors.

A vector interface with no support for bitmaps at all would be useless. There's no way a photo can be displayed as a vector graphic, for example. Would you therefore suggest that iPhoto can never have a vector based interface?

You're picking up on the least important part of such an interface. We have the foundation. All developer graphics APIs (that are not deprecated) now support scaling to arbitary sizes. We've done the hard work, and that all works already (check out Quartz Debug, which can turn on scaling in Tiger). The fact that Apple may need to redraw a few button bitmaps (although some can already scale just fine) is not a problem at all.

Just for clarification, Quartz Extreme isn't another name for Quartz. Quartz is the drawing engine, while Quartz Extreme is a specialized compositor that handles window layering (i.e. sticking it on top of other windows) after the window has been drawn.

Quartz is the generic all-encompassing name.

Quartz 2D is the drawing API for developers, which is fully vector based.
Quartz Compositor does the window layering.
Quartz Extreme uses the graphics card to make Quartz Compositor faster.


Amorya

[Eriamjh]

Recommended doesn't mean minimum.

[meelk]

Apple wont do anything that requires a 256meg card as standard, because Apple is simply too cheap to do so. You buy a $10,000 loaded Dual G5 and get cas 3 ram for God's sake.