Come 2007 when you pick the Windows Vista box off shelves, the printed requirements on that box will be simple: 800MHz CPU, 512MB RAM, and a DirectX 9.0-Capable graphics card. Users who want the "premium experience" (read: Aero interface) will need 1GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and plenty of RAM for that DirectX 9.0-Capable graphics card. Those requirements will likely never change, at least not for the first release of Vista.
If you're an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) like Gateway or Dell, it gets much more complex than that, however. For OEMs, there is a higher standard to meet if they wish to place a "Vista Premium" sticker on a laptop or desktop computer. The logo sticker is meant to assure consumers that Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) have validated a machine's configuration, and OEMs use the process, even if they don't love it.
Microsoft recently informed system builders as to what the company considers to be the optimal configuration for the "Premium" Windows Vista experience, and it will use these standards to govern its logo certification program. For us, that means we have a glimpse of what we can expect to see shipping from OEMs in a few short months, as they traditionally have hastened to meet logo certification requirements. In no particular order, these are the notable additional requirements for Premium certification:
sa: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060614-7060.html Get Vista Ready: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...y/default.mspx