Windows Vista Information

Microsoft Windows Vista© is the latest edition of Windows to be released from Microsoft. It has been publicly available since January 30, 2007. Before the official name "Vista" was announced, it was referred to by its codename "Longhorn".

In the US market, there are currently four different editions of Vista; Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. All four support both 32 and 64 bit processors. Home Basic is the least expensive, but offers the fewest features of the bunch, being aimed toward basic PCs used to check e-mail, and browse the web. Home Premium adds many of the features Vista has available, from the flashy new Aero desktop, to movie and DVD creation tools, to Windows Media Center. Business edition lacks the Multimedia goodies of Home Premium, but adds Fax and Scan tools, remote desktop capabilities, and PC Backup and Restore. Ultimate edition has all of the available features in Vista, and is the most expensive edition.

Windows Vista has two categories for system requirements; Vista Capable, and Vista Premium Ready. A PC that meets the "Vista Capable" requirements will be able to run any of the available editions of Vista, but without some of the advanced graphical options and special features. A Vista Premium Ready compatible system will be able to take advantage of all of Vista's advanced graphical options. A quick run down of the requirements for a Vista Capable system are: at least an 800 MHz processor, at least 512 MB of memory, and a DirectX 9 capable video card. A Vista Premium Ready system requires at least a 1 GHz processor (1000 MHz), 1 GB of memory (1024 MB), and a DirectX 9 with Pixel Shader 2.0 capable video card. These are the strictest system requirements from Microsoft for their OS to date, excluding many older systems from being able to run Vista. Additionally, the above specifications only represent the minimum system requirements for Vista.