It matters not what users think of Vista — most are fairly favorable — but starting with the release to the consumer in the United States on Tuesday it will very quickly start to change the world of personal computer.

Unless you are buying a Macintosh or you are one of the very few who do personal computing using Linux your next personal computer will run with Vista. Yes, there will be ways around it.

You can build your own personal computer and run it with Windows 2000, which for many people is the last truly stable and useful Windows released, but you will be swimming against the tide. Every new personal computer which is not built by Apple, (when it has time for making iPods and iPhones and, I guess, very soon iComputers), will come equipped with Vista.

At a guess there will not be a flood of consumers wanting to load Vista on to their current computers because it is not a trivial task and many current computers are simply not up to the job.

Microsoft seems to have worked this out and this is a very low-key launch for anyone who remembers the excesses of the launch of Windows 95.

For computer manufacturers it is a different story. There may be very minor exceptions but take it that all PCs being made now are being made with Vista in mind. It means that the specifications of the computers themselves have changed. Indeed, they changed in November of last year in preparation for the launch of Vista. All PCs made since that date are Vista ready.

So what does that mean?

• Memory. It used to be PCs had 256 megabytes of memory which is where the computer holds information and computer sub-routines when it is working on a specific problem. Now the figure is 512MB because without it Vista runs more slowly. Indeed, most PCs now double that requirement to one gigabyte and Dell believes that for Vista to run properly if you are using running more than one program you need two gigabytes. Microsoft play this down as it does not want to put off customers. But it is likely that Dell is right.

• A new graphics card. Vista makes serious demands on graphics and uses a new system of computing graphics. A new card is needed and most PC makers now have a card which is more sophisticated, very Vista-aware and, as an excellent by-product, is far less likely to freeze or crash.

Will a desktop PC cost a lot more money?

No. The competition on computers is such that raising prices is one sure and certain way to go out of business. Indeed, if anything prices are falling.

Where the problems will all arise is with laptops. If you buy a laptop using Vista — and more and more there will be no other choice unless you are a big business — then it will cost more money than you expected. About $1,200 will be the bottom figure for a reasonably performing machine.

Pre-Vista models of consoles and notebooks will still, of course, be on the shelves. They will be marked ‘Vista Capable’ and should be avoided like the plague even if they come with a big discount and offer to send you Vista when it is available. Installing Vista is far, far more tricky than installing, for example, Windows XP. And that was no stroll in the park.

As Vista is rolled out computers will change even further to fit in with the system. A simple example is flash memory to speed up the booting up of the the computer. And there will be a big move into having computers that can link into a home entertainment center — especially digital cable TV systems.

The Wall Street Journal said recently that Vista was the prettiest Windows system ever, with better navigation than its predecessors. But the reviewer said it wasn’t a breakthrough in ease of use, and parts of the system ran slowly even on new computers. The large headline called Vista ‘Worthy, Largely Unexciting.’ A headline similar to that run in The Times, ‘Small earthquake in Peru; few injured.’ Think of Vista in the same way. Nothing to get over-excited about. But it really is happening.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 12:20 am under Microsoft, Vista.

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