Test how far Win Vista is from your PC.

With the official release of a monthly CTP version of Microsoft, Windows Vista is getting closer and closer to users. According to the latest news, this next generation The operating system will be officially released in November this year, no later than Christmas. While rejoicing, there may be a major problem that requires you to decide whether your machine can bring Windows Vista home.

First, Microsoft's recommended configuration

Not long ago, Microsoft and Intel, AMD, ATi, nVIDIA first announced the minimum configuration requirements of Windows Vista for computer hardware, we may wish to understand, see See if your love machine can meet the requirements of the next-generation operating system:

Processor: 800MHz, 1GHz recommended, dual core processor and 64-bit processor are recommended.

Physical Memory: The minimum capacity is 512MB, 1GB is recommended.

Physical hard disk: 7200rpm SATA or EIDE hard disk, at least 2MB cache, although there is no specific capacity requirements, but the recommended minimum capacity is 40GB, and the available space must be no less than 15GB.

Graphics Card: Must support WDDM (Windows Display Driver Moder) driver, support DirectX 9, minimum 64MB memory, 128MB memory recommended, and require a separate graphics card, after all, Vista Aero's graphical interface requirements for graphics It is quite high.

NIC: Must have a network card supporting 100Mb, if it is a laptop, then it is recommended to support 802.11g wireless network.

Optical Storage Device: Must Be a DVD Drive

From this list of only the minimum configuration, Windows Vista will have very strict hardware requirements, even for Pentium 4 and Celeron D. The processor can only be reduced to the entry-level processor ranks. Of course, even if the user's machine configuration is lower than this requirement, it does not mean that Windows Vista cannot be installed and run. However, some topics and effects cannot be displayed, so most users do not need to worry too much.

Second, test your love identity

Microsoft provides a scoring component for testing system performance in Windows Vista, which can be used to test processors, memory, hard drives, The scores of the subsystems such as the graphic display card and the game performance are comprehensively compared to obtain a final total score, which is divided into ten levels, with a score of 5.0.

1. Quickly check the system score

The author's love machine is the 9100 desktop in the Dell Dimension series purchased in September 2005. This is the highest-end configuration at the time, and it is re-run. Related collocations, such as Pentium D830, 2GB DDRII533 memory, 160GB+80GB SATA dual hard drive, 256MB RADEON X600 Series graphics card, 19-inch ultra-clear LCD display, all kinds of components can be said to be top-level configuration, but right click "Computer" Open the window of Figure 1, and see that the score is only 3.6 points, it seems to be a bit strange, can't such a high configuration reach 5 points of full marks?

Figure 1

2. Check the scores of each subsystem

In order to verify the reliability of the score, the author found this scoring component from the control panel: Control Panel→System and Maintenance→Performance Information and Tools, click “Update my score” link to re-test, wait for about 3 minutes, and finally give the test results shown in Figure 2, very unfortunately, Except for Memory and Primary hard disk, the other components did not get 5.0 points, and Windows Vista took the lowest score as the performance score. The score of 3.6 is naturally reasonable...
Figure 2< Br>

Third, upgrade Vista, you still have a lot of work to do

If you are going to make a major upgrade in the near future, then you definitely need to consider the next generation operating system Windows Vista, Microsoft Recently released a software called Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor (hereinafter referred to as WVUA), the biggest function of this software is to detect which version of Vista your computer can run, can use Vista What features, what hardware needs to be upgraded, will provide a report and give recommendations accordingly the tests are complete.

The operation of the WVUA detection system is very simple. Run the program to open the wizard window and click the “Start System Scan” button. Here we can read the relevant help information carefully. Next is to select the test project, as shown in Figure 3, there are a total of 8 projects here, "Strengthen Security" and "Searcch and Organize" two projects for all versions of Windows Vista, so has been set to mandatory detection For the project, the remaining 6 projects correspond to Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Business. Of course, if you only use two default detection items, then it will be tested for Windows Vista Home Basic.

Figure 3

You can decide whether you need to test, but I recommend selecting all items for testing as much as possible, even if your machine is configured too many times, but "Windows Aero" This project should never be missed? After selecting the test item, you can click the “NeXT” button to test, and the test result is displayed almost immediately. It is divided into two parts: Hardware Assessment and Software Assessment. The former is mainly for hardware, the latter is mainly for drivers, if all items Congratulations on the front of the green tick, indicating that it is fully compliant with Vista.

However, in most cases, I believe that some projects will not meet the demanding requirements of Windows Vista. As shown in Figure 4, there are many red warnings like "Contact the manufacturer". It seems that Some hardware may not be able to play Windows Vista if it is not upgraded. After the check is completed, you can click the “NEXT” button and select “Print fianl report” to print out the test report. Select the “Save final report” button to export the test report as an HTML file. If you have time, you may wish to study it. Fan, look at the shortcomings of your own computer system, how to improve, in time to prepare for the arrival of Windows Vista.
Figure 4 It is said that Microsoft is going to put a label on the OEM PC, such as Basic (standard), Premium (luxury), but even the Basic label PC, at least must have 1GB of memory. It is estimated that when Windows Vista is finally released, there will be another round of hardware upgrades. I believe that both hardware manufacturers and PC international manufacturers will most hope to see this.