Behold Windows Vista

More than five years in the making and—according to Jim Alchin, co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division—boasting more than a thousand new features, Windows Vista is a landmark OS, and IT pros would do well to ensure that they’re prepared for its launch. Even if you have no explicit intent to rapidly upgrade to Vista, you’ll inevitably need to understand the OS as it begins to creep into your organization through new hardware purchases. With Vista poised to charge headlong into the IT arena in the next year or so, now is the time to delve into the OS’s essentials and coolest features.

Which Edition for You?
Were you ever confused by the differences between the various versions of Windows XP? If so, you’re going to be confounded by Vista, which Microsoft will release in five basic versions—three that provide business-oriented management features and two that are intended for the home. Here’s a look at the five versions, from the bottom up.

• Vista Home Basic—At the low end of the Vista product line, you’ll find Vista Home Basic, the counterpart to XP Home Edition. Vista Home Basic won’t support the new Aero UI, which I discuss a bit later.
• Vista Home Premium—Usurping Windows XP Media Center Edition, Vista Home Premium includes all the features of the previous OS, including the ability to view and record TV and to create, edit, and burn DVDs. This version includes the new Aero UI, as well as Tablet PC support.
• Vista Business. The counterpart of XP Professional, Vista Business offers support for using Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy to join domains and perform management activities. This version of the OS also includes the Aero UI.
• Vista Enterprise. A superset of Vista Business, Vista Enterprise includes all the features of Vista Business as well as new enterprise-oriented features such as Bit- Locker (a new drive-encryption technology) and Virtual PC Express (a single-session Virtual PC edition for running legacy applications). Vista Enterprise will be available only to customers who buy Microsoft Software Assurance or have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.
• Vista Ultimate. As its name implies, Vista Ultimate includes all the features of all the other Vista editions, including the business, mobility, and entertainment features.

To get an idea of the main features you’ll find in the Vista business editions but won’t find in the Vista home editions, check out Table 1. To see the features of the home editions that aren’t in the business editions, see the sidebar “Vista at Home,” page 36. European customers will be able to buy Home Basic N and Business N versions, which amount to the OS minus the media player. At the time of this writing, the pricing for the various editions has yet to be announced.

What About System Requirements?
Microsoft has been vague about Vista’s hardware requirements, leading to speculation that these requirements will be far beyond those of XP. However, early experience with the Vista Customer Technology Preview (CTP) builds squelches that speculation. Microsoft’s minimum requirements are a modern CPU (i.e., 800MHz or faster), 512MB of RAM, and a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) with DirectX 9 support.

Vista’s interface requirements scale according to the hardware it runs on. For Aero support, Vista requires systems that support DirectX 9, Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM), a minimum of 32-bit-per-pixel graphics capability, and an adapter with adequate graphics memory per screen resolution. For example, 1280 × 1024 resolution requires a minimum of 64MB of graphics memory, whereas 1920 × 1200 requires a minimum of 128MB. If systems don’t have that level of support, Vista will provide a more basic Aero-less UI. The bottom line is that Vista will run well on the vast majority of current systems but will likely run slower than XP on older systems that have less than 512MB of RAM.

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