First of all – system requirements.

The minimum published specs to run Windows Vista are a work of fiction! In our view you should not even consider putting Vista on an existing machine unless it has AT LEAST a 2Ghz processor and 1Gb of RAM. It also takes up significantly more disk space than XP, so make sure you have in the region of 15Gb of available disk space. The spec above, will not get the flashy new Aero user interface working however. For that you need a stonker of a graphics card that would normally be the reserve of a pale teenager with a 5 word vocabulary due to the fact the he/she spent all the waking hours playing games on a computer powerful enough to beat Chess Grandmaster. Mind you, the resulting ‘user experience’ is, very...... hmmm, ‘nice’.

If you want the ultimate ‘user experience’ we would say that the optimum spec of machine would have a 3Ghz + dual core processor, at least 2Gb of RAM and a graphics card compatible with Direct X 9 Pixel Shader which has at least 256Mb RAM. But don’t forget, apart from looking nice, the Aero interface doesn’t actually make your computer do anything different!

Secondly – hardware and software compatibility.

Before you look at upgrading to Vista, make sure you run the Vista Upgrade Readiness Advisor. Do this even if you are going to buy a new machine with Vista on it because it will tell you which applications and hardware are likely not to work. I can tell you from experience that there are likely to be quite a few! You can get hold of the Vista Readiness Advisor here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=42B5AC83-C24F-4863-A389-3FFC194924F8&displaylang=en

If you are intending to do an upgrade make sure that you uninstall everything that the advisor says might be a problem. If you don’t you probably won’t be able to get rid of it later!

As an indication, in our own office environment our network printer, scanner, accounts package, drive imaging software and spam filtering software were marked as ‘Having Known Problems’. That basically means they won’t work. We have also found numerous programs that obviously have some ‘unknown problems’! In our situation, the scanner was the oldest piece of hardware at 3 years old and it’s from Hewlett Packard which isn’t what I would call a ‘backwater manufacturer’. All of the incompatible applications were a current version which is frustrating to say the least.

Would we upgrade?
Honest answer? No. It does have some very useful features. We just don’t think that those features are significant enough or the operating system is currently stable enough for most people to bother upgrading. We would personally wait until you are going to buy a new computer – it will have Vista on it.

Buying a new computer with Vista on it.

There is a difference between ‘Vista Ready’ and ‘Vista Capable’. Vista Capable means that whilst the machine will run Vista, you probably won’t get the Aero interface and sadly will probably need a memory upgrade. Most of the ‘Capable’ computers we have seen have only got 512Mb of RAM which just isn’t enough. Vista Ready as you will have guessed, generally does mean the whole shebang. That said, keep an eye on the spec because not every computer manufacturer is being completely honest at this stage.