Technology Explained
The word on everyones lips is, if you believe Microsoft, is Vista! Now that's a word that scares me! I get asked quite often - "Should I get Vista?" or - "My new computer came with Vista installed. Can I get rid of it? I much preferred XP." - or - "How come my games won't install on my new PC?" - or - "Can I re-install my Office '97? Will it work?" - or - "Will my current PC take Vista? Can I upgrade? Microsoft says it's easy. Is it?"
These and many more questions will be answered over the coming months. This month we'll look at upgrading from Windows XP to Vista.
Firstly, we need to be aware of the substantial increase in the hardware requirement to get the optimum out of Vista and even then, there are various versions of Vista that each have different requirements. Home Basic? Home Premium? Business or Ultimate? To see a comparison of the key features, click here. Home Premium seems to be the edition that is bundled with most brand-name computers from the leading retailers. A PC that used to run Windows XP reasonably well with 256MB of memory, fit it and all your games and productivity programs easily on a 40GB hard disk will NOT cope with an upgrade to Vista, so unless your PC is less than 2 years old and has a swag - 1GB or more - of memory, a dual-core Pentium 4 (or single core 3.0GHz and up), forget it. It would be cheaper to buy a new PC!. Video adapters are a completely different kettle of fish, because to get the full benefit of the new look "glass" requires a Vista compatible adaptor - $200 to $700+ !!! You can either get in a technician to quote on getting an upgrade or hand the old PC over to Granny and get a new one.
To get some idea of whether or not to pursue the upgrade path, click here. But, do remember that the link you're going to follow will take you to Microsoft, whose key drivers are to get Vista into as many machines as possible, regardless of the performance.
Next month, we'll look again at the hardware requirements and the implications of less-than-optimum configurations.
The word on everyones lips is, if you believe Microsoft, is Vista! Now that's a word that scares me! I get asked quite often - "Should I get Vista?" or - "My new computer came with Vista installed. Can I get rid of it? I much preferred XP." - or - "How come my games won't install on my new PC?" - or - "Can I re-install my Office '97? Will it work?" - or - "Will my current PC take Vista? Can I upgrade? Microsoft says it's easy. Is it?"
These and many more questions will be answered over the coming months. This month we'll look at upgrading from Windows XP to Vista.
Firstly, we need to be aware of the substantial increase in the hardware requirement to get the optimum out of Vista and even then, there are various versions of Vista that each have different requirements. Home Basic? Home Premium? Business or Ultimate? To see a comparison of the key features, click here. Home Premium seems to be the edition that is bundled with most brand-name computers from the leading retailers. A PC that used to run Windows XP reasonably well with 256MB of memory, fit it and all your games and productivity programs easily on a 40GB hard disk will NOT cope with an upgrade to Vista, so unless your PC is less than 2 years old and has a swag - 1GB or more - of memory, a dual-core Pentium 4 (or single core 3.0GHz and up), forget it. It would be cheaper to buy a new PC!. Video adapters are a completely different kettle of fish, because to get the full benefit of the new look "glass" requires a Vista compatible adaptor - $200 to $700+ !!! You can either get in a technician to quote on getting an upgrade or hand the old PC over to Granny and get a new one.
To get some idea of whether or not to pursue the upgrade path, click here. But, do remember that the link you're going to follow will take you to Microsoft, whose key drivers are to get Vista into as many machines as possible, regardless of the performance.
Next month, we'll look again at the hardware requirements and the implications of less-than-optimum configurations.
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