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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Hey Geek Guy! What do I need to run Vista?

By Bob Finley

Geek Guy has lived in Chicago for a long time. When you stop him on the corner of Wacker & State and ask him the apparently simple question "Excuse me - which way is 100 Wacker Drive?" you might be surprised to find he needs more information. Do you mean North Wacker, South Wacker, East Wacker or West Wacker?"

Microsoft's new Vista operating system has a number of versions -- too many in the opinion of many reviewers. So to clarify an answer to your question about running Vista Geek Guy says:

  • Vista Business at a minimum -- stay away from the Home versions - Enterprise & Ultimate are ok, too (Vista versions are like addresses on Wacker Drive. You need more information).
  • 2 gigabytes of RAM.
  • Graphics card capable of supporting Directx 9 and 128 MB of graphics memory. A tip from Geek Guy -- The Vista upgrade advisor tool available for download at Microsoft is probably the quickest way to test your current graphics card. You might also discover a favorite software package or two that won't run in Vista without an upgrade.

One more word on graphics cards and Vista - unless you're a heavy duty gamer or a graphic designer there's a strong probability you'll need a new graphics card to fully support Vista on your existing machine.

Hey Geek Guy - my computer is just a year and a half old and it runs XP Pro just fine. So I can figure it'll run the flavor of Vista you're recommending fine right?...

Read the complete article at http://www.nptimes.com/technobuzz/tb20070814_1.html

This article is from NPT TechnoBuzz, a publication of The NonProfit Times. Subscribe to NPT TechnoBuzz or any of our other enewsletters and get the latest nonprofit news and stories delivered to your inbox.

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