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Vista and the Hardware Monster, Part 1
Sunday, July 2nd, 2006
If you’re at all like me (quick, count your fingers and toes — 7 of each? Good!), you’ve probably 
heard the Vista hype, read the dire warnings, and maybe even tried Microsoft’s compatibility software to see if your PC had enough testosterone to actually run Windows Vista. Truth, at least as I interpret it, is that it’s all pretty much meaningless and probably irrelevant to boot.
There are five bloody flavors of Vista — from a bottom-of-the-line version that appears to be meant as a substitute for Linux on third-world computers to some supreme and ultimate version that’s most likely too good for any hardware that you and I could possibly afford. All right, I’m exaggerating a little. (Well, except about the low-end version, which is only available as a 32-bit package.) To find out just how much hyperbole is involved I decided to do something stupid. I was going to install a Beta version of Vista on a computer I owned. (Just for perspective, the first Beta software I installed on a computer was Windows — before there were notable version numbers — and the last was OS/2.)
I dutifully went to Microsoft’s Web site and tried to download Vista Beta 2 Evaluation Copy Build 5384. Forget it. Despite having had their servers slow down to a crash the last time they did something like this, once again, Microsoft, piloted by the richest man in the world, doesn’t have adequate hardware resources to meet demand. So I did the only thing I could: I shelled out a few dollars and had them send me a copy. The intervening two weeks gave me time to draw up my battle plan. Desktop Pipeline | Best Bits: Vista and the Hardware Monster, Part 1
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