About half of U.S. business personal computers fail to meet the minimum hardware requirements to support Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system, according to a new information technology whitepaper by Softchoice Corp.
Furthermore, about 94 percent lack the horsepower needed for Vista Premium. That is a troubling scenario for American businesses. Consider that when Microsoft launched Windows XP in 2002, about 71 percent of American business PCs met its systems requirements.
The minimum CPU requirements for Vista, which includes Microsoft Office 2007, are 243 percent higher than those of Windows XP, yet the average business PC’s CPU has increased by just 215 percent during the same time frame. A Softchoice analyst calls this “a significant barrier to adoption.”
Microsoft, however, estimates that 20 percent of PCs will run Vista within the first year of its release, double the adoption rate of XP.
That means that businesses will need to weigh the costs of the upgrades with the costs of not investing in the upgrades, such as lower productivity and potential competitive disadvantages, and calculate a timetable for conversion to the new system.
Whether they are early adopters or they choose to wait, companies would be wise to do their research and establish a time frame for upgrading their computers, according to the new whitepaper.
“Ultimately, organizations with deployment plans for the next two years have a number of compelling reasons to investigate their general state of hardware readiness. Failing to effectively plan and forecast the necessary upgrades and replacements accompanying a Vista deployment could mean unbudgeted expenses, unplanned resource constraints, and unrealized savings,” said Dean Williams, corporate services consultant for Softchoice Corp. “Generally speaking, any computer older than 24 months will be unlikely to support the Vista OS. And because many organizations are maintaining PC life cycles of 48 to 60 months, it could take two years or more before hardware requirements cease to be a concern for organizations planning to adopt the new OS unless Vista forces organizations to undertake major PC refreshes.”
Microsoft says Windows Vista will provide four key areas of improvements over XP: the ability to find and access information within the digital domain; an increased focus on remote security and connectivity; enhanced protection against malicious attacks; and the optimization of desktop infrastructure through features that allow network administrators to reduce the number of unique desktop images required across an organization.
According to Softchoice, the hardware requirements for Vista-capable PCs are:
• 800 MHz processor.
• 512 MB RAM.
• DirectX 9 class graphics card.
A Vista-ready machine can fully utilize Vista and meets the following requirements:
• 1.0 GHz processor.
• 1 GB main memory.
• Windows Aero-compatible graphics card with at least 128 MB graphics memory.
Microsoft held a soft rollout for Vista on Nov. 30, and the full rollout is planned for January.
