The iTWire poll asked the question: Are the hardware requirements to run Vista excessive? Of 502 respondents to the question as this article was published, 360 (71.7%) answered yes, while 142 (28.3%) answered no.

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft having two sets of minimum requirements would appear to be misleading to say the least. The so-called "Vista capable PC" tag is a sham. An 800 Mhz PC with 512 MB of RAM is not Vista capable at all since it can't even run the operating system's new Windows Aero interface.

The other set of requirements for a Vista Premium ready PC are the real minimum requirements. They reveal that an installation of Vista requires at least 15 GB of disk storage, which is huge; at least 1 GB of RAM; at least 128 MB of graphics memory; and a graphics card that is capable of running Windows Aero. Since these are just minimum requirements, as a rule of thumb we should probably double them to get a system working with reasonable performance, judging by previous releases of Windows and their specifications.

What that all adds up to is that in order to run Vista, users are probably going to have to think about buying a new PC. And a pretty highly configured PC at that. Add up the cost of a fully configured desktop PC pre-loaded with Vista (which some say will cost US$400) and it won't be cheap. Add the cost of Office 2007 and it will be pretty expensive. Now consider what all that will cost if you want to take it on the road with a highly configured notebook.

So what's the conclusion? Microsoft may well find that the take-up of Vista (and Office 2007) may be slower than it had hoped because it has priced itself out of the market. Most offices will stick with what they've got for quite some time. As for home users, most people would rather buy themselves a new spa bath or wide screen plasma TV than spend up big for a new PC. {moscomment}