Stan Beer
Friday, 01 May 2009 15:48
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
According to Ms Vaughan, Windows
7 Starter Edition, which limits the user to running three concurrent
applications with no aero interface, is aimed at entry level netbooks.
But there is no explanation as to how a merely hobbled version of
Windows 7, which has a 10 GB footprint, can be made to run on an entry
level netbook with say 512MB of RAM and 8GB SSD
"Starter Edition is an edition that has been built specifically
for that type of hardware, the entry level netbook," Ms Vaughan said.
"The
differentiator between Home Premium and Starter Edition it really came
down to features and capability. However, from a performance point of
view it's limited to only having 3 applications running at the same
time and from a performance point of view 512 MB is......"
That
suggests that Microsoft is sort of saying that Starter Edition because
of its severe limitations will be sort of OK for entry level netbooks
provided, as Ms Vaughan confirmed, they have at least 16 GB of disk
storage.
However, from past experience knowing that whatever
"minimum specs" Microsoft states for an operating systems needs to be
substantially boosted - doubled in the case of memory - what are we to
make of the minimum specs below?
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1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
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1 GB of RAM (32-bit)/2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
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16 GB of available disk space (32-bit)/20 GB (64-bit)
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DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher
driver
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For a start, let's compare them to the "minimum specs" for Vista:
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1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
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512 MB of system memory
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20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
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Support for DirectX 9 graphics and 32 MB of graphics memory
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1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
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1 GB of system memory
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40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
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Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
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To even the untrained eye, there is a remarkable similarity between the
Vista and Windows 7 "minimum specs". In fact, they're almost identical.
Furthermore, everyone and their dogs know that if you tried to run
Vista on a computer with the above specs you would probably take a
hammer to the device in frustration. Will the same be true of Windows 7?
CONTINUED Page 3
