What Does "Windows Vista Capable" Mean?

[Tyler]

To me it means a marketing gimmick.

Next month, new PCs will show up with stickers identifying them as being "Windows Vista Capable." But "Capable of Running Certain Versions of Windows Vista, But Maybe Not Stupendously Well" might be a more accurate designation, it seems.

As my IDG News Service colleague Elizabeth Montalbano's story explains, a PC can get the sticker if it has a "modern" CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a Direct 9-class graphics card. What's a "modern" CPU? There's no simple answer, but this Microsoft.com page links to external pages at CPU manufacturers with lists of chips that qualify. (Hmmm. the AMD list doesn't include the Athlon XP inside my four-year-old home desktop--I guess that machine, which still runs XP fine, may never make the leap to Vista. Who knew that 2002 wasn't part of the modern era?)

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[lpxxfaintxx]

Does that mean my crappy computer can't handle vista programs?

[Jason425]

I saw one at work (a Dell laptop) that had the sticker last week... It had a core duo.