| Microsoft Gifts that Click 2006 |
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| Written by Laptop News | |
| Monday, 18 September 2006 | |
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Page 4 of 4 Let's Talk About Vista Although our current experience with it has been on the desktop side, we can already see some issues for Laptop users. First off, the new Windows "AERO" interface is one of the highlights of VISTA. It really gives a cool look to the user interface with 3D Cascading windows like the ones above, and requires a 3D accelerator to do it. Most laptops on the market will not have the necessary hardware to succesfully use this new feature, thus you'll be greeted with a very plain jane version of the OS. Also, because of the 3D accelerator requirement to see all the eye candy, this will mean that laptops will use more power, and get less battery life, if users want to use it on their Vista Ready laptops. Heat will also be a factor, so expect a surge in Laptop Cooler sales when the new OS hits. On the flip side, Windows Vista also promises an enhanced gaming experience and is boasting up to a "Five Time" performance boost with games patched or natively built for DirectX 10, Vista's 3D engine. So on one side, Vista uses more power to run the cool and pretty interface, but on another side, it gives you better gaming performance. Looks like non-gamers aren't going to be big fans of this. The other thing that might turn Laptop users off to Vista may be the heavy RAM requirements. Windows Vista in the 64 bit flavours will require around 1 GB of RAM to run. Most older laptops max out at 1 GB. However, the new "ReadyBoost" feature allows you to use a standard USB Memory Drive to augment the RAM in your system. As the Release Candidates Mature, we shold be able to install it on a laptop here to give you a better idea of how things will really work out. We won't even talk about Media Center. We haven't been able to get it to run on any of our systems yet, though what we saw at our meeting was looking fairly good. Windows Media Center will be bundled with the Ultimate and Premium editions of the operating system. One More Thing... Although we're really not supposed to say anything, we'll let you folks know that Microsofts favourite road trip software for your laptop will be getting a hardware and software upgrade in their latest product due out later this year. Stay tuned for a look at this new product!  |