Although Vole has not told the world what the final hardware requirements for Vista itself are yet, Cnet has found that it has listed some guidelines for Vista's graphics system, Aero.
The system will need a graphics chip with a Vista-specific driver, as well as a varying amount of minimum graphics memory, depending on the size of the monitor. A standard display of 1280-by-1024 pixels needs at least 64MB of graphics memory. OK, we are with you there Vole.
The next requirement is a memory bandwidth of 1,800MB per second. Now not being a hardware engineer I have not got a clue what memory bandwidth is, let alone how I measure it.
Vole told Cnet that it is jolly easy to find a computer's memory bandwidth. There are diagnostic tools available on the Web, such as SiSoftware's Sandra, that provide memory bandwidth benchmarking information.
Is your average Joe or Jane who wants to know if their computer is able to run the new operating system is hardly going to know that? And they are hardly going to understand how to run hardware benchmarking tools are they?