The computing world is abuzz with rumors, and once in a while even facts, about Microsoft’s new version of Windows, dubbed Vista.  It’s supposed to come out late this year for corporate customers, and in early 2007 for consumers.  It will feature a really cool new interface, support for 64-bit processors and new technologies, and new ways to search for data on your computer.  It will also be much more secure than any Microsoft OS that came before it; it will feature a protected administrator account, parental controls, and more tightly debugged code so that you’re not as likely to get malware.

That’s all great.  But will you be able to run it on the computer that you currently own?  Statistically speaking, probably not.

Let’s start with hardware minimum requirements.  Before you even install Vista, you’ll have to have seven gigs for it on your hard drive - compare that to one and a half for XP.  That shouldn’t be an issue now that drives in the hundreds of gigabytes are commonplace, but most people only have 256 or 512 MB of RAM.  When you boot up Vista for the first time, before you start any programs, it will eat up about 800 MB.  If you want to play games, you better have at least 2 GB of RAM.  For higher-end games, 4 GB is going to become par for the course very quickly.

Furthermore, if you want to use that cool new interface, called Vista Glass, you better have a decent graphics card.  The majority of computers in use today have Intel integrated graphics, but most Intel IGPs don’t support Glass.  The only one that does is the GMA950 - so if you have a low-end Dell, or a non-Core-Duo laptop with integrated graphics, you’ll be stuck with the basic Vista interface, which looks a lot like XP’s.  Why upgrade in that situation?

Okay, so there are reasons to upgrade still.  For example, XP won’t support HD-DVD or Blu-Ray; you’ll need Vista for that.  But in order to placate the piracy-paranoid MPAA, Microsoft had to put in a feature called PVP-OPM.  Essentially, PVP-OPM means you have to have an HDCP (High-Definition Copy Protection) compliant monitor and an HDCP-compliant video card.  If you have practically any LCD with DVI currently on the market today, it won’t work; you’ll have to buy a new one to run Vista.  If you don’t, you’ll get a message that says “Monitor Revoked” and you won’t be able to see anything on your screen.  In other words, if you just dropped $1000 on a Dell 2405FPW, you’ll have to upgrade to the HDCP-compliant 2407FPW to run Vista.  I’m sure Dell will be happy to get your money a second time.

On top of that, you’ll need a new video card, because even though many manufacturers were touting HDCP-compliant video cards, they were essentially lying about the cards’ capabilities.  You may have read about this scandal a few weeks back; suffice it to say that companies like ATI are now producing HDCP-compliant cards, but that they weren’t just a short time ago and that even now you have to check that the card supports HDCP before you buy.

Well, maybe you have a CRT or an analog LCD and don’t intend to watch high-def content on your computer.  You’re not in the clear yet, because many of Vista’s new security features will require a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on your motherboard.  A few business-oriented prebuilt computers have TPMs, but practically none of the motherboards on sale for BYO configurations and practically none of the consumer-oriented prebuilts have TPMs.  So you’ll need a new motherboard too.

So let’s tally up the components you need.  You’ll need to buy more RAM, a new video card, a new monitor, and a new motherboard.  And then as if that weren’t bad enough, you’ll have to buy Vista itself.  At that point you’ll go from being mad about having to upgrade so many components to downright confused about what to get, because there will be twenty different versions of Vista.  I’m not going to bother listing them all, so you can go to this site to take a gander.

So, when you see someone on the forums ask whether their new build will run Vista, you know the answer: “Probably not.”