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Vista Beta 1 Install Fest Hardware requirements...

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For the up-coming Vista Install Fest I have been asked by many what sort of hardware should I bring along… so what I though I would do is let you know what sort of machines I have installed Vista on to letting you know my experiences thus far… I will add a HUGE caveat to this event that we are using a Beta 1 product!

The suggestion is:

* Minimum system requirements for this install on August 27th are guidelines and are the following:

• 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM or more

• A dedicated graphics card with DirectX 9.0 support

• A modern, Pentium- or AMD–Athlon-based PC.

• An IDE based Disk system

Over the past few months I have now installed the various builds of Vista on to the following machines:

P3 800 Dual Proc 512Mb Ram, ATI Rage graphics card (okay it was a server so not the best demo machine) This machine ran reasonably well and with an IDE based disk system proved to be straight forward to install. It was not the fastest machine on the planet though.

P4 1.8 Ghz Dell laptop. 512 Mb Ram 64M ATI Mobility Graphics card. This machine ran Vista Beta 1 very well and while there are few laptop specific features in Beta 1, I look forward to Beta 2 and beyond..

Virtual Server 2005 running on Windows Server 2003… Host hardware: P4 3.2Ghz, 4Gb Ram. In order to run under a virtualized environment, you will need an updated version of the VM additions. This is currently in Beta and not publicly available. However, the guys in Redmond have given me permission to use the current version for the Install Fest J

Running the Vista Beta 1 in a virtualized environment will give you a good view of many of the new features, but please remember that the standard graphics card presented to the guest OS is basic…

Other suggestions (please bare in mind that were are using a Beta 1 and ther emay be some challenges with drivers etc)...

Graphics cards: ATI driver seem to be more abundant.

Hard Drive Controllers: I would also suggest that you use IDE drives rather than SATA or SCSI if possible again due to drivers. I recommend having a blank drive for a clean install with at least 5Gb of free space...

Activation: we will be providing a key, but this is very likely to expire. There will be very limited Internet Access during the event.

Accessories: With this in mind, we are asking that people bring their own machines, including monitor, keyboard & mouse, power cables etc as we are not able to supply these. On hand will be the Nerds On Site guys to help out.

We will be supplying copies of the Beta 1 DVD so please make sure your machine has a DVD drive!

Software: I have run many applications on top of Vista Beta 1, some successfully like Office 2003 and some that are not so happy.. be aware of possible limitations bearing in mind this is a beta 1, but I am really keen to find out the good, the bad and the ugly.

Backup: Please make sure you back up all of your data before the event. The machines will need a clean install and will not upgrade existing OS's.

If I think of anything else, or you have some suggestions / questions, please do not hesitate to post a comment on this blog.

See you all there and Enjoy!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2005
    Bruce, can you document a list of the current Ethernet Adapters by Windows Vista Beta Build 5112 supplied at the InstallFest. I am working with an older adapter and require to purchase a new one from the supported hardware list.