Popular magazines such as Infoworld, PC  World Magazine, and several of the trade publications recommended 2 Gigabytes on your computer to run Vista. Usually, you can install additional RAM on your computer. If you have a newer laptop, perhaps you already have two slots available with 512MB's in each slot and will have to replace each of those 512MB chips for two1GB chipsets.

            I had a new computer built from scratch and asked the technician to give me 4 GB of RAM. He filled the entire four slots of the mother board with 4 Intel DDR2 667 RAM chips of 1 GB each, since he quoted a high price at the time on a 2 GB chip. The boxed Core 2 Duo, E6600 2.4 Intel motherboard features a D965 RYEK (10/100/1000 LAN).

           The Hard Drive consisted of a WD 7200 rpm/6MB, 320 GB SATA II type with my CD and DVD RW drives being DVD+/RW DL 16X_. The Video card I chose is an Intel Integrated Media ACC X3000. When the technician who built my computer from scratch found out that Vista didn't work properly without a compatible graphics card, he put into the computer an NVIDIA e-GeForce 7300 GT graphics card with 256 MB, DDR2, and PCI-E.

           The computer worked fine, but the graphics score from the Vista operating system gave at first a 2.7 score and then a 3.0 score to my graphics capability. It worked fine for my general word processing and digital photography operations. But I wanted a higher graphics score.

           I then had the technician who built my computer from scratch replace the e-GeForce 7300 GT graphics card with an e-GE 7600 GT  KO graphics card with 256 MB, GDDR 3, PCI-E (designed for extreme HD gaming). These full-throttle graphics brought the graphics score up to 5.9 (on the performance information and tools) screen of my browser's Microsoft Vista Ultimate Welcome Center. The graphics card is designed for gaming, imaging, 3D video, entertainment, photos, and graphics. The 3 of the 7300 graphics card denotes that it is an "entry level" score, whereas the '6' of the 7600 number refers to a higher-level graphics card performance.

        If you aren’t doing video editing and production, illustration of book covers and magazine articles, and writing books, reviews, and feature articles, you might need another version. Microsoft offers a selection of five versions—the Home Basic, the Home Premium, the Business Edition, the Ultimate, or a version tuned to 64-bit computer systems.    

            There are different hardware requirements. I had a perfectly working Pentium 4 before with 1.8 GB of RAM. But I chose to have a computer parts store build me a new computer from scratch just to accommodate all the possible uses I’d have with my new Ultimate. If you want to start with the basics and your hardware will support Home Premium, you’ll get Aero and Flip 3D. Just hold down the Windows key and Media Center when running various applications. Decide whether your graphics card will support Vista’s Aero interface.

            You can check out the requirements for each version of the operating systems online and compare the requirements against what your computer already has. You can buy a new PC with Vista Home Premium installed before you buy your new computer. Most new computers will already have the system before you buy. So check out your graphics card.

            If you want the Business version of Vista operating system, the advantage of having it is that you can log into and use the various resources on your Windows Server domain, such as Windows Server 2003, or in a newer version of Windows Server. You may already be accessing resources in your Windows XP Professional if you use the Business version. The difference between Windows Professional and Windows Home in your old XP operating system is that the Home edition of Windows Vista does not have support for domains.

            But Vista Business, just as Windows XP Professional did, gives you the advantage of remotely logging into your system and managing it. Just use your Remote Desktop tool. You can connect to your office PC and send out or receive your email, copy emails, and manage your business files. You can get a Vista version that lets you take care of your tablet PC business if your tablet PC has enough power. Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate all have tablet PC functionality and pen-writing capabilities.

My personal needs do not require remote control as I’m home-based and do not travel. I do need the RAM for video editing and production, for digital photography and illustration. But the function I use most in my work—writing, and/or reviewing software, books, and documentary videos, relies on Microsoft Word. That’s the bare bones basic function I do. Secondarily, my ability to scan my photos, save them at 300 dpi as .tif files and email them to my various publishers and editors are my two basic needs. The video editing is third in its importance—the ability to save what’s on my camcorder to my computer (mainly my lectures).

The five different retail versions of Windows Vista each has 32- and 64-bit forms of the operating systems. However, perhaps you need the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. If you have previously used the 64-bit version of Windows XP, you will welcome the ability to run 32-bit and 64-bit applications, using more than 4 GB of memory. What I use most, photo and video editing, you can do with the 64-bit version. My occupation is to mold light waves, either in photography, illustration, or writing books and articles in text. I’m molding and shaping light waves, and that’s the direction of progress.

 I do a lot of audio editing of my lectures also, besides the art work, photography, video and text writing. But I didn’t opt for the 64-bit version of the operating system because it would require a 64-bit driver. For now, I’m sticking with the 32-bit version. In the future, the drivers will go further than 64-bits. You’ll eventually use 128 and 264 bit drivers, but that’s in the future, and all I need to do now is write and illustrate my books, reviews, and articles.

What I do look forward to is when MIT will announce the arrival of optical chips in perhaps five years. Everyone using chips know that electronic components are destined to grow smaller and smaller parts are needed to connect each of those components. Manufacturers should take a lesson from the human brain’s electrochemical connections on one hand. On the other, light is what will be used—light waves to connect the components of chips. Those optical interconnections need a new transmission medium, and light is the fastest and smallest.

What’s important in optical, “photonic circuitry” is that electronics will be using the speed of light waves.  Read Journal of Nature Photonics to find out more about the marriage of electronics and light and how the integration of these properties plays on silicon chips.

The new manufacturing process emphasizes inter- and intra-chip communications networks. Think of all the devices that will be manufactured for computers, gadgets, communication systems, and appliances using this advanced technology. Why put optics on a chip when you have the speed and power of light waves?  Perhaps the concept of using a component as large as a chip will become as old fashioned as the button-hook shoe? Progress, like new operating systems, is about intra- and- inter-connections.

How do you mold light? The science is called microphotonics. I’m doing just this when I write time-travel or suspense and adventure novels. Only the engineers are using two materials that refract the light in different ways.

I’m not using silicon or oxides. I’m not trapping photons. Or am I when I wrote my humorous science-oriented novel, Astronauts and Their Cats?

Engineers, physicists, and eventually manufacturers will use mirrors that give the oxides new properties. I use my keyboard to write novels or reviews. The only oxides that gets new properties from me is when I clean my electric toothbrush with H₂O₂  to oxidize the bacteria before I brush my teeth with baking soda.

The goal of the engineers and I is to connect to the outside world. If my book is read, I’m connecting to the outside world. When those research engineers integrating optics on computer chips at MIT connect to the outside world, they are trying to separate two different types of polarized light waves. Back here on my computer, I’m also looking for a breakthrough of integrating words in such a way as to usefully connect to the outside world through reviews or writing articles and novels.

The engineers and manufacturers are switching light signals on integrated circuitry. They will end up integrating optical components on a silicon chip. Both of us have something in common—the goal of connecting to the outside world—me with words, they with polarized input light signals confined to phototonic circuitry. What this means to me, now, with my new Vista Ultimate, is that Vista is better than XP at managing memory.

I need to use the 4 GB of RAM I just had installed that is now taking up all four slots of my motherboard. Vista will use that RAM. Don’t put Vista on your really old computer. I would not put it on my old Pentium 3 or even my Pentium 4 with the current video cards and RAM those two computers now have. I like my newest computer.

My review advice is to get a new computer or upgrade your old computer to meet the system’s requirements. Don’t upgrade your computer to the bare bones minimum required to operate the system or you’ll end up with a slow computer.  I’m happy with my fast, new computer. But I had it designed specifically to make the best use of Vista Ultimate. Whenever I needed a new computer, I always have had it built around the latest software rather than the other way around (upgrading your computer to make use of the newest software.) The choice is yours.