Datasheet

Preparing to Install Windows Vista

Deciding on Minimum Hardware Requirements

The company you work for has decided that everyone will have their own laptop running Win-

dows Vista. You need to decide on the new computers’ specifications for processor, memory,

and disk space.

The first step is to determine which applications will be used. Typically, most users will work

with an e-mail program, a word processor, a spreadsheet, presentation software, and maybe

a drawing or graphics program. Additionally, an antivirus application will probably be used.

Under these demands, an 800MHz Celeron processor and 512MB of RAM will make for a very

slow-running machine. So for this usage, you can assume that the minimum baseline config-

uration would be a Pentium 4 processor with 1GB of RAM.

Based on your choice of baseline configuration, you should then fit a test computer with the

applications that will be used on it and test the configuration in a lab environment simulating

normal use. This will give you an idea whether the RAM and processor calculations you have

made for your environment are going to provide suitable response.

Today’s disk drives have become capable of much larger capacity while dropping drastically

in price. So for disk space, the rule of thumb is to buy whatever is the current standard. At the

time this book was published, 80GB drives were commonplace, which is sufficient for most

users. If users plan to store substantial graphics or video files, you may need to consider buy-

ing larger-than-standard drives.

Also consider what the business requirements will be over the next 12 to 18 months. If you

will be implementing applications that are memory or processor intensive, you may want to

spec out the computers with hardware sufficient to support upcoming needs, to avoid costly

upgrades in the near future.

Measurement Units Used in Hardware Specifications

Computer processors are typically rated by speed. The speed of the processor, or central

processing unit (CPU), is rated by the number of clock cycles that can be performed in one

second. This measurement is typically expressed in gigahertz (GHz). One GHz is one trillion

cycles per second. Keep in mind that processor architecture must also be taken into account

when considering processor speed. A processor with a more efficient pipeline will be faster

than a processor with a less efficient pipeline at the same CPU speed.

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