Microsoft Announces Vista Hardware Requirements

Microsoft Announces Vista Hardware Requirements

Thursday, Microsoft announced its official recommended hardware requirements for Windows Vista operating system.

Vista will be the most demanding operating system Microsoft has sold to date, and the company suggests that machines running Vista’s Premium version, which includes the Windows Aero experience, have at least a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and a Direct X9-capable 3D graphics system.

Aero compatibility lets you view some of Vista’s extra eye candy, such as fancy transparent menus and slick-looking 3D graphical elements. Minimum requirements for basic Vista include an 800 MHz or faster CPU and 512 Mbytes of RAM. Your graphics subsystem only needs to support Direct X9.

In the opinion of PC Magazine’s lead analyst, Joel Santo Domingo, the requirements are a bit steep, especially for owners of aging computer systems, but many users’ PCs will still meet Microsoft’s standard.

“If you bought a high-end gaming or multimedia centric desktop or notebook between 2003 and today, chances are you should be ready for Windows Vista Premium,” he said.

"The release of a new operating system always comes with a 'minimum' set of system requirements, but I would suggest setting your sights higher than the minimum configuration by about 20 percent, so you're ready for all the new versions of applications like Office and Adobe PhotoShop Elements," Santo Domingo added. "Tack on 30 percent if you are going to run the Media Center component of Vista Ultimate.”

Find out if your rig measures up by checking out Microsoft's new "Get Ready" Web page: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx.

Happy Mother's Day !

Mother's Day is a time of commemoration and celebration for Mom. It is a time of breakfast in bed, family gatherings, and crayon scribbled "I Love You"s.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation and its destiny. --South African proverb

Mother's Day is a holiday celebrated in many countries around the world, but not all nations celebrate on the same day. In the United States, Mother's Day is always celebrated on the second Sunday in May. Many other countries such as Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia and Belgium also celebrate Mother's Day on the same day as the United States. England, however, celebrates Mother's Day on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and in Argentina it is the second Sunday in October.
International Mother's Day is actually celebrated on May 11.

A Brief History of Mother's Day
The earliest celebration honoring mothers dates back to the annual spring festival of ancient Greece dedicated to Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. The Greeks would pay tribute with honey-cakes and fine drinks and flowers at dawn. Much like our current Mother's Day tradition of breakfast in bed! Early Christians celebrated this festival on the fourth Sunday of Lent in honor of the Virgin Mary. Later, in England, an ecclesiastical order expanded the holiday to include all mothers, and decreed it as Mothering Sunday. Servants would have the day off and were encouraged to return home and spend the day with their mothers.

When the first English colonists settled in America they didn't really have time for many celebrations. The tradition of Mothering Sunday was discontinued until 1872 when Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), the author of the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, organized a day for mothers dedicated to peace.

In 1907, Anna M. Jarvis (1864-1948), a Philadelphia schoolteacher, began a campaign to establish a national Mother's Day in honor of her mother, Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis. She wrote hundreds of letters to legislators and prominent businessmen on both state and national levels asking them to create a special day to honor mothers. On May 10, 1908, the third anniversary of the death of Anna's mother, the minister of the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virgina (the church her mother had attended) gave a special Mother's day sermon honoring Mrs. Jarvis' memory. Anna handed out her mother's favorite flower, the white carnation. In 1914, Anna's hard work finally paid off when President Woodrow Wilson made the official announcement proclaiming the second Sunday in May as a national holiday in honor of mothers.