I've been using Windows Vista for a couple of weeks now and although I have found some redeeming qualities about the upgrade, I'm still not sold on it by a long shot. One confusing issue for me is the massive amount of computing power that will be required to run the software. And that's not just me and thousands of others saying that, Microsoft will tell you straight up how crappy your computer is with their "Windows Experience Index" score. The score breaks down how your processor, memory, graphics card, and hard drive all handle the massive Vista system by assigning each a score.

The score can be from a 1 (lowest score) to 5.9 (highest score). The higher the score, the better Windows will perform. The overall score is derived not by an average of all the scores, but by taking the lowest score. Microsoft is hoping that software companies will adopt this score to list on their boxes to help with minimum requirements. If the box says that it requires a 2.4 Windows score to run it and you only have a 1.8, you don't buy the software. Hmmm, will 1) Users know how to find this score, 2) All companies adopt this method (thus hurting sales), and 3) Do hardware makers want their hardware critiqued like this? I think the answer to all the questions will probably be "no".

My score of 1.0 listed above is on a machine with a 2.8 ghz Penitum 4 with 768 megabytes of RAM and 80 GB hard drive. The graphics card is on-board with RAM shared from the system. Basically an above average computer for the last couple of years and yet the score is the lowest possible. To make my score rise, I could add RAM and a graphics card ($200 or less for the two). It would probably raise my score to a 3 or 4.

What do you think of this Windows Index Scrore? Have you heard about it? Do you think it is a good idea or bad idea and why?

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Tags: hard drive, Mac, Microsoft, upgrade, Windows

This entry was posted on Monday, October 9th, 2006 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Riding Shotgun with Rick. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.