Is your PC "Vista Capable?"
Ok, so maybe there was a little confusion on the part of Microsoft. Yeah, their hardware requirements for Vista seem are a little obscure -- and don't even get us started on that system analysis thing of theirs. And no, it looks like with Vista delayed into early next year, PCs purchased today still may not actually be Vista capable. Enter the "Windows Vista Capable" badge, friends, Microsoft's quick n' easy way to identify the Vista capable boxes from those sad, pathetic, sure-to-be-outdated-in-days "Designed for Windows XP" computers Microsoft sincerely hopes you'll avoid buying. But being that chances are your next computer might not be running Vista, for the general consumer, the Vista Capable badge only means it'll support the baseline version, Home Basic Edition -- which we'll be promptly ignoring, thankyouverymuch -- and may not do fun things like run Aero or be able to use more "advanced" Vista features like HDCP. Normally this is the part where we'd get a little huffy and suggest Microsoft do it this way or that, but we're starting to feel we're in a little too deep here, you know?
