Re: I'm looking to buy a new PC so I gotta ask...

["Jones, John \(US\)" <John.Jones@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Other than single v. dual core that is very modern hardware.  My work
notebook is a PentiumM 2GHz, 1GB RAM, 60GB 7200RPM disk, 128MB VRAM.  I
don't think it's suitable, mostly for RAM followed by CPU.  Video would
be alright after it was tuned by turning off some or all of Aero.
Overall it might be adequate but I really don't think it'd be or even
feel faster than XP.

I said 'modern hardware' to discourage people from thinking that a box
that ran XP decently (2GHz P4, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, 64MB video card)
would run Vista just as well.  It won't.

Re: Comments on ring switching:  I agree about the performance hit for
ring switching but current hardware should minimize any noticeable
performance differences.  Another reason for modern hardware.

Philosophically I disagree about where video belongs.  I don't think
drivers in general should be in ring 0 unless they are absolutely vital
to the machine's availability.  Video is not as one can run a PC
headless and use remote desktop for access.  Granted, few desktops do
this but some folks do run desktops as non-dedicated file servers, media
servers (yeah, another form of file server), and whatnot.  But I can
easily 'agree to disagree' on this; Microsoft has changed their mind
about it twice so far. :)