My two borderline ThinkPad T43 notebooks with 64MB ATI Mobility X300 video live in a gray area between Aero and Vista Basic video modes. While transparency is turned off by default, Aero is available, and it's possible in Beta 2 to turn transparency back on. The Control Panel > Personalization > Visual Appearance (change your color scheme) > Open classic appearance properties (Appearance settings) dialog gives you the option in machines that support Aero to choose among three video modes: Windows Vista Aero, Windows Vista Basic and Windows Standard.

The Windows Standard mode was added for Vista Beta 2. It provides the basic look and feel of Windows XP but with the video reliability of Aero. (Aero provides for video driver programming at the user level while significantly reducing space available for video driver instruction at the kernel level. That results in a large reduction in the frequency of video-related blue screens, the single largest cause of Windows crashes in previous versions of the operating system.)

So the question is, are Microsoft and ATI correct that I might hit a video brick wall when running my 64MB ATI X300 in full Aero mode with transparency enabled? Time will tell. But I definitely don't like the idea that my recent hardware investments are suddenly out of date. And I very much doubt I'm alone with that feeling.

No wonder Microsoft announced these system requirements earlier than usual. It was probably afraid of a backlash.

If you're wondering whether your computer will run Aero, or Windows Vista at all, download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. When I ran this tool from my T43 ThinkPads, it told me that they would only support Vista Basic, although that isn't quite true in Beta 2.