After zipping through the required sign-up process for Microsoft's Customer Preview Program, users with a 1.5Mbit/sec. Digital Subscriber Line or cable broadband connection will likely spend 10 hours downloading the 4GB Vista installation file, Microsoft warned Thursday on its Vista download site here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/default.mspx
Users with a faster 3Mbit/sec. broadband connection might be able to slash that download time by half. But for most users, downloading the file will prove to be at least an overnight exercise.
The installation software, called an ISO file, must then be burned onto a blank DVD. Most DVD-burning software should recognize the ISO file and burn it correctly.
Once that is done, you can insert the DVD into a PC during the start-up, or boot, process.
Users who lack a DVD writer or who can delay gratification a bit can also order the file already on DVD, which will be mailed to them by Microsoft. In the U.S., that method costs $6 per copy, with a maximum order of five DVDs. Microsoft will mail out DVDs to more than 100 countries, and the cost will vary from nation to nation.
Microsoft has said it hopes as many as 2 million people will try out Beta 2, its first widely-available test version of Vista. But it is also warning that installing Vista is not for everyone. Microsoft is not providing technical support for it and stressed that would-be installers should be "developers, IT professionals and technology experts." Moreover, users who upgrade to Vista now from Windows XP will not be able to roll back to XP by simply uninstalling Vista. Rather, they will have to reinstall Windows XP from scratch.
As for just how powerful your PC needs to be to run Vista, Microsoft answers that question by dividing computers into those that are "Premium Ready," "Vista-capable" or neither.
To be Vista-capable, PCs must have at least an 800-MHz processor and 512MB of RAM, along with a graphics processor that supports Microsoft's DirectX 9 rendering technology released in December 2002. But that's the bare minimum for running the operating system; PCs deemed Vista-capable are really incapable of running most of Vista's neatest features, particularly its new 3D Aero graphical user interface.
To run Aero, PCs must have at least a 1-GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a DVD-ROM drive. That fits the description of most desktop computers sold in the past four to five years and most laptops sold in the past three or four. However, it's the graphics processor that may prove to be your computer's Achilles' Heel. It must have at least 128MB of memory and support not only DirectX 9, but also several more esoteric technologies such as a WDDM driver, Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
Unless you're a gamer with a newish desktop PC, there is a good chance your graphics card is not Premium Ready. And if you have a laptop, not only are its graphics capabilities likely to lag even more, but it will also be that much more expensive to upgrade.
To find out exactly where your PC stands, download Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor, which will scan your computer and tell you what hardware you lack. Using it showed that an IBM ThinkPad T42, despite being a top-of-the-line-model last year with a 1.7-GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, fell short on all counts in the graphics chip department.
The Vista Beta 2 release is available in English, German and Japanese and in 32-bit and 64-bit editions. Microsoft expects Beta 2 to largely have the same features as the final version of Vista, which is due out early in 2007.
Testers will also be able to download or have mailed to them a copy of Windows Vista Release Candidate 1, which is now expected to be available in late August.
For this beta, Microsoft is making available the Windows Vista Ultimate version, which is expected to be the most comprehensive and expensive of the five versions of the operating system that will eventually be released.