The Computer Corner

Minimum requirements, maximum problems
By Charles Miller

Along with several friends who are also in the market for new computers, I have been perusing the computer ads. Some of the things I see advertised really disappoint me, but also take me back in time.

Many years ago almost every Sears newspaper ad would feature a US$99 electric clothes dryer; this, when all the other dryers were US$300 and up. If you were in the market for a dryer, it caught your eye and you rushed to Sears to see this $99 wonder. Of course it was a 110-volt dryer and it seemed like it took a week to dry a full load of clothes. And Sears actually had one unit on the sales floor… it was bolted permanently to the floor. Any salesman who could not sell the customer up from that $99 dryer to a more expensive model knew he would be looking for other employment tomorrow.

A friend tells me his partner actually had one of those $99 clothes dryers. He said the salesman was in tears when he wrote out the check to pay for it. It ran for 20 years…probably without stopping. Every day or so, they would stop by, take out the dry clothes, put in a new load of wet clothes and turn it back on. The dryer was really inadequate for the job, but they used it anyway.

The reason the preceding story is relevant is that I have seen several ads for laptop computers I consider to be entirely inadequate for the new Windows Vista operating system. Buyers who choose to buy one of these and use it anyway are going to need a lot of patience to deal with their disappointment.

I see Office Depot offers a Celeron M 430 1.7 GHz with 512 megabytes of RAM for US$799. On their web site, Dell is offering a Mobile AMD Sempron 1.8 GHz also with 512 megabytes of RAM for only US$549.

The problem here is that I know from experience that these machines are woefully inadequate for running the new Windows Vista well. I have written before in this column that the minimum system requirements stated by Microsoft are a cruel joke.

There is a huge difference between what is technically possible to do, and what you should do. Any experienced technician will confirm that it is reasonable to take the minimum system requirement specified by Microsoft, then double or triple them.

Any computer that meets only the bare minimum specified by Microsoft is going to be like the one I recently worked with. The computer in question was a five-year-old Dell. It came with the minimum 128 megabytes of RAM specified for Windows XP.

The owner complained the computer was too slow to use and I recommended we reinstall Windows to clear out all the junk he had loaded on the system.

I reinstalled a fresh copy of Windows XP and the computer was zipping right along. It slowed down a bit to install antivirus software, but this needed to be done.

A few days later, after the client had loaded up his computer full of programs including Skype, instant messenger, fancy screen saver, and music sharing software; it was once again taking eleven minutes to boot up.


My point here is that a computer having the minimum system requirements is never going to give more than minimum performance unless you refrain from ever loading any new software on it.

I am really ashamed of Office Depot and Dell for even selling the two laptops I mentioned earlier. These minimal systems will never deliver the kind of performance most users have come to expect.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ@SMAguru.com.