After lots of hemming and hawing, today Microsoft published the official hardware requirements for Windows Vista. There are two classes of requirements: "Vista-capable," which means a computer will run Vista but not many of the bells and whistles, and "Premium Ready," or capable of showing the pretty Aero effects and other higher-end features. So what will you need to get by on Vista? An 800Mhz processor, 512MB of RAM, and a DirectX 9-capable video card. That's not too bad, but to be honest I'm a bit skeptical how usable a system like that really will be. If you want to have the "Premium" experience, Aero and all, your minimum specs take a pretty big jump: A 1Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, at least 128MB of video memory, and 15GB of free hard drive space. To help customers prepare to fork over the cash for Vista next year Microsoft has launched its Get Ready campaign, which includes an Upgrade Advisor tool that will tell you just how inadequate your system is.