Conservative estimate
Gartner analyst David Smith agreed that Microsoft tends to be "overly conservative." But he felt Microsoft had other reasons for its hardware recommendations. "The requirements going up so much are quite surprising," he said. "I think they're looking at the demographics out there and what they want to support."
But Microsoft has actually released a second set of minimum hardware specifications, said Art Pettigrue, the company's Windows product manager. Those suggest a 233MHz Pentium II processor and 64MB of RAM.
"There are two guides out there right now. The first is for core technology and the other is for the best experience you might have running Windows XP," Pettigrue said. While he emphasised "nothing is final," and the "requirements could change before final release," Pettigrue said the lower requirements are "the minimum for the typical user."
IDC analyst Roger Kay, who is running a Windows XP beta, disagreed.
"The minimum requirements talk about putting the operating system on your hardware and nothing else," he said. "If you want a computer that actually works, you need much more hardware than that."
Sargent agreed. "The specs they list are typically well below what makes sense for the computer."
An interesting proof point is test systems Microsoft has dispatched to some analysts. The Windows XP Beta 2 test PCs typically come with the fastest processors available and 320MB of RAM.
How much is enough?
When released, Windows XP will come in two flavors: Home Edition for consumers and Professional for businesses. But the important difference from older Windows version is significant.
Microsoft is releasing its first combined consumer-business operating system using the same code base. Windows 95, 98 and Me share a common heritage with DOS and Windows 3.1, while the business-oriented Windows 2000 is based on Windows NT.
Microsoft has not released final pricing for Windows XP, which could be affected by whether the company includes subscription services, Smith said.
"They haven't decided about this yet," he added.
The company has added many new features to the second beta, including the Luna interface, which bears striking similarity to Microsoft's MSN Explorer. Windows XP also sports lots of multimedia extras, such as sophisticated movie editing and production tools, a Web publisher, built-in support for CD-rewritable drives and DVD playback, among other things.
