Cosmetic surgery
"The difference between Windows 2000 and Windows XP is largely cosmetic," Smith said. "There's no new kernel, no new memory management system, and the guts are the same." The real payback would be for consumers, who would get the most stable operating system Microsoft has offered along with better ability to run multiple programs simultaneously.
Those added features and the Luna interface could be leading reasons for the heftier system requirements, said MicroDesign Resources analyst Peter Glaskowsky.
"Fundamentally, the user interface is a lot more sophisticated, and there are a lot more things going on behind the scenes for managing disk drives and that sort of thing," he said. "Any time you increase the number of graphics you have to process, you increase the amount of background tasks going on. So you just naturally have to have a faster CPU, and more memory is almost definitive with a faster CPU."
But Glaskowsky is less concerned with system requirements, noting no one really sells 233MHz or 300MHz processors anymore.
"Microsoft has said Windows XP is intended for hardware after 1998," he added. "That's about right. That was the 300MHz generation."
The larger issue may be whether people move up to Windows XP and keep existing hardware.
Pettigrue said he upgraded to Windows XP beta from Windows Me on his home machine, which meets the 233MHz Pentium II and 64MB of RAM requirements.
"I'm not doing anything power-user-like," he said. "I'm using it as my mom would use it."
His work machine, with a 500MHz Pentium III processor and more memory, is being used for more demanding tasks Microsoft expects from power users.
But Kay said he sees 500MHz processors as a more reasonable minimum for Windows XP.
"You're going to need a lot of hardware to run this," he said.
