Misplaced Consternation On Vista and Heavy Graphics Apps

Oh, my. How quickly we forget. As we get closer to the Vista consumer release (the clock is ticking) and more and more folks who have already gotten their hands on Vista begin experimenting, there seems to be a growing consternation that some of the first generation of the Ultra-Mobile PCs, and some of the next generation that use lower powered processors, won’t run a few graphics intensive applications like Windows Movie Maker and DVD Maker.

Of course it won’t. This info that has been known for some time, so I sure hope folks don’t get up in arms about this, even though I sense some early rumblings. jkOnTheRun points to recent articles on Carrypad and jkkmobile that talk about the issue. Kendrick rightly points out that several models of Ultra-Mobile PCs use the Via processor, and many use the Intel 915 graphics controller. These won’t get stamped Vista Premium Ready. Again, this is not new news.

Keep the big picture in mind, here folks. Vista, like any new OS, is geared towards the ever increaseing evolution in hardware design. Things are advancing on the hardware front, and much of what we’ve gotten accustomed to as far as hardware architecture will be old news soon. Heck, in my opinion, even the first wave of new Vista ready hardware will be completely outstripped within a relatively short period of time. At least I hope it will. The march to “mobile media everywhere, all the time”, is very much behind this, and I still think we are a generation or two away from smaller mobile devices that can handle that kind of load with the ease of larger computers. And to tell the truth, I’m not sure I’ll be ever be looking at an Ultra-Mobile Device to handle my movie making or DVD burning chores. The tradeoffs are many in the mobile scene and will continue to be so. And that’s not a bad thing.