Hardware vendors launch powerful Vista PCs

PC vendors rushed to launch souped-up computers on Monday, offering faster chips and larger hard drives to handle the demands of Microsoft's new Windows Vista OS.

Microsoft will begin selling Vista to consumers on Tuesday, following its launch for corporate users in November, sparking a flare of new desktops and notebooks from Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lenovo Group, and others.

Vista offers users a graphics interface, demanding PC upgrades to provide optimal performance for its Aero glass translucent desktop windows and other features. In an era when sinking prices for chips and memory have pushed PC makers to slash their prices, vendors are jumping at the opportunity to add advanced components to each PC and add dollars to its sticker price.

On Monday, Dell recommended that Vista customers upgrade their PCs from single-core to dual- or quad-core processor, from 1GB to 2GB of memory, from graphics integrated on a motherboard to a dedicated graphics card, from standard display to widescreen, and from standard to fast-spinning hard drives. Vista can also run on slower PCs, but it will automatically disable certain features, said Alex Gruzen, senior vice president of Dell's product group.

"If you installed Vista on an older system with a minimum performance level, you would frankly be overpaying if you paid for Premium or Ultimate because the operating system scales itself to the capability of your hardware platform," he said.

Dell opened a Web site with advice for consumers looking for the best PC to support their flavor of Vista -- whether Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate.

"Vista has changed the user experience. In the past, for gaming you might get a discrete graphics card, but otherwise all those recent hardware advances went largely untapped if you were simply editing a document or browsing the Web," Gruzen said. "What's exciting about Vista is that it brings those hardware advances to bear in your day-to-day experience instead of saving all that horsepower for discrete applications."

For example, Vista allows users to play a video instead of displaying a static photograph as the "wallpaper" on their everyday desktop. Dell began taking orders for those computers on Saturday and reported a 20 percent rise in Web activity compared to the previous weekend, leading to the sale of 10,000 Vista-loaded PCs. Microsoft will allow vendors to start shipping those PCs on Tuesday.

HP launched its own fleet of Vista-ready PCs, including its full HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario lines, lead by the TouchSmart desktop and Pavilion tx1000 notebook, which allow users to augment Vista's graphic interface by navigating through a touch-screen display instead of a mouse. Some of those PCs are further upgraded to support the greater computing demands of Vista Premium.

The company is also selling migration consulting services, helping users transfer files, photos, and system preferences to a new PC. Its technicians can even do the work remotely by connecting to a user's PC over the Internet. HP charges $59.99 for a 45-minute session of that SmartFriend service.