Anilrgowda

IT Week will shortly publish an article looking at a handful of Vista-ready business desktop PCs. I say 'Vista-ready', because none of the systems actually shipped with Microsoft's new operating system pre-installed, and neither did any of them come with a Vista disk. Fortunately, I was still able to install it in order to see how each machine performed with Vista.
While the systems we reviewed were all capable of running Vista, two of the vendors – HP and Acer – said they will either delay offering the new Windows, or make it available only as a special build-to-order option. Only Lenovo said it intends to offer Vista pre-installed following the retail launch on January 30th. This would seem to suggest that PC makers don't foresee an immediate rush on Vista business systems.
Of more concern to me is Microsoft's support for the embedded graphics functions in Intel's Q963/Q965 motherboard chipset, which is a standard feature in desktop PCs based on Core 2 Duo processors.
Throughout my tests using beta versions of Vista, drivers for these graphics functions were missing from the operating system and I had to download them from Intel's web site instead. The situation was no different with the release version Microsoft made available in November.
During tests for the Vista-ready article, all the Intel-based PCs pulled down an update from Microsoft's website containing drivers for the Q963/Q965 graphics. Sadly, this turned out to be an outmoded version dating from August, and which was incapable of completing the Windows System Assessment Tool tests that check whether a PC can run the Aero user interface.
Intel has Vista drivers on its site dated 13th December 2006, which I duly installed to fix this. I sincerely hope that the version of Vista that Microsoft releases on January 30th contains updated drivers, or that system builders have the sense to install Intel's latest, rather than rely on Microsoft.