There are five bloody flavors of Vista — from a bottom-of-the-line version that appears to be meant as a substitute for Linux on third-world computers to some supreme and ultimate version that's most likely too good for any hardware that you and I could possibly afford. All right, I'm exaggerating a little. (Well, except about the low-end version, which is only available as a 32-bit package.) To find out just how much hyperbole is involved I decided to do something stupid. I was going to install a Beta version of Vista on a computer I owned. (Just for perspective, the first Beta software I installed on a computer was Windows — before there were notable version numbers — and the last was OS/2.)

I dutifully went to Microsoft's Web site and tried to download Vista Beta 2 Evaluation Copy Build 5384. Forget it. Despite having had their servers slow down to a crash the last time they did something like this, once again, Microsoft, piloted by the richest man in the world, doesn't have adequate hardware resources to meet demand. So I did the only thing I could: I shelled out a few dollars and had them send me a copy. The intervening two weeks gave me time to draw up my battle plan.

The Vista Ready software was really no help. It declared that all of the computers I ran it on were adequate — even my Pentium D 955EE box running at 4.1GHz. Huh? 4.1GHz wasn't superlative; it was adequate? That hurt my pride. A plan of action formed in my mind as the days passed waiting for the arrival of "Windows Vista Ultimate."

First I took an old Antec Super Lanboy case and stuffed it with an Intel D975XBX "Bad Axe" motherboard. If you're a motherboard fan, that may sound like a recent product but this one was a very early version of the board, one that I had already replaced in the 955EE system with an ASUS 975-based board. (Originally, I was going to use an ASRock 775XFIRE-ESATA2 945PL board for this Vista box but it arrived partially DOA and I have no patience for such things.) I added 1 measly gigabyte of memory (2x512 so I could take advantage of dual channel), and crowned it with a Pentium D 805.

The dual core 805, while better than trailer-park quality, is probably one of the more plebian processors Intel offers. It can be had, currently, for around $100 in some places and runs at just 2.67MHz. Remember now, I'm sitting here with a 955EE overclocked to 4.1GHz and I have a second 955EE running at its native 3.46GHz. I even have a pokey old 3.2GHz Pentium 640 pumped up to 3.56GHz. In fact, the closest I come to 2.67Ghz is an Athlon X2 3800+ that chugs along at 2GHz. Was the 805 a Vista class processor? Well, Vista Ready liked the Athlon. . . .