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Microsoft is two days away from launching its long-awaited Windows Vista operating system. Windows Vista introduces a plethora of new features and enhancements that allows for greater security, a sleek new user interface and ease of use.

As with all new operating systems, however, new hardware may be required to take advantage of all the new features. Microsoft has devised a new rating system that will hopefully simplify future hardware and software purchases as well as give users a basic idea of the capabilities of a PC – say hello to the Windows Experience Index.


The WEI analysis tool shipped with Vista

The new Windows Experience Index evaluates a systems performance right before the user sees the Windows desktop after a clean installation. It evaluates five subsystems and rates the system on a higher-is-better scale starting with 1.0. Processor, memory, graphics, gaming graphics and hard disk performance are the subsystems rated by the Windows Experience Index.

After evaluating the different subsystems, the system determines a base score of the system that is simply the score of the lowest performance subsystem and not an averaged overall score. The base score of the system determines the computing capabilities of a system. Microsoft offers a general description of system capabilities according to the base score in the Windows Vista What is the Windows Experience Index help file.


The WEI analysis tool shipped with Vista

According to the Microsoft help file, a system with a base score of 1.0-2.0 is sufficient for basic productivity such as browsing the web and running office applications but lacks the horsepower to run Windows Aero or advanced multimedia functionalities such as Windows Media Center. Moving up to a score of 3.0 is a system that has enough power to run Windows Aero at a resolution of 1280x1024 and a few multimedia features such as standard definition video playback.