One of the most commonly asked questions — and one to which Microsoft has still not provided a definitive answer — is what will be the hardware requirements for users interested in running Windows Vista. In conjunction with the release of Vista Beta 1, Microsoft offered little new guidance. Vista PCs should be "a modern, Intel Pentium- or AMD Athlon-based" one with a dedicated graphics card featuring DirectX 9.0 support, and 512 MB or more of RAM. "Minimum system requirements will not be known until summer 2006 at the earliest," according to a corporate statement. Why Microsoft is remaining so vague on this, we have no idea.