Chapter 5. Hardware Basics

  • Understand minimum system requirements

  • Improve your computer with the Windows Experience Index

SO, YOU HAVE the Windows Vista operating system, you have a PC, and you understand basic audio/video formats and connectivity issues. Now what? Well, the next step is to make sure you have the right hardware to support everything you can do with Windows Vista, Windows Media Center, and other programs.

In this chapter, we’ll cover the basics you need—and give you some advice about how to get your system into top-notch shape. There are recommended requirements to run a Media Center PC using Windows Vista, so you’ll need to meet at least those in order to get started. However, as you’ll see, there is much more you can do to obtain ...

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