Windows Vista is not slow on a quad-core CPU, 8 GB of RAM, a GeForce 2-series video card, and SATA 2 disks. Is that overkill? Only a little. For the first time, I have Windows Vista installed on “enough” hardware to make it fly. Up until now, I’ve found it OK for the most part, although slow at times, but now that I’ve seen what it can do on the “right” hardware, it’s really quite nice. Even UAC prompts aren’t bothersome when they happen instantly: what really annoyed me about UAC on my other Vista machines was that the computer would go into slow motion as it got ready to darken the screen and display the prompt.What did it take? Basically, this box has a quad-core CPU, 8 GB of RAM, a GeForce 2-series video card, and SATA 2 disks. That may be overkill, but it certainly does the job.If you look at the system information, you’ll see that it rates a 5.7 on the Experience Index. What went into that? You’ll notice that the amount of RAM didn’t figure into the Experience Index. On a fresh boot with nothing running, “only” 1.34 GB of RAM is used. When the box has been running a few days under heavy use, that creeps up over 2 GB, but that’s just Windows being lazy about returning RAM to the free pool. Software Development