Windows Vista Minimum System Requirements

Computer manufacturers are being told by Microsoft that they can put a Vista compatibility sticker on their machines to better communicate to customers wither the machine will run Vista or not. There are two stickers 'Capable' and 'Premium', but from the looks of these specs it seems like most people won't need to upgrade to run the new version of Windows unlike previous launches.

Capable
800MHZ CPU
512MB RAM
DirectX 9 Capable Graphics Card

Premium
1GHZ CPU
1GB RAM
128MB Graphics Card RAM
Graphics card that supports Vista's new graphics driver model.

Yes you read the last line correctly Microsoft is now controlling the unified driver for all ATI, Nvidia and other branded cards. Not that a card needs to support the Microsoft driver, but I think compatibility will be much better with it.