Windows System Assessment Tool ---->>>
http://www.answers.com/topic/windows-system-assessment-tool
I forget when you see this. But I guess it's not too hard to find out how to run this Vista tool/
You get a number from 1-5. I is miserable. No Aeroglass. 5 is all bells and whistles. Dual core processors will get you there if you have the graphics capability
HEres an article similar to the other article I read.
http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/vintagevista.ars/2
Very informative, some horror story some good.
snippet:
Momma's five-year-old workhorse (July 2001)
"Upgrading into the future"
We were extremely impressed with Vista on the five-year-old Gateway. This machine has been a dedicated Sims game machine for the last several years, and has modest hardware as a result. It was originally equipped with 128MB of PC133 and a Radeon 7000. It is now equipped with 512MB of RAM and a NVIDIA FX5200 GPU with 128MB of VRAM. These are bargain-basement upgrades and have allowed a relatively modest PC the ability to run Vista with all the fancy effects turned on, and performance was reasonable given the age of the machine.
While the Gateway had the graphical muscle to support all of Vista's capabilities, the system itself was usually taxed before the graphics system showed signs of heavy lifting. For example, hard drive performance was again an issue, making the system sluggish at times as Vista pummeled the hard drive. It was nowhere near as bad as the ThinkPad, but on occasion there would be notable disc thrashing and performance dips, such that one was rewarded for keeping as few programs running as possible.
This wasn't a big surprise, however. The Performance Index results on the Gateway made it clear to us that 512MB of RAM was not optimal, and with a Microsoft OS, suboptimal RAM means that your disc subsystem will be busy with paging. Was this the red-haired step child? Inside was 20GB hard drive spinning at 5400rpm on a UDMA100 interface.
Unlike the ThinkPad, the Gateway was usable, and its I/O problems can be almost completely blamed on the RAM. How much RAM you should have is a matter of taste, but you'll look like you're bringing boxed wine to the party if you have less than 1GB. Just don't do it.
It is clear that this kind of machine can run Vista. Whether or not it's worth the money to upgrade a machine like this is a subjective question, but we would recommend that you save your money. Vista will not outperform Windows XP on a box like this, so one must really consider the merits of upgrading older hardware.
Read more at the link.