Hester - 10:09 am on Apr 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

And why does it require around 256MB of video memory to operate Aero, that's 32-64 times more than is required by XP.

Before Vista was released, I heard Microsoft saying Aero would be available for XP. I guess they changed their minds as it hasn't emerged.

From what I know, Vista is radically different than XP in terms of rendering windows. There was a lot of hype about this before it launched. Basically it uses the graphics card to draw everything. XP and earlier versions of Windows use the processor. This enables windows to be rotated (there was a demo showing a video running smoothly in a spinning window with no loss of frames) and other special effects like page turns. Microsoft even showed how you could take an application like Calculator and stretch the window easily to make it larger, and all the buttons would be rendered perfectly.

Transparent windows also depend on the graphics card, though of course they can be done slower via the processor.

[edited by: Hester at 10:12 am (utc) on April 16, 2008]