Always great to see a heading like that huh? Well that is the one used for this article over at CNet. It seems that Longhorn will have the ability to scale down so that it may run decently on older PCs. To be honest I don’t think asking for 512MB of RAM is too much, but asking for a 3GHz processor is a bit steep.

Microsoft has developed at least four different levels of graphics for Longhorn giving PCs and laptop users the ability to fit their system for optimal performance. Choice is good, but too many choices can make things difficult for users.

A second challenge, which Microsoft said it is already planning to address, is putting the burden on the software to figure out what settings are most appropriate to the type of machine one has.

Most users that I know of are only capable of changing their wallpaper so having the OS take care of the performance issues is a big deal. We can only hope that it makes the right decisions.