Many classifications have been bandied around for things as diverse as food preferences to general movie stereotypes. Hence, being “vegetarian” has replaced your religious orientation in resumes, while you’ll find it difficult to find a teen movie without a jock, a snob, and a geek.

The same can be said for computer systems – the latest trend among graphic component manufacturers is to stick a “Vista Ready” sticker onto their products and call it a day. Of course most, if not all, won’t ignore the requirements for sticking on such a claim on their products, without first ensuring that their product is certified for it. So, if you buy a product with a “Vista Ready” sticker on it, rest assured that that particular product won’t hold you back from enjoying Vista.

                                                  Vista's vaunted Aero-Glass interface

What you do have to look out for is the fact that getting Vista to run on your new LCD, or even your new graphics card, is not such a demanding task as the manufacturers make it out to be. In other words, to be able to get that Vista Ready sticker, the manufacturer simply needs to ensure that the LCD can accept input from a Vista Ready videocard, which in turn must simply be capable of running the Vista Aero interface (which in turn is simply a graphical trick that enables better looking shadows and transparencies to run on the desktop.)

The Vista Ready campaign is nothing but marketing fluff aimed at creating a buzz for products that will support the new operating system from Microsoft. Don’t get sucked in; in all probability, if you have a decent videocard and monitor combination not older than 2 years old, it will be able to run Vista and any special graphical effect it wants to throw down. We’ll put aside any discourse on Vista certification for other computer components for now – suffice to say that becoming “Vista Ready” for motherboard, soundcard, memory, etcetera manufacturers is a done thing – and Vista capability is more the result of a combination of components rather than a single one’s.

                                                  A fairly successful marketing campaign...
 

Another “certification” you may be familiar with is the Centrino certification created by Intel. There is nothing mind-bending in this scheme, the Centrino certification is more of a branding effort by Intel to identify laptops  as “Wireless By Intel-Capable” (is what I like to call it.) Centrino laptops specifically had to have three components to be called such – an Intel CPU, an Intel branded WiFi adapter, and an Intel chipset, irrespective of what generation these components were part of. This kind of certification made sense, if only for the manufacturer and their retailers – for consumers, knowing that a laptop was WiFi capable was usually enough – never mind that the laptop is not a Centrino. Do note that I said “usually” – as some buyers intentionally look for the Centrino branding due to brand awareness.

                                                  LukeSkywalker keeps popping into my head...

One other certification that directly concerns computer buyers is the THX certification, usually applied to multimedia systems and soundcards. For those not in the know, the THX certification was introduced by George Lucas of Star Wars fame himself – he wanted to make sure that the original Star Wars soundtracks, first heard in the cinema, matched those created on the sound stage of a home system. Over the years, THX certification has spread to include computer systems, luxury automobiles, and even displays – the first LCD to claim THX certification is the Aquos 52” and 65” televisions. Fortunately, this wide acceptance of the THX certification has done nothing to dilute its stringent requirements for acceptance into its elite group -  certainly we won’t find products with a THX certification just anywhere.

                                            THX classification system for logo

Unlike the first two “certifications” mentioned in this article, the THX certification is first and foremost a declaration of quality for any product that bears its mark. I have been fortunate to own a number of these products, most current of which is the Logitech Z-5300 5.1 Speakers for the PC. Some people might scoff, many associate THX with theatres and big, expensive home theatre systems. It must be clarified then, that the THX symbol is actually subdivided into different  classifications, depending on its intended audience. Thus small home systems are simply “THX certified”, while PC systems are typically labeled “THX multimedia”. There is also the Ultra and the Select classifications, representing cinemas and large home theatre systems, respectively.

Just to summarize, there are three “certifications” that represents a tech user’s “gullibility” rating: ranging from the poor guy who’s very taken with anything that’s “Vista Ready”, to the guy who slavishly follows and purchases only Centrino branded laptops because “it’s the only way I can get online wirelessly” (taken from an actual forum post in a popular site), and the guy who likes THX for what it gives the consumer: confidence in the product.

I first set out to write of an unfortunate incident wherein I lost all belief in this certification system from THX – it involved an Altec Lansing model 5021 which frankly sounded horrible. I would have been prepared to slam the whole rating system as I did to the Vista Ready campaign, if not for the fact that it turned out to be the result of a combination of a sub-standard soundcard and bad wires, plus some interference. I did not encounter any trouble with the THX branding ever since.

Of course, one must be careful of matching quality to quality – getting a P120 set of speakers from CDR-King and attaching it to a Creative X-Fi THX certified soundcard will obviously result in horrendous, not thunderous, sound. Determine what you want from your listening experience too: is it for personal listening? Is it a 20 seat, home cinema type of setup? Get the right components for the right application, and the THX brand will work wonders for your entertainment experience.

 George Lucas should have foreseen this...

It amuses me then, that not only will people fall readily to a marketing onslaught based mostly on conjecture and name-relations, as is the case with Vista – related merchandise, a lot of people will also go to great lengths to deny the effectiveness of a certification system like THX’s – although I’m thinking that there’s simply too many kinds of people and thus too many kinds of preference, in other words, “you can’t please everybody.” Regardless, that’s the official word from Hardwarezone, although not all certifications work, some do - THX Rocks.

Credits: 

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/04/03/microsoft-sued-over-vista-capable-campaign - the trouble with vague marketing campaigns...

http://www.thx.com/ - Start here to get certified.