Besides WinSAT, Windows Vista comes with Windows System Performance Rating tool that rates your system based on its processor, RAM, hard disk, regular graphics, and gaming graphics. To launch this tool, open the Control Panel, click System and Maintenance, and then click Performance Rating and Tools. Vista supplies a subrating for each of the five categories and also calculates an overall rating. You can get a new rating (for example, if you change performance-related hardware) by clicking the Refresh My Rating Now link.

• In general, the higher the rating, the better the performance.

• The lowest possible value is 1.0.

• There doesn't seem to be a highest possible value, which I assume is a reflection of the simple fact that hardware will improve over time. (Microsoft has said, however, that it will attempt to keep the ratings constant over time. So, for example, a machine rated 3.0 today will have the same relative performance as a machine rated 3.0 two years ago or two years from now.) I've seen ratings as high as 5.5 (this was a Memory [RAM] subrating given to a machine with 2GB RAM).

• The Overall Rating takes a weakest-link-in-the-chain approach. That is, you could have nothing but 5.0 scores for everything else, but if you get just 1.0 because your notebook can't do gaming graphics, then your Overall Rating will be 1.0.