While I will say that Microsoft has a right to do what they wish with their upcoming Longhorn version of Windows, the idea of explaining to clients that they need to look at making sure they have a graphics card that will support the 3D needs of the OS is going to be annoying.

The majority of users don’t care about a graphics card because this majority uses only 2D operations, or should I say they need it just to draw and show picture on displays.

Some will use the graphics card to accelerate video files or help decode DVD content. but that’s about it. The big mass of users don’t care about 3D games or any kind of shaders. This is about to change with Longhorn.

Longhorn will feature a graphics subset called WGF (Windows Graphic Foundation). Its goal is to unify 2D and 3D graphics operation in one and will bring 2D Windows drawing and 3D operations together. Nowadays, 3D is done using a Direct X subset with the current version 9.0c.

Longhorn will also use 3D menus and 3D interfaces and will require at least Shader 2.0 compliant cards, so it will make the graphics card an important part of your PC. Nowadays, Windows doesn’t care much about graphics until you play your DVD or start a 3D game. In such cases, Windows actually benefits from graphic card acceleration whether we talk about video or 3D acceleration.