system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
"Windows Vista ready" laptops with 4GB RAM or less were what crippled the OS.

My dad had a Windows Vista netbook back in 2007 with a ~1 GHz single-core Atom (at the time they used in-order processing instead of out-of-order processing, so the IPC was even lower, probably less than Core 2's IPC) and 1-2GB RAM. You could barely get a web browser to run, and that was well before the "Chrome eats RAM" became a thing.
gpt
You're right. If I recall correctly, they were like two different stickers. Windows Vista ready and Windows compatible or something and one meant it would run great and one meant it would run like dog shit but it would install