Who's on Windows Vista here?

[Theo_admin]

Are 4gb RAM a must to run Vista?

What's your overall feedback?

thx :)

[Geode]

It depends on which flavor of Vista you are running. It is an absolute must to have with Vista Ultimate especially if you intend to do any video editing. Vista is a memory hog in itself. I would also put the fastest memory your monther will take.

[Joe of Norway]

I have 4 gig + quad core CPU with Vista Ultimate. It runs smooth but I think with less it would be a pain.....

I had (mark "HAD") vista on my 1 gig dual core laptop. NOT good! Used Linux for a while but are now back to XP. Really don't know why, as I love Linux :)

But conclusion - 4 gig is a must I think!

[Max]

I can't wait until I get my XP desktop back again, this Vista laptop is driving me insane

[Richard]

Vista?

Hell NO!!!!!

XP here, and in Windows classic style, want speed, no fancy shadows and screens :confused:

[Nic]

God no!

From what I read opinion seems to be 2GB for 32bit and 4GB for 64bit.

But really I wouldn't go there yet if you're trying to decide. I built new machine a few months ago and glad I bought XP again. Consensus seems to be that you just get a new flashy GUI (aero) which, incidentally, runs gfx cards in 3D mode permanently - potentially a significant heat/noisy cooling issue. And in return you get poor driver support & compatibility problems.

MS play heavily on the 'security' side of things, but this also seems to cause far more problems than it solves.

[Joe.]

Dear Theo,

I think its be fine, I see my LovelyNiece 3yrs old play The Sims2 on my idiot low spect NotbookPCs without problem.

but I think these your silly question :D because you can buy many high Laptop and good PC Band for test witout any problem in your pocket, hehehe

sorry with my bad english. . . I hope you understand me.

ps, missed Rojo too much . . . passing my kiss to his head plz


Thanks a lot.

[Theo_admin]

awesome feedback guys, thanks a lot. All PCs now come with Vista so I thought to give them a try. My windows XP were working very smooth for 3 years with no format which is something I can't tell for windows 2000, but now I experience some problem impossible to resolve and I thought it's about time to change computer as well.

Does aero speed up your work,surfing experience or it just a visual effect in your opinion that doesn't add up anything more than consuming resources?

[Theo_admin]

Joe I will, cheers :)

[Max]

Aero just a visual effect in your opinion that doesn't add up anything more than consuming resources?


That sums it up IMHO. ;)

[Billy Cigarette]

If you're going with the 32bit version of Vista, don't bother with more than 3GB, it wont see more than 4GB and even then you have to fiddle around with it and it'll cause other problems to arise. 32bit have a max of 4GB.

Vista 64 however can see something like 128GB, but even then, you still need to play around to get it to see you have 4GB or more.


Ask yourself this simple question

"Can I do tomorrow on the same OS what I'm doing today?" If the answer is yes, then why upgrade just yet? Otherwise, yeah I'd upgrade now.

Why now? Well like it or not, Vista IS going to replace win2k and XP eventually. Maybe not this version, as XP still has some time to go before it becomes completely outdated, but the next which will likely be built upon Vista.

32bit vs 64bit

More and more software is requiring more memory and speed. Unless there's some huge change to how CPU's work. It's going to be a 64bit world soon. So why not get the nasty switchover done now rather than later?

Yes some of your software wont work at all, some wont work so good. If you have hardware that isn't so well known, or is more than a couple or so years old - it probably is never going to work on Vista 64. But could you see yourself using that same hardware in a few years anyway?

I personally hate building computers, and making the changeover, installing a new operating system, tweaking it, trying to reinstall all what I use. But I'd rather just get it done soon and be through with it than have to do it twice (switch to 32bit, then to 64bit later)

But then I'm using Win2k still, and it's only JUST begun to show its age, after all these years of doing well. I could upgrade to XP, but why bother when I'm going to eventually have to go with Vista (or Linux, but that's another headache if you're stuck with having to repurchase all your software in Linux flavor, while learning a whole new OS at the same time)

--

As for the comments about the Aero interface, yeah it's a bit of a system hog whichever way you look at it. But you can switch it off. Once I get it, I'll probably keep it on for a few days, because it looks cool. Then switch to a less intensive GUI. Or more likely I'll purchase Object Desktop from Stardock and make my operating system look and feel like OS X (because lets face it, Panther looks great! But Mac's generally aren't! hehe)

Still nice looking, but far less system intensive.

[Theo_admin]

great post! I'll do a follow up with my vista experience today. I've been using it for the last 3 weeks.

[Billy Cigarette]

great post! I'll do a follow up with my vista experience today. I've been using it for the last 3 weeks.

I'm still waiting on my copy of Vista Ultimate 64 and a Case. I went and added a Flash drive which wasn't in stock and it's gone and slowed the entire order down to probably late next week. I'm itching to set it all up and try Vista out properly!

[Theo_admin]

Hi guys,

I have to say overall im satisfied by Vista, but I haven't found a single major reason for someone to upgrade from XP especially if he has to pay for them and do not come free with a new computer.

I turned aero off (totally pointless) and removed sidebar (again not useful to me). The only small improvements I noticed that are worth mentioning are: slightly easier networking, faster search function, snipping tool (cool for taking screenshots) and I'm afraid that's all! Truth is my computer can go without any reboot for whole weeks, so allocation of memory and resources must be improved cause this wasn't the case with my XP.

[Theo_admin]

"Object Desktop from Stardock"

i need to give this a try. I had used in the past several add-on GUIs on XP but they were totally killing my resources. Hopefully new system won't face this.

Do you guys know by doing an upgrade to 4gb if I can assign the spare 1gb ram to nvidia card? I read it can use up to 768mb and i dont think its a reference to upgrading the nvidia memory (laptop)

[Billy Cigarette]

"Object Desktop from Stardock"

i need to give this a try. I had used in the past several add-on GUIs on XP but they were totally killing my resources. Hopefully new system won't face this.

Do you guys know by doing an upgrade to 4gb if I can assign the spare 1gb ram to nvidia card? I read it can use up to 768mb and i dont think its a reference to upgrading the nvidia memory (laptop)

You can't do that with the memory I'm afraid. The video card comes with it's memory and that's that. Though I think it can still use more memory if it runs out of it's own, but it wont be as fast or something. I'm not all that sure, but I have noticed that once, video cards with the most memory were the ones you had to get, these days the ones with only a few hundred meg on them seem to be in demand, so maybe DX10 and Vista has changed things.

If you're video card states it has 768mb available, then that's what it's got on board.

Object Desktop WORTH the money. It's dirt cheap and you get a truck load of software in the bargain.

DesktopX (a super fun toy, then you realize it's very useful to boot! and being able to use it to turn your OS into the one from Star Trek is kinda cool hehe),

WindowBlinds. Goes without saying, this is great, only seems to be a resource hog on the slower machines (like my current one hehe).

Icon packager, change all the icons in a couple of clicks, and there's tons out there of very high quality.

Also includes in the price things like TweakVista, TweakShell, IconDeveloper, SkinStudio Pro etc. etc.

Then you get a whole host of other little programs along with those, all thrown in and available through a special app called Stardock Central. Downloads/installs/uninstalls/organizes all the programs from Stardock.

All that for what, $24? Which is next to nothing in Pounds / Euro's


Should be good on Vista, I'll be installing it early on if all goes well building the new PC tonight. :)

[Nic]

Personally I would avoid any 3rd party GUI stuff. Been there in the past many times and all it does is eat resources and cause potential problems. I really think it's one of those things you play with when you first get the machine but once you forget and just start using it you realise it was pointless.

And 768MB on board video should be more than enough for anything at the moment - high resolutions and anti-aliasing are where it gets used.

[Theo_admin]

hi guys, laptop has 384mb i think, but it says it can upgrade up to 768 and i dont think its by adding a chip. I'm not 100% sure.

WindowBlinds I used some years ago, very impressive indeed.

Billy Cigarette, I'm sold,ill buy it :)

[Theo_admin]

here's a freeware part

http://storage.stardock.com/files/objectdock_freeware.exe

the funny now...its more customizable than vista itself and its free lol