SillyDog701

[James]

I've a question for you. My computer has 468 MB of RAM. Windows Vista suggests a minimum of 512 MB. Will it run on my computer or am I asking for trouble? I don't really relish buying more RAM just to try Vista since I'm content with what I now have. I never play games on the computer and do very little other than a little surfing and email. So, what's the verdict?

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[Mandrake]

When Microsoft says Vista requires a minimum of 512mb of ram, they are not lying. I found running Vista with 512mb ram less than enjoyable - performance was much better with 1GB of ram. Ram is so cheap now that there's really no point running Vista with less than 1GB of ram.

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[DJGM]

It's not only the RAM requirements that are the issue for running Windows Vista. The PC I'm running now wouldn't
have a cat in hell's chance of running it in anywhere near decent perfomance! That's assuming off course, that
the installer on the Vista DVD doesn't refuse to run on a 650MHz PIII system, with only 384MB RAM!

If anything, this PC would need ... a much newer CPU, more RAM, a new mainboard, and a decent Gfx card.
If I was planning on installing Vista, I may as well scrap this old junkheap altogether, a buy a new PC!

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[Mandrake]

If anything, this PC would need ... a much newer CPU, more RAM, a new mainboard, and a decent Gfx card.
If I was planning on installing Vista, I may as well scrap this old junkheap altogether, a buy a new PC!

That's true. If it's any indication of lower end but still capable hardware I tested Vista RC1 on a 2Ghz Celeron system with a Radeon 9250 video card with 128mb video memory, a 40GB HDD and 512mb, then 768mb and finally 1GB of memory.

The system ran just as quickly as it did under XP with 1GB of ram, but with less than 1GB of ram XP was noticeably more responsive than Vista RC1 on the same hardware.

It's worth noting that the system obviously didn't run the "Aero Glass" user interface, since the video card only supports Direct X 8.1, and not Direct X 9 or higher like Vista requires. For Aero Glass you need an Ati Radeon 9500 or higer video card, Nvidia Geforce FX or higher video card, or an Intel GMA 950 or higher. Intel GMA 900 might be supported, I'm not sure on that one at the moment.

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[Pu7o]

If I was planning on installing Vista, I may as well scrap this old junkheap altogether, a buy a new PC!

This is the part where Antony comes in saying how you should buy a new Intel-based Mac and use Boot Camp.

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[DJGM]

If I was planning on installing Vista, I may as well scrap this old junkheap altogether, a buy a new PC!

This is the part where Antony comes in saying how you should buy a new Intel-based Mac and use Boot Camp.

If I could afford a Mac Pro, I'd buy one tomorrow! Does Boot Camp actually support Windows Vista yet?

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[Don_HH2K]

If you know what you're doing, you can get Vista to use under 256mb of memory. You'd need to install it on a machine that has 512mb, though, because its default configuration loads about that much in system services. When most of them have been disabled, Vista 32-bit takes up about 190mb alone.

Alternatively you could edit the Vista preinstalled image's registry hives, but to do that you'd need to know the short names for all of the system services loading at startup, not to mention be able to extract a .wim file.

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