So finally.. after 4 months of waiting..

[kchi55]

Microsoft finally shipped my free copies of Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit and 64-bit .

I got the free copies for signing up for Windows Feedback program, a survey or so a month for three months and I get a free copy of Vista, beats having to shell out $100+ for the, still buggy, operating system.

Now I'm just faced with the problem of "Do I really want to upgrade to XP?".
What do you guys think? I'm really reluctant to upgrade at this point since my RAM is a meager 1GB still (PC3200 RAM is so outrageously priced), and chances are my next system will come with Vista pre-installed, so this is the only computer I can use it on.

Decisions, decisions.

 

[mark thorpe]

been running vista on 512 for over a year on my PC with no problems what so ever.

all this rubbish about vista needing huge amounts of ram is total BS.

its a hell of alot better than XP...

 

[esa193]

agreed

 

[Celegorm]

Install it. You'll love it.

 

[MikeReiner]

been running vista on 512 for over a year on my PC with no problems what so ever.

all this rubbish about vista needing huge amounts of ram is total BS.

its a hell of alot better than XP...

1 Gig is plenty. 2 is ideal for Vista, but you'll be fine.

I for one disagree, about it being better than XP, that is.
Most machines I've seen struggle ram-wise with Vista are machines with a ton of shit running, which really isn't the OS's fault.

Speed wise though, XP is snappy and responsive for me, even with clean installs of Vista on powerful hardware, Vista has always been sluggish for me.

But my opinion of sluggish is probably different than yours.

 

[A True Folder]

Microsoft finally shipped my free copies of Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit and 64-bit .

Now I'm just faced with the problem of "Do I really want to upgrade to XP?".
What do you guys think? I'm really reluctant to upgrade at this point since my RAM is a meager 1GB still (PC3200 RAM is so outrageously priced), and chances are my next system will come with Vista pre-installed, so this is the only computer I can use it on.

Decisions, decisions.

You should be fine with 1GB, when I was beta testing Vista used ~600MB of my DDR400 (PC3200) memory at idle.

been running vista on 512 for over a year on my PC with no problems what so ever.

all this rubbish about vista needing huge amounts of ram is total BS.

its a hell of alot better than XP...

I bet your page file is being flogged unmercifully, have you had a play on a Vista system with more memory? I think you'd be surprised how much of a difference the extra ram makes.

Install it. You'll love it.

You'll love it is pretty subjective, I'd probably dual/triple boot it for a while to trial it.

I for one disagree, about it being better than XP, that is.
Most machines I've seen struggle ram-wise with Vista are machines with a ton of shit running, which really isn't the OS's fault.

Speed wise though, XP is snappy and responsive for me, even with clean installs of Vista on powerful hardware, Vista has always been sluggish for me.

But my opinion of sluggish is probably different than yours.

The sluggishness is borne out time and again in benchmarks so I have to agree with you Mike.

 

[MikeReiner]

Yeah, pagefile usage is just horrible. The extra hard drive activity can't be good for the hard drive's life span.

 

[mark thorpe]

My laptop has 2GB ram and a higher level, of coarse its nicer, but it still runs perfectly fine on 512MB ram..

 

[MikeReiner]

Yeah, if thats how you view it, you aren't nearly as picky about it as I am.
I for one go out of my way to make sure my ram is not exceeded.

If you so much as get another 512 stick, mark, you might be surprised how much better your desktop runs.

The 2nd pc in my comment, with 512, never gets sluggish with XP.

Though I understand Vista makes better use of ram sometimes. Loading a bunch of data that you regularly use and only dumping it if you try to do something else.

 

[~mr mixx~]

if you don't mind the pains staking time of answering questions about your whole lifestyle, then yes you can get some kool items for free.