Windows Vista, Do or dont?

[tidenburg]

Right so im back onto the wanting a better pc thing again and now im wondering, once I get the new RAM should I then purchase the windows Vista upgrade? It looks sex and I want it now but some people are sounding a bit sceptical about it, I dont mean the OS X thing but stuff like they've made obvious screw ups in some places. Tommorow they will finally have more RAM in the shop and I need to ask these few questions to all you smart computer people out there:

1. If my PC says max RAM is 2gb but crucial.co.uk says its 1gb could it be because I already have 512mb RAM and you cant have two separate amount in the banks (confusing question)
2. Does my video cards RAM count toward my RAM limit?
3. how noticable will the difference between 358mb and 1/2gb RAM be?
4. Is the Vista upgrade really worth it?
5. Other comments on vista so I can see what people think
   
6. Bonus Question: In media center is it possible to use the SCART adapters on my tv card to play/watch xbox 360 on the tv?

Just want to hear what people think about it in general. Not all people are liking it because they've "only just got comfortable with XP" (they must have taken a long time about it)

[silverx2]

if your max ram is 1gb you need a new motherboard. if you have two slots. then the max is gb per slot with a max of 2gb

no

how would you get 358mb of ram to begin with?

not yet. wait for all the launch jitters

im not getting it till i get a computer with it already installed.

i dont know.

[gerbick]

I wouldn't upgrade... I'd do a clean install if I were you. Windows upgrades have historically been messy and tend to be slower than a clean install... since Windows 95 and up.

You better be rocking at least 1gb of RAM, a video card with at least 128mb of RAM. Want to really know if your PC is up to Vista standards, use the Hardware Upgrade Advisor instead of bringing up randomly OSX - which made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Use Windows Vista Ultimate or Media Center to talk over to your XBOX360.

[drunknbass]

if you dont have a gig of ram you cant use the aero features of vista and i dont know what else. and even at 1 gig your just at the min. i have 2 gig and my system feels sluggish running it. i went from x64 to 64bit vista and x64 ran ALOT better/faster. ive already had 2 bsod in 2 weeks and a wierd prob with my wifi card being unresponsive when i hook my printer up.
i will probably be throwing another 2 gig in and ill let you know how it runs. it does look cool tho. but it uses ALOT of system resources. and i dont even use the side dock

[gerbick]

Are you running RTM, RC2, or final? Also, have you went through and trimmed the services? At boot, a stock install of Vista had me running over 52 services at boot. WinXP has about 28. After trimming the services, I have WinXP down to 14 services, Vista RC2 down to 27 or so.

Speed increased quite a bit. And Aero is more reliant on your vid card, not system RAM... right? Or at least your DirectX compliance...

[drunknbass]

i actually havent messed with the services yet.. i did when i ran regular xp, and it helps alot. but running x64 i never bothered and it ran great. i figured vista would run as good or better with better driver support but i dont thinkit has so far.. what services did you disable on vista?

[tidenburg]

Are you saying its slower than XP unless you disable the things you brought it for?

[drunknbass]

im saying it runs slower than x64. i never ran regular xp on this system so i cant compare. plus i always tweak my xp installations.. x64 ran good and never bloated and slowed down. never crashed. and i never got a virus or spyware on it (i ran x64 for a year) and thats saying alot. and i never tweaked x64 i ran it that way out of the box. i wanted to create a hardware profile to try tweaking stuff on vista but its not done the same way. im curious what service made such a noticable impact.. i did find this link http://www.errorforum.com/microsoft-...de-v1-0-a.html

[gerbick]

Are you saying its slower than XP unless you disable the things you brought it for?

actually... half of the stuff running at boot/fresh install you didn't buy it for, nor would use.

about Vista, it was mismatch for me... the machine it's on, there's no printer, bluetooth, wireless... there's a few other services not needed... like network discovery - I hand add all servers in my network anyway - and a whole bunch of other services... I tend to keep it simple... more RAM for photoshop/3D.

[drunknbass]

have you used flash on that vista system yet? i have a wierdthing when i double click a symbol to edit it it does this wierd dotted line box and slowly zooms in and out of the symbol.. its so annoying cause it takes like 10 seconds to finish. and my dreamweaver will loose the remote sites login info if i am conected to the site when i exit out of the program.

[gerbick]

hasn't happened to me... I'm running fully-licensed Vista video drivers finally though. All kinds of weirdness before with Photoshop and Flash before though - prefs for palettes were never saved in RC1/RC2; RTM and higher (MSDN) worked fine though. Weird problems with fonts though - it'll substitute fonts, with the same font every now-and-then... but I don't recall that one you described.

but I'm not running the x64 version.

also, for what it's worth, seems like XP isn't all that much faster than Vista afterall...

[darkstar]

i still run XP as my main OS, apart from the extra security features (which seem to be a double edged sword) and whizzy graphics i can't see any reason to upgrade to Vista.
XP runs well, it's fast and it's reliable, most if not all problems have been fixed with the service packs and i know a fair bit about it after having it for so long! i suppose that i'm not the average XP user in that my main interest is music creation and game playing, i dont use photoshop or office and hardly use any web programs anymore apart from the odd website herh and there.
also my pc is quite modest being an athlon 1900 with 768 megs of ram so it would cost me a small fortune to upgrade.
so any good reasons why i should upgrade to Vista?

[Dark_Opal]

i still run XP as my main OS, apart from the extra security features (which seem to be a double edged sword) and whizzy graphics i can't see any reason to upgrade to Vista.
so any good reasons why i should upgrade to Vista?

Solitaire is reeeeeeally shiny

[random25]

I wont be running vista as my main os untill it becomes a pain to find things that work with xp.
I have spent years customizing every little aspect of xp to my liking, im not going to dump it and start over with a new os untill i have to.

[The_Xell]

Building a computer for a friend and trying to decide whether or not to get Windows XP Pro or XP Ultimate... It's only £20 difference. Then again, he wants it to run games and from what I can tell Vista isn't 100% friendly. And any idea what's going on with the multiple licenses? I heard talk of an extra percentage enabling 2 licenses etc.

Any suggestions? XP Pro SP2 nice and customized, or Vista, able to run Halo 2...that's about it to be honest, I don't see many other reasons!

[drunknbass]

well one cool thing i havent tried yet is readyboost. you can plug an external memorystick in and vista can use it as extended memory. faster than hdd but slower than ram .

[tidenburg]

Halo 2 on vista will allow you to connect with the xbox live players playing it on xbox...

I am going to get vista for sure, im trying to decide what the difference between Vista Ultimate and Pro edition is, as far as i can see its media center which I dont like nor need anymore (stupid idea buying it) I still have to buy more RAM though, they all look really complicated! Will any RAM work with any machine? Im looking for at least 1gb of RAM for under £75, im using an Emachines E4036 can someone help me?

P.S. Is vista out in Europe yet?

[PAlexC]

Are you high? Wait for SP1. Who knows, the price might drop by then if sales suck enough.

[gerbick]

DDR2 PC2-4200 (533MHz) DIMM

You can use up to 2GB in your machine.

here is where I found that out...

Get that much, find the appropriate DDR2 RAM...

[tidenburg]

Thanks Gerbick, is the site you pointed to reliable? Have you ever brought anything from it because I might buy the RAM they have on there.

Two last questions, is a clean install when you do factory reset and then instead of using the MC disc I would use the vista ultimate/premium disc?
And finally, when I install RAM do I just remove the old one and insert the new ones or do I have to install somthing first?