Degrading it to XP was a very funny story (in fact very sad one...) I received the Laptop with Vista allready installed (that's how it goes out from IBM/Lenovo) Afetr I saw her speed, I wanted to go back to XP, I had to put more money, yes, put more money in order to have the rights to go back to XP and still have warranty for it. I have Home Premium, and I had to upgrade to one level up (don't remember how it's called) but in that level I can also go back to XP, now, what do you say?
Depending on the different versions of Vista, you do need different amounts of RAM to run them properly. For example, Vista Basic needs a min of 512MB - thats a min, it'll run, just not very fast. While Vista Ultimate will need more. The average person running the general programs on Vista will need 2GB. In theory 1 is fine, but thats if your only running one application at at time. Lets say your browsing the net, downloading something and listening to your media player at the same time - which is fairly common practice on my laptop anyway - then the 1GB will get you nowhere. It pretty much limits you to running one, or at best two, applications at a time. 2GB's will do you a lot better, but like others have already pointed out, it all boils down to what your using it for. And for the record, yes - XP is the superior operating system.
The only real issue with down grading to Vista is the drivers often uninstall themselves. Now, I know most people will say - "sure you can download the XP drivers anyway." And while this is true, one of the most common drivers to be uninstalled are the network or ethernet drivers. Try getting online to download drivers without internet access! Annoying things like (on a laptop) the touch pad, the wireless and the ethernet drivers are uninstalled and you have to go looking for new ones. Also, if you down grade to XP from Vista, any free bits of software that might have come with the computer wont be there anymore.
witht that spec I would better run XP and i think it's would be more than enough. To run Vista I would prefer to have more than 4G RAM for a smooth run though. 1G is way not enough.
Exactly, huge RAM for Vista, and huge hard disk space for Vista as well. It's just too resource hungry.
if your running a 86x (32 bit) the max you have ram = 4 gb (including video card and sound card). So I started with 2 gigs and added an extra gig. Now it runs soo much faster.
However it may be better to use 2x2 GB. While windows will only adress about 3,5 GB out of those 4, dual channel setup works faster. If you decide to go for 2 different kind of sizes, then make sure you pick the same type of RAM. For example don't put DDR2 PC6400 with DDR2 PC8500 or even DDR3. RAM only runs at 1 speed, so it'll slow your faster RAM down. Hope that helped.
The other name for vista is "slow" or "lazy"... Better to downgrade to XP or go in for the costly option of getting 4 gb RAM
I just got a new laptop yesterday with Vista on it and it's got 2GB of RAM and it runs perfectly. It's not slow either.
Let's go with this: 1 GB ram with vista = Horrible 2 GB ram with Vista = Mandatory, Alright 3 GB ram with vista = Runs smoothly, (well I don't know if I can use the word smoothly and vista in the same sentence)
If you 're planning to use 4GB and above RAM, consider upgrading your Vista to 64bit since 32bit ONLY recognize RAM up to 3GB. Even if you're adding 10GB RAM on your 32 bit machine, you will only see 3GB on your system.
Vista is always slow on peoples Machines, go up to 2GB and I'm sure it'll run fine. I'm sticking with XP myself.
Oh yes, that's right! If you can't afford 64-bit Windows Operating System, try the free Linux, e.g. Ubuntu or openSUSE.