Vista Premium with Aero turned off

[Jon]

What is the minimum memory requirement in Vista Premium if I turn off Aero - is it the as Vista
Basic (512M), as Vista Premium (1M) or somewhere between the two?

Are there any other things that can be adjusted on Vista Premium to reduce the memory requirement?

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Vista's bare minimum (generally) is actually 512 MBs of RAM.

 

[Jon]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Are you saying that turning Aero off does not save any memory?


Vista's bare minimum (generally) is actually 512 MBs of RAM.

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Windows Vista is much more aggressive about caching things in the
background. It will use around half of the available RAM to do so, so if you
through another gigabyte of RAM in there, you'd see around a gig of that
used during idle periods. From what i've heard, Linux and Unix have done
this for years.

When another program requests memory, Vista will happily give it what it
needs at the expense of caching, so that idle memory usage won't affect your
programs and games. So don't fret. If anything, be glad that the memory you
paid for is constantly being used instead of just sitting there.

 

[PhilBiker]

The minimum requiremend for Vista is 512M. I wouldn't run Vista on a PC with
less than a Gig. I'm a big fan of Vista, but if your system has a gig or
less RAM you're better off with XP IMO.

-Phil

 

[non flammable on XP]

Not really much memory...

There is some saved but you are better off turning off services you dont
need...
blackviper has a guide for this
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

make sure you have disabled uneeded startup programs
Start> and in seach type MSCONFIG and then go to the STARTUP tab and disable
all you can.... (with care though.. dont disable antivirus apps!)

there are also many other tweaks you can do to get some juice out of vista..

I have become a master at this.. lol I need to write a tutorial for you guys
soon...

 

[non flammable on XP]

oh, and get a flash drive 4 gigs readyboost compatible and plug it in!

 

[Jon]

Thanks for your comments, that's very helpful.

Presumably Aero makes most of its demands on the graphics card rather than main memory?

I remember seeing the Black Viper site a while back for XP. I didn't realise that it now caters for
Vista too.



oh, and get a flash drive 4 gigs readyboost compatible and plug it in!

 

[Frank]

I have become a master at this..

....sure you have...LOL

lol I need to write a tutorial for you guys

soon...

Well first you actually need to get Vista, install it and then come back
here and learn how to configure it to run properly. IOW's ask us real
Professionals...you know..we're the ones who have been actually using
Vista in a daily productive manner.
Otherwise, best to stick to building those cardboard space ships in your
mom's basement.
That is proly where your true "talent' lies...LOL!
Frank

 

[Frank]

Thanks for your comments, that's very helpful.

The most helpful one thing you could do is to bump your RAM up to at
least 2 GIGS.
Frank.

 

[Jon]

Thanks Frank + non flammable on XP for your suggestions.

I get the feeling from other people that with only 512M of RAM, that quite a bit of tweaking will be
needed, so I will take a look at the Black Viper site - it seems to be well regarded (at least for
XP). It's not actually for me, but for someone else.

I think I go along with the 2G suggestion for Vista Frank - I have a Vista laptop already with
1Gbyte, and it's perfectly usable but not great - even that could do with some tweaking. Laptop
memory wasn't that cheap when I bought it (last March) so I bought one with "only" 1G. Because it
has all its slots filled (two lots of 512M) I think it means I have to throw it away and get two 1G
cards for 2Gbytes. I will have to check memory prices at Crucial. Dell wanted well over £100 extra
(I'm from the UK - double it for US$) for 2G (ie an extra 1G) when I bought my laptop last March,
but I thought at the time that that's where they make their money - by having an enticing price for
the basic laptop, but over-charging for upgrades to it, so I resisted. I suspect that the other big
manufacturers do the same marketing trick.

This doesn't help the person who has a 512M PC, of course (the subject of my original question).

I have become a master at this..

....sure you have...LOL

lol I need to write a tutorial for you guys

soon...

Well first you actually need to get Vista, install it and then come back
here and learn how to configure it to run properly. IOW's ask us real
Professionals...you know..we're the ones who have been actually using
Vista in a daily productive manner.
Otherwise, best to stick to building those cardboard space ships in your
mom's basement.
That is proly where your true "talent' lies...LOL!
Frank

 

[non flammable on XP]

From my tests I have seen something that is worth saying to you..

when you use a glass-enabled (or in other words 3d accelerated gpu enabled)
theme like AERO
the whole desktop responds faster with LESS CPU ussage than with simple
classic theme.

Thats why I have done a tweak on all my production machines.. I have used a
free utility called
vistaglazz http://www.codegazer.com/vistaglazz/ that enables you to use
other themes with vista, then I downloaded and used
2 vista "classic" themes that have been made so that they use the 3d
effects, so now I have the best of both worlds..
a simple clean and uncluttered interface AND the use of the GPU for the
rendering of the desktop

I found the themes at deviantart.com there are 2 of them..

here is one
http://abkend.deviantart.com/art/Vista-AeroClassic-Final-v-1-0-71611722

Hope this gives you some ideas

 

[non flammable on XP]

getting more ram is always the best solution...

But due to your question, I did not say that..

at last for once frank said something that will help a person...

you should consider this a monumental moment.. it seldom happens!

 

[Xenomorph]

I would recommend 1 Gig or more of RAM minimum for Windows Vista regardless
if you use Aero or not.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I would recommend 1 Gig or more of RAM minimum for Windows Vista regardless
if you use Aero or not.

Ditto. And, depending on what applications you run, 2GB is
considerably better for many people.