Minimum ram req to install XP/ & Pro

[Guest]

I have always thought that XP & XP/Pro needed at least 256 mb of ram to work,
recently looking in ebay for a laptop i see many installed with XP & Pro. App
192 mb of ram is this enough to run XP for word pro/ and internet no games.
Thank you.

 

[Richard in AZ]

I have always thought that XP & XP/Pro needed at least 256 mb of ram to work,
recently looking in ebay for a laptop i see many installed with XP & Pro. App
192 mb of ram is this enough to run XP for word pro/ and internet no games.
Thank you.

Windows XP will load and operate with 128 MB of RAM, but it does not run, it walks.
Performance is very poor at 128 MB fair at 256 MB and great at 512 MB, It may work for what you
want to do with 192 MB.
RAM is cheap and you could add more after you get it. (But on ebay, buyer beware!)

 

[Guest]

Thank you kind sir well noted.

Windows XP will load and operate with 128 MB of RAM, but it does not run, it walks.
Performance is very poor at 128 MB fair at 256 MB and great at 512 MB, It may work for what you
want to do with 192 MB.
RAM is cheap and you could add more after you get it. (But on ebay, buyer beware!)

 

[Plato]

I have always thought that XP & XP/Pro needed at least 256 mb of ram to work,

At least 256 ram to work "properly". Note that your video card may use
64 or 128 of your onboard ram. So that's one reason people say put at
least 512 in t make XP work "properly".

recently looking in ebay for a laptop i see many installed with XP & Pro. App
192 mb of ram is this enough to run XP for word pro/ and internet no games.

Personally, I wouldn't buy a laptop on ebay. I got my latest laptop from
Dell for $499. It plays DVD movies, does the WWW and email, Thats all I
needed it for.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have always thought that XP & XP/Pro needed at least 256 mb of ram to work,
recently looking in ebay for a laptop i see many installed with XP & Pro. App
192 mb of ram is this enough to run XP for word pro/ and internet no games.
Thank you.

It's not a matter of how much you need to work, but a matter of how
much you need for acceptable performance.

How much RAM you need is *not* a one-size-fits-all situation. You get
good performance if the amount of RAM you have keeps you from using
the page file, and that depends on what apps you run. Most people
running a typical range of business applications find that somewhere
around 256-384MB works well, others need 512MB. Almost anyone will see
poor performance with less than 256MB. Some people, particularly those
doing things like editing large photographic images, can see a
performance boost by adding even more than 512MB--sometimes much more.

192MB is marginal for most people. I've seen some people report
adequate performance with that amount, and others poor performance.
Since your requirements seem to be light, it *may* just be adequate
for you (but will certainly not be great).

But be aware that many laptops have on-motherboard video and share
their main memory with the video subsystem. If that's the case, that
192MB may effectively be only 128MB, and that is *definitely*
inadequate.

You should also consider the possibility of buying such a computer, if
the price is right, and then upgrading the RAM if necessary.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I have always thought that XP & XP/Pro needed at least 256 mb of ram to
work,
recently looking in ebay for a laptop i see many installed with XP & Pro.
App
192 mb of ram is this enough to run XP for word pro/ and internet no
games.
Thank you.

There are a number of reasons why this would not be a good choice.

First, that's nowhere near enough RAM for XP to run. It will crawl,
instead.

Second, a laptop that has that little RAM is an older model and probably
won't allow expansion to any reasonable amount of memory.

Third, the most expensive and most likely component to fail on a laptop is
the display. You have no way of knowing the condition of the display.

If you spend a little time looking at ads for newer laptops, you'll find
that prices have plummetted. That's because display manufacturers have been
able to significantly reduce costs with better production yields.

So, if you're looking at a laptop, seriously consider a new one. You'll be
much, much happier with the results, and while it may be a few hundred
dollars more, it won't be thousands. And, you will have a real warranty.

One thing you really need to be aware of when looking at such systems is
reinstall / restore media.

Many manufacturers do not provide reinstall media, but do provide a method
for you to make it. It's really, really important for you to actually do
this! Make the disks and put them somewhere safe, where they won't be
lost.

Some manufacturers use a "recovery partition", which means that the files to
fix the machine are on a hidden partition on the hard disk. This is a
fundamentally bad idea, as one of the reasons you'd need to use the
partition is that the drive fails - and they do fail. But if the drive
fails, *you have no access to the recovery partition* and are, in technical
parlance, screwed. And you will not be able to do a "repair install" of
XP, which is not uncommonly needed.

I would recommend not accepting such a machine, and telling the salesperson,
the vendor and the manufacturer why - in writing, not email. Let them know
why they lost the sale. This arrangement saves them perhaps two dollars,
and can cost you hundreds later when you have to buy a new hard disk AND a
new XP license.

If you have no choice but to accept the machine, there is a way to protect
yourself. What you need to do is make an image of the complete drive to
DVD media, and set that aside. Then, when the drive finally fails, you
can restore from that image to a new hard disk, and have it all available in
short order. Examples of tools to do this are Acronis TrueImage and
Norton Ghost - there are others.

HTH
-pk

 

[David Abbott]

I have a desktop that has Windows XP Home and it only had 128 MB of RAM. If
does work, but not the way that it would if it had more memory. It is
important as stated to make the recovery CD's if they are not provided but
the partition is provided. Do it as soon as you get a new computer out of
the box. At least you have something should you need to reinstall windows.

There are a lot of new laptops that have much more memory and will work
better that are well under $1000 dollars. Dell always has specials. I
would suspect that other manufacturers do the same.

 

[Guest]

Thank you all for you reply`s all well noted and etched inside one`s brain.

 

[Plato]

The niggle is Ken, that people buy a pc with as much ram as they think
they need for XP for their current uses. Then decide to install the
latest pagemaker which will give you out of memory errors if you dont
have at least 1 gig of ram installed.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The niggle is Ken, that people buy a pc with as much ram as they think
they need for XP for their current uses. Then decide to install the
latest pagemaker which will give you out of memory errors if you dont
have at least 1 gig of ram installed.

You are pointing out that people's needs change, and that's certainly
true. However one can always add more RAM later, if it turns out that
their needs have changed. As far as I'm concerned, it makes no sense
to waste the money to install more than is needed today, based on the
idea that you *may* need more later.

Yes, you may need more later. But you also may not. I recommend
installing more if and when you do, not before.