Vista Home Basic enquiry

[poachedeggs]

I am thinking of running Vista Home Basic on a six-year-old 1.3 ghz/
250 gb/ 512 mb/ nVidia GeForce fx5200 desktop machine. I have kind of
tested it by installing a Vista Home Premium recovery disc on it and
leaving Aero and the sidebar off. Is there a _lot_ more to their
difference than that? It's not performing too badly (and can do the
aero glass though I'm not fussed about it), briefly using the
sidebar's cpu and ram gadget shows very low cpu useage and 66% of the
RAM. A DVD and media files play fine, OpenOffice 3 opens and works
fine, youtube videos play normally but choppily on a MySpace page.
It is slightly laggy for some things, e.g. drawing some icon-filled
menus/ folders; would that indicate Home Basic would be too? I see
from the Microsoft site that this machine falls within the Home Basic
requirements. The motherboard won't take more RAM, apparently; I
don't know enough about processors to know if it can take a newer
one. I didn't like XP, W2K's only sold after a fashion by con-men on
eBay nowadays and I'm at the end of a trying month-long dalliance with
various Linuxes, hence the interest in this purchase.

Thanks.

 

[Tyro]

You need a more powerful machine to run Vista and Windows 7. Time to bite
the bullet, buy a new machine with tons of power to last you into the
future.
Buy the biggest and best 64 bit machine you can afford.

Tyro

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Yes, Vista will install on 512MB of ram, but that doesn't mean it's a good
idea. I find that 2GB tends to be a sweet spot, though YMMV depending on how
you use the system. What is the motherboard make and model? Even early XP
era systems generally supported 2GB or more of ram.

I find that the amount of memory and its speed is far more critical than the
processor speed.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[P. Jayant]

I also tried out Vista Home Edition for a period of 6 to 8 weeks in 2008 on
my old PC with Intel(R) 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Controller -
27B8. I had to retract to XP because it was impossible to make Vista work
for all the applications I can work under XP with the old PC.

I struggled through the various Vista Newsgroups and suggestions for
overcoming problems with the software of Microsoft and others like Nero for
CD/DVD authoring and burning, Cakewalk for playing MIDI, Winamp for mp3
files etc. But I found to my disappointment that no drivers were available
for the versions of graphic, sound and video capture cards which were
working fine with XP. I would have had to spend hundreds of dollars to
replace them so that compatible drivers and later versions of CD/DVD burning
and other software were available. Even worse was the need to change even
the Suzuki Synthesizer I have since I could not find any connector which has
8-pin connectors for MIDI-In and MIDI-out at the Synthesizer end and USB at
the motherboard or a new Soundcard end.

I suppose the only practical solution is to change the whole PC.

P. Jayant

 

[Tyro]

Gab is a typo. 4GB is what I meant.

What is GAB?

It makes sense because Vista actually uses RAM, unlike XP. 16 GB RAM
would make no difference to XP, it would *still* be grinding the disk
every time you clicked something.

I have 8 GB here. Going from 4 to 8 was a noticeable difference, much to
my surprise. 64 bit Vista, of course.

 

[Earle Horton]

I just put this deal for $152.99 in my wife's old XP machine. It really sat
up and took notice. It's Vista-ready now, but she doesn't like Vista. The
only tool needed was a number two phillips. After stripping the old mobo, I
found I had enough memory to put 1 GB in my old socket 370. Vista is a real
cpu hog, and in my admittedly limited experience you really do want dual
core. If you're a hobbyist you might want to try 64-bit too.

http://www.directron.com/holidaycombo3.html

Changing out a motherboard is not a big deal, especially after about ten
times. Just check the specs, make sure the new one has all the features you
want and that it will fit in your old case. You might need a new power
supply but they are cheap too.

With a six year old 1.3 GHz machine check the mobo specs. It just might
take 1 GB which would be a great improvement for XP SP3, but still not up to
running Vista.

Cheers,

Earle

 

[the wharf rat]

Even XP will struggle with that hardware.

Nonsense.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Nonsense.

Indeed. Utter garbage.

ss.

 

[poachedeggs]

Crumbs, you people are passionate. Anyway, according to a .pdf I
found of the computer - it's a Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic T with D1371
mainboard - the maximum RAM is 512 mb. When I had a second hand
Compaq deskpro before it, I learnt that the manufacturer's specified
RAM could be exceeded, so maybe the .pdf is a bit too contemporary to
when the pc was new and I can do that again? At the time of the pdf,
this machine had a 1.2 ghz processor. Money is tight, so if you can
tell me that it should take 1 GB - annoyingly the D1381 can take 2 gb
- I will get 512 mb at a time off someone on eBay with 100% feedback.
It is of course 133 mhz SDRAM, there is a 256 mb chip in each slot. I
can at least then revisit the Vista recovery disk to consider Vista
Home Basic and some of the laggy Linuxes, eg Mandriva, which would
have been everything I need if not for the RAM-related lag.

I do actually have a new laptop too, but I bought the other machine
for other tasks and am experimenting with replacing as much as I can a
bit at a time with a view to a later rebuild with a newer motherboard
etc, just as a fun, hobby interest thing.

Thanks for any further views/ facts.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I am thinking of running Vista Home Basic on a six-year-old 1.3 ghz/
250 gb/ 512 mb/ nVidia GeForce fx5200 desktop machine. I have kind of
tested it by installing a Vista Home Premium recovery disc on it and
leaving Aero and the sidebar off. Is there a _lot_ more to their
difference than that? It's not performing too badly

What you perceive as "not too badly" may be very different from my
perception, but let me make the following comments:

1. How much RAM you need for decent performance depends very greatly
on what apps you run. However 512MB is inadequate for almost everyone.

2. In general, for almost everyone, good performance with Vista starts
with 2GB of RAM. More than that is better for some people, but less is
unacceptable for almost everyone.

3. If you motherboard won't take more RAM than 512MB, I would scrap
the plans to install Vista on it. Either forget about Vista or buy a
new motherboard (or entire computer).

 

[RalfG]

Sometimes the manufacturer's specs are conservative. Have you looked for any
outstanding BIOS updates? Vista upgrade advisor should say if there are any
serious problems with the mobo that might make it not worthwhile to bother.
If you can run the Vista performance index from Home Premium that will give
you some idea of the performance deficiencies.

On another note, I've been working with Vista Basic on a new computer with
1GB RAM and the practical differences between it and Home Premium are not
very significant. Vista Basic lacks Aero, Media Center and a couple or three
of the games that are bundled with Home Premium. The other few items can
probably be replaced with 3rd party software if you actually needed them.
The PC I have has shared video RAM so the OS really only has a bit over
800KB to work with. Not spectacular performance but quite workable. I find
what can noticeably bog down a system is the AV software. If you can find an
AV that puts a light load on the system or even run without one, using Vista
with only 512K RAM might not be too torturous.


Crumbs, you people are passionate. Anyway, according to a .pdf I
found of the computer - it's a Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic T with D1371
mainboard - the maximum RAM is 512 mb. When I had a second hand
Compaq deskpro before it, I learnt that the manufacturer's specified
RAM could be exceeded, so maybe the .pdf is a bit too contemporary to
when the pc was new and I can do that again? At the time of the pdf,
this machine had a 1.2 ghz processor. Money is tight, so if you can
tell me that it should take 1 GB - annoyingly the D1381 can take 2 gb
- I will get 512 mb at a time off someone on eBay with 100% feedback.
It is of course 133 mhz SDRAM, there is a 256 mb chip in each slot. I
can at least then revisit the Vista recovery disk to consider Vista
Home Basic and some of the laggy Linuxes, eg Mandriva, which would
have been everything I need if not for the RAM-related lag.

I do actually have a new laptop too, but I bought the other machine
for other tasks and am experimenting with replacing as much as I can a
bit at a time with a view to a later rebuild with a newer motherboard
etc, just as a fun, hobby interest thing.

Thanks for any further views/ facts.

 

[Earle Horton]

You don't want to be running Vista on a six year old mobo with 1 GB maximum
possible memory. I have a P6VEM of that vintage that runs happily on 1 GB,
but of course that doesn't mean that your Fujitsu-Siemens will do the same.
Why buy memory from some unknown on Ebay, when Crucial.com has deals as good
as anybody and a warranty too?

Earle

Crumbs, you people are passionate. Anyway, according to a .pdf I
found of the computer - it's a Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic T with D1371
mainboard - the maximum RAM is 512 mb. When I had a second hand
Compaq deskpro before it, I learnt that the manufacturer's specified
RAM could be exceeded, so maybe the .pdf is a bit too contemporary to
when the pc was new and I can do that again? At the time of the pdf,
this machine had a 1.2 ghz processor. Money is tight, so if you can
tell me that it should take 1 GB - annoyingly the D1381 can take 2 gb
- I will get 512 mb at a time off someone on eBay with 100% feedback.
It is of course 133 mhz SDRAM, there is a 256 mb chip in each slot. I
can at least then revisit the Vista recovery disk to consider Vista
Home Basic and some of the laggy Linuxes, eg Mandriva, which would
have been everything I need if not for the RAM-related lag.

I do actually have a new laptop too, but I bought the other machine
for other tasks and am experimenting with replacing as much as I can a
bit at a time with a view to a later rebuild with a newer motherboard
etc, just as a fun, hobby interest thing.

Thanks for any further views/ facts.

 

[the wharf rat]

Home Basic and some of the laggy Linuxes, eg Mandriva, which would

Try a different eg lightweight window manager if you need an X
desktop. That's what using all the cycles.

 

[the wharf rat]

Why buy memory from some unknown on Ebay, when Crucial.com has deals as good
as anybody and a warranty too?

Cause crucial is NOT cheap. Good, but not cheap. Especially
for no longer produced parts.

 

[Earle Horton]

Cause crucial is NOT cheap. Good, but not cheap. Especially
for no longer produced parts.

We're talking about 512MB PC133 SDRAM here, which Crucial has for $55.99
each. That's $111.98 for a pair, and I've seen mobo, cpu, memory and fan
deals for about the same. Still, the OP is convinced that his old mobo is
up to it.

Earle

 

[Earle Horton]

You think $112 for 1 GB of PC133 is a good price? Do you work for
Crucial or something? You can get this on eBay for under $20 including
shipping.

It was a great price when I bought it. ;^)

Seriously, why even bother.

Earle

 

[Earle Horton]

It was a great price when I bought it. ;^)

Seriously, why even bother.

Another thought, if you want to get two memory sticks from Ebay or anywhere
that is all right with me but you might want to make sure that they are
identical parts "just in case". If you're thinking of putting Vista on a
computer you're probably thinking of keeping it for a while, and $112 for
something that works is probably a better deal than $20 for something that
doesn't.

I am not saying that Ebay parts won't work, but there was this one guy who
sold me stuff with a different part number on it than was advertised, and
swore up and down it would work. Of course it didn't.

Earle

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Another thought, if you want to get two memory sticks from Ebay or
anywhere that is all right with me but you might want to make sure that
they are identical parts "just in case". If you're thinking of putting
Vista on a computer you're probably thinking of keeping it for a while,
and $112 for something that works is probably a better deal than $20
for something that doesn't.

I am not saying that Ebay parts won't work, but there was this one guy
who sold me stuff with a different part number on it than was
advertised, and swore up and down it would work. Of course it didn't.

I've bought second-hand (used) Crucial, Kingston and Mushkin RAM, on eBay,
for older desktop computers and laptops. They still come with the lifetime
guarantee. It is not worth wasting time with cheap, unbranded memory -
especially on eBay. A lot of cheaper memory is actually made at the same
placed as the expensive branded stuff, but it graded as substandard. When
you buy from Crucial, Kingston or Mushkin, you are guaranteed Grade-A Micron
chips.

ss.