Minimum Specs for laptop??

phog

What are the minimum specs required for laptop using Vistaas the OS?

My neighbours daughter is looking around at "bricks & mortor" shops and I want to give her some info around what might/might not be a bargain.
She is not a gamer so she will be using it mainly for study/projects in uni, internet/emailing.

If someone could list the various specs from lowest to max it would be much appreciated.

Also, what makes are good and what are best avoided?

She is currently looking at an Acer and a Toshiba in Soundstore but she doesn't know what specs are on either.

eamonnq

Best thing to do in my opinion is pick up a cheap second hand one from adverts.ie (like the one I am selling!!).

Seriously though if she only needs a laptop for basic use I would advise paying about 300 for a second hand one, no point in wasting money on high-spec laptop that won't get used to its full capability.

Why does it need to use VISTA?

phog

eamonnq wrote:

Best thing to do in my opinion is pick up a cheap second hand one from adverts.ie (like the one I am selling!!).

Seriously though if she only needs a laptop for basic use I would advise paying about 300 for a second hand one, no point in wasting money on high-spec laptop that won't get used to its full capability.

Why does it need to use VISTA?

They probably believe that they will have more fallback if they buy a new one.

She doesn't need Vista but that seems to be only what's on offer right now - is XP still available on new Laptops?

TerrorFirmer

For running Vista for basic tasks ideally you'd want 1gb of ram minimum with at least Ati or Nvidia integrated video. Most laptops feature video strong enough to handle vista easily, even the cheapest ones nowadays, but watch out for older stock with the GMA950 or VIA chips. The CPU in any modern laptop shouldn't really be a factor.

Saruman

Check out the vostro 1000 from dell. Im using one right now. Cheap, comes with Vista Business and a very good laptop.
If you look for my vostro 1000 thread you will see the specs i got, how much and how i get over 7 hours of battery life.

techman07

1 Gig of memory is the recomended for vista, steer her away from the Acer, crap quality and the service, well just search on Acer here !
As I said before, I am a Tosh fan so biased but never had a problem, go for ever.

goodluck

fret_wimp

from running vista for more than a year, i personally wouldnt run on anything below 3Ghz, preferably Dual core, and definately not below 2Gb of ram. Vista was , after startup with no additional apps running, taking up 72% of the 2gb of ram in my laptop! after a few days figuring out what services i could do without and disabling them, it now takes up 35% of my 3gb's just after start up. Its hungry. very hungry.