Vista and Ram?

BazMcG

Quick Question lads and ladies. Bought a laptop there, it has 2gb installed, i want to put more in, will vista be significantly faster with an extra gig, or should i say, will i notice the difference significantly? Thats 32bit vista btw. cheers Baz

Alzar

I had a HP laptop in my last job. 2Ghz processor & 4Gb RAM.
Have to say it didn't rocket along by any means. Should mention I was running Office 2007 also.

I think Vista is very "clunky", for want of a better word. Maybe Sp1 has improved things, I don't know. Glad to say I'm back on good ol' XP.

Perhaps some of the learned people here may know of some performance tweaks?

Al.

BazMcG

Yeah i am unsure because was reading a few blogs and a guy had said that you wouldnt notice the ram unless you upgraded to a 64bit version of vista, or downgraded to the as you say good oul Xp!

muckwarrior

I upgraded mine from 1GB to 3GB and there's a very noticeable difference. Then again 1GB is a bit low for Vista so the upgrade from 2 may not be so noticeable.

DannyBuoy

AFAIK Vista 32 bit will only recognise up to 3.2GB Ram, with sp1 it'll report you have more (if its installed...) but wont allocate it. So if you can get an extra 1GB ram for handy money go ahead, it all helps.

BKtje

a guy had said that you wouldnt notice the ram unless you upgraded to a 64bit version of vista, or downgraded to the as you say good oul Xp!

32bit can address(use) a TOTAL of 4gb. However this 4gb includes any memory that your graphics card, sound card, ram, cpu etc etc use. In Practice this means that about 3.2gb of system memory can be used. This "problem" is not Vista specific, it occurs in XP too unless you get the 64bit version of either.

Now to answer the question, it depends. If you are running memory intensive programs then yes, you will notice a big difference. If on the other hand you are not, you won't notice as big a difference (on XP wou probably wouldn't notice at all but Vista will use it anyway even if it's just to prefetch more software providing you haveb't disabled that).

Hope that helps

Dartz

Even without a 64 bit OS, I would say the OP would be best going for ther 4GB. It's always better to have 2 equal memory modules, rather than two different sized modules. It's more efficient, especially if you Laptop supports Dual Channel memory. It does make a noticeable difference alright.

BazMcG

Just noticed actually.. I bought a 2gb stick, the laptop has 2 x 1gb sticks in atm but theres only 2 slots so I'm going to replace them with 2 x 2gb sticks (I'll buy another they're cheap). Sound good then? I will be using some software i'm sure for my course at university, and the odd game would be great too so I figure if you guys say it will be noticeable in the more demanding programmes i'll just go for it.

EDIT: Another question. I noticed someone spoke of microsoft office 2007, what's the best package to go for, just for the standard programmes, word, excel etc ? the laptop doesnt come with that installed, i presume there is a simple trial.

AlmightyCushion

It depends on the applications you need. Home and student comes with word, excel and powerpoint. You can get that for around €100 or so. You could also try open office which is a free alternative that can open and save to microsoft office file types so interoperability isn't a problem. I'd try openoffice first and then buy ms office if you need to afterwards.

DannyBuoy

I'd also add, if your used to Office 2003 then get 2007, its a bit of a change, expect a little learning curve and dont expect to be hugely productive on the first day...

BKtje

Sound good then?

Sounds perfect, just don't expect to be able to "use" all 4gb's.
Others have answered your other query.

BazMcG

ok sorted thanks guys for all the advice.