People hate on Vista and 64bit OSs because of driver support. But most of these people tried using Vista or x64 stuff when it was first coming out. Now, Vista supports just as much hardware as XP, but most people fail to figure that out.

Now everyone is hyping Windows 7. Even at work we only support XP but our owners are going to skip Vista like everyone skipped ME now that Vista is pretty stable.

Need 4GB? Have you ever checked the computer's performance in task manager...you don't really NEED all the extra RAM unless its caching to the HDD.

 

I just got a laptop with 4gb ram running vista 64b. So far its been great and trouble free. I think I still love my xp. But running Vista for the last 2 years in 32b has been just fine. I think vista carrys too many bells and whistles myself. But least it will be easy for me to make the upgrade switch when the new os comes out. As I'm sure it will be based more off Vista then XP or ME.

 

Are you using BootCamp for that?

Not much of a Mac guy since my last Mac Classic, but I was a PM for a senior project running Forensics Tool Kit and Encase on MacBooks BootCamping XP compared to a PC with the exact same hardware and specs and the Mac ran it faster and cleaner.

 

My wife is a graphic designer, she has to use adobe's premium suite, which means lots of memory... programs like Photoshop, premiere, etc... So she needs the memory.

 

Yes, photoshop does use a lot of memory. Definitely do more than 2GBs

 

That is not necessarily the case. A properly set up Vista machine works quite well.

Although... I'm not really one to talk, considering the fact that I've banned Vista from use at my company, but I have been using Vista x64 with 4GB of RAM at home on my gaming rig for almost a year and a half now.

 

Memory limitations are inherent to your CPU and your operating system. A 32 bit CPU can only run 32 bit operating systems, and therefore is limited to about 3.2GB of system memory. A 64 bit CPU running a 64 bit operating system can use quite a bit more RAM; XP 64's limit is 128GB of RAM.

If your wife runs graphics applications, you should load her up with at least 4GB of RAM. Depending on the OS, even just turning the computer on with no applications could take up to 700MB of available system memory. Add in a couple hundred more MB for a browser, another hundred for a word processor, and so on and so on.

Just be glad you don't have to **** with memory managers, conventional memory, extended memory, etc. Those days were a nightmare, constantly tweaking a system running MS-DOS to try to get it to have as much conventional memory available as possible. Ugh. To hell with CONFIG.SYS, HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.SYS.

 

Another problem you may run into with a 64bit system is software compatibility. Some software doesn't let you run or even install it onto a 64bit platform if it was made for a 32bit platform, for example: some programs let you install on XP or Vista 32bit, but won't let you install on XP or Vista 64bit. Why, I'm not too sure, but I've run into the problem once in a while.

 

[cue the quote that may or may not be attributed to bill gates]

"who needs more than 640k?"

 

I've seen that more with device drivers. Beyond that, I've never really had a problem with 32 bit emulation on a 64 bit OS.

 

I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time... I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
-- Bill Gates, Bloomberg Business News (19 January 1996); also WIRED (16 January 1997)

Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement — I said the opposite of that.
-- Bill Gates, U.S. News & World Report (20 August 2001)

 

Definitely. A couple of friends recently got Vista-equipped machines and they say they run great.

I agree with the comments that Vista is kinda bloated with special effects etc. but I think that is the natural progression. Just imagine how fast the original MS-DOS would run on a current processor!

 

I repartitioned the drive with the bootcamp setup. But I then repartitioned the "XP" space to install Windows 7 and OpenSuse 11. I'm using a boot utility called reFit to select OS at boot. reFit also has utilities to keep sync between the Windows and OS-X/Linux boot records.

I have been debating installing VmWare instead and just running the OSs concurrently, but I really need more RAM before I can do that.

Windows 7 is running really well so far. It found drivers for the Mac's graphics system and wired/wireless networking without any problem - though there are no hotkey controls for the screen brightness yet. The only notable missing item is I have a Mac bluetooth mouse. Win7 sees the bluetooth device, but doesn't have a driver to load yet. The UI looks very clean. I think they are deliberately making it look streamlined compared to Vista.

 

1)Vista 64x is not stable at all, its got massive issues with print drivers, bluetooth drivers, and video drivers. We have 2 vista 64 ultimate machines here at work and ive had to rebuild them 4 times now, due to massive problems in the OS. There is also some internal problems with how it addresses cashe that causes lockups and the BSOD for no apparent reason...and no patch to fix it.

2)Windows 7 is FANTASTIC! thats all I can say about that.

3)Extra ram is not just for that. Often programs will "stretch out" if they find extra space to do so. Programs like word and outlook run much better when there is tons of space for them. Most games also will run faster when they can pull commands in from ram rather than have to go to the HDD for them.


Now that said, XP pro has a limit of 3gig of ram before it must go into switching.
XP Pro X64 has a 8gig limit
Vista ultimate x64 has a 16gig limit
Windows 7 full release will have a 32gig limit. (4x8 DDR3-4-5 2.2.2.3)

 

The only problem I've had with Vista x64 for almost a year and a half now is it randomly "forgets" that I have a DVD-R drive. Stability has never been an issue, and I have literally never had it blue screen on me.

I'm running an instance of Win7 on my VMware VI3 cluster and I agree. It's pretty awesome.

I'm not sure what you mean by "go into switching," but here are the physical memory limits per Microsoft (first line is x32 and second is x64):

Windows Vista Ultimate
4 GB
128 GB
Windows Vista Enterprise
4 GB
128 GB
Windows Vista Business
4 GB
128 GB
Windows Vista Home Premium
4 GB
16 GB
Windows Vista Home Basic
4 GB
8 GB
Windows Vista Starter
1 GB
Not applicable

Windows XP
4 GB
128 GB
Windows XP Starter Edition
512 MB
Not applicable