Upgrade to Vista Home Premium worth it?

[morefifemusicanyone]

I have been using Vista Ultimate 64-bit for around six months. It runs great. Vista is a dog on an average system though.

The primary reason I use Vista is because I have 8 gigs of ram, which xp won't recognize.

Unless you need it for hardware reasons or are willing to upgrade your hardware to use it, don't bother. XP is still a great OS. Or just switch to Linux.

I would say min of 4gigs of RAM for Vista and a decent Vid Card.

[Poriggity]

I currently am running Vista Basic that came with this laptop with 1 gig of memory, and was curious if the upgrade from Basic to Home Premium was worth it. If this laptop had XP on it, I wouldn't be asking this question, because I would be sticking with XP.
Scott

[madurolover]

Originally Posted by morefifemusicanyone

I have been using Vista Ultimate 64-bit for around six months. It runs great. Vista is a dog on an average system though.

The primary reason I use Vista is because I have 8 gigs of ram, which xp won't recognize.

Unless you need it for hardware reasons or are willing to upgrade your hardware to use it, don't bother. XP is still a great OS. Or just switch to Linux.

I would say min of 4gigs of RAM for Vista and a decent Vid Card.

Like I said, I hve been running it for about a year with NO problems. I only have 2 gigs of RAM in my machine and it runs really fast. Of course I have it tweaked so that services I do not need are not running except on demand.

[Kneo]

I run Home Premium and I like it, I only have 2 gig and it runs a little slow. I recommend if you do get it to have atleast 3 gig if not more. I plan to upgrade to 4 soon.

[morefifemusicanyone]

Originally Posted by madurolover

Like I said, I hve been running it for about a year with NO problems. I only have 2 gigs of RAM in my machine and it runs really fast. Of course I have it tweaked so that services I do not need are not running except on demand.

I have used it on systems with the services tweaked and only 2 gigs of ram. For me, it runs too slow. You can always disable Aero though for a nice speed boost.

Also, some users may not be willing or capable to tweak Vista to get it to run at a decent speed.

[mugwump]

I follow the same rule I have since my DOS days -- I don't make major operating system upgrades on exisiting hardware. My 9 year old desktop (powers my MAME arcade machine) runs Win98, my 5 year old desktop runs XP, and my new laptop runs Vista. Trying to get old hardware to play nice with a new OS is a losing battle. That being said since you're already running Vista moving up to Home Premium shouldn't cause any issues if Media Center is that important to you.

[heavyd]

Originally Posted by Kneo

I run Home Premium and I like it, I only have 2 gig and it runs a little slow. I recommend if you do get it to have atleast 3 gig if not more. I plan to upgrade to 4 soon.

I'm not an IT expert, but I think Vista 32 only recognizes 3.3 GB of memory. If cost is an issue, don't bother with more than 3 GB. I may be wrong and if so, I'm sure someone will correct me

[mels95yj]

Originally Posted by heavyd

I'm not an IT expert, but I think Vista 32 only recognizes 3.3 GB of memory. If cost is an issue, don't bother with more than 3 GB. I may be wrong and if so, I'm sure someone will correct me

Actually, I'm pretty sure all current 32-bit Windows applications has a 4GB limit. Switching to 64-bit will get you over the 4GB hump.

I switched us to Vista where I work last year when we bought new laptops. After the initial moans and groans of learning something new, most people actually prefer Vista over XP. As far as Aero, the best thing is being able to see a preview of the open window when hovering over the items in your Start bar. The 3D tiling was cool for about a day, then it got old. Just my $.02.

Mel

[morefifemusicanyone]

Originally Posted by mels95yj

Actually, I'm pretty sure all current 32-bit Windows applications has a 4GB limit. Switching to 64-bit will get you over the 4GB hump.

I switched us to Vista where I work last year when we bought new laptops. After the initial moans and groans of learning something new, most people actually prefer Vista over XP. As far as Aero, the best thing is being able to see a preview of the open window when hovering over the items in your Start bar. The 3D tiling was cool for about a day, then it got old. Just my $.02.

Mel

That's correct to the best of my knowledge as well, which is why I went x64. A lot of people seemed scared of x64 vista compatibility issues, but post-sp1 I have had no difficulties.

[Poriggity]

Thanks for all the input.. I still haven't made a full decision on this. To do it right, I'd need put another gig of memory in and then upgrade, and like anything like this, I am still a little nervous about all my files being in tact once I did do the upgrade...
Scott

[morefifemusicanyone]

Originally Posted by Poriggity

Thanks for all the input.. I still haven't made a full decision on this. To do it right, I'd need put another gig of memory in and then upgrade, and like anything like this, I am still a little nervous about all my files being in tact once I did do the upgrade...
Scott

External Hard Drive FTW!

Make a restorable image with ghost or some such thing before you upgrade.

Or even a flash drive will do it if you are just concerned about your documents.

I have everything backed to an external HD and my documents backed to a 16 GB flash drive as well. I am a little paranoid after learning the hard way several times.

[Hermit]

I've been sticking to XP Pro for new machines,
but before long they'll probably stop installing it on new machines.

We'll be stuck with Vista and those f'n curlycue lightbulbs.