Vista 64bit, business use - RAM 1 or 2Gb??

[ars20]

Hey there laptop pros,

I'm about to buy a Dell 1501 laptop with AMD X2. I'm planning to run Vista 64bit and use it for MS Office and Visual Studio - basically no games, just business.

Would you recommend 1gb or 2gb of RAM? You can judge from my configuration that I'm not looking for a blazing performance - just trying to make my laptop a good, solid performer.

I just wanted to get an opinion from someone who _actually_ uses Vista.

Thanks!
Arsen

 

[asusman]

You can judge from my configuration that I'm not looking for a blazing performance -

We can tell this by the Dell brand alone.

1 GB will be fine. Stay way from integrated graphics.

 

[ars20]

Thanks, Asusman!!

I haven't used Vista, but I've read a whole lot of conflicting information about memory requirement for running Vista in 64bit mode. So, I really appreciate your help on this!

By the way, your comment about the Dell brand is hillarious. rofl. :lol:

 

[lostandwandering]

Hilarious but true.

About the ram, you will get a different opinion from each person you talk to. Kinda like what I'm about to do. 1 gig would give you okay performance, but I think 2 would be best. I will only tell you to get the 2nd gig if you have the money and are willing to do the upgrade. Otherwise you will be fine with 1. And besides, you could always upgrade it yourself.

 

[tekzor]

Hilarious but true.

About the ram, you will get a different opinion from each person you talk to. Kinda like what I'm about to do. 1 gig would give you okay performance, but I think 2 would be best. I will only tell you to get the 2nd gig if you have the money and are willing to do the upgrade. Otherwise you will be fine with 1. And besides, you could always upgrade it yourself.

I'm running vista premium on the system below.

Testing with
1GB my ram usage was at 44% idle
1.5GB at 33% idle
assuming 2GB 23-30% usage idle.

Not realy a big deal

so if only business and running 2 programs at once, 1GB is perfectly fine.

 

[lostandwandering]

I never said it wouldn't be okay with just 1 gig. My personal choice would be for two. But now reader his OP a little harder, I understand that he is only using it for presentations and such. Sorry if I caused confusion, I was just stating my opinion.

That being said I will revise my original statement.

@ OP: For the types of programs you will be running, Vista 64 bit will run fine on 1 gig of ram.

I stand corrected

 

[tekzor]

I never said it wouldn't be okay with just 1 gig. My personal choice would be for two. But now reader his OP a little harder, I understand that he is only using it for presentations and such. Sorry if I caused confusion, I was just stating my opinion.

That being said I will revise my original statement.

@ OP: For the types of programs you will be running, Vista 64 bit will run fine on 1 gig of ram.

I stand corrected

I dont know why I quoted your post, it was supposed to be a reply. No harm intended ^_~.

Its all good!

 

[lostandwandering]

Oh, okay. Honest mistake. It happens to the best of it and to quote you "It's all good".

 

[ZappCatt]

Any particular reason you are going to run x64 if you are only going to be using 1 or 2 GB of RAM?

For any Vista(especially on a notebook) I would suggest 2GB. Vista tries to make the most efficient use of memory as it can..so if you give it more memory it will actually take advantage of it..unlike earlier versions of Windows.

Yes, I have used Vista..on machines from 1GB up to 4Gb, both x86 and x64.