[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I welcome any suggestions.

Vista is a good operating system if:

1) You have a good video card, and

2) You have lots of RAM.

You need to make sure that your laptop does NOT have an onboard Intel video chip.

You need the video chip to be from someone like ATi, or nVidia.

That was the whole point of the discussion in the Microsoft case - the Intel video chips which they put in the motherboards aren't capable of running Vista.

Only nVidia and ATi are capable of running Vista.

As for the RAM, I'd want at least 1 GB [preferably 2 GB].

And if you can't afford 1 GB, then I'd pass on Vista, on go with XP.

[Salamander]

I have ALL of the above and it still SUCKS.

When I have the time, I’m booting from a USB floppy to install the right SATA drivers necessary to install WinXP Pro on this miserable POS and, hopefully regain both my laptop’s functionality and my sanity.

[ovrtaxt]

My computer has an Ati chip and a Gig of RAM. Still sucks.

[chilepepper]

you should upgrade from Vista to XP — the latter runs up to 10% faster with the same hardware...

[Ignatz]

Vista is a good operating system if:

1) You have a good video card, and
2) You have lots of RAM.

3) You can convince some idiot to trade you a licensed copy of XP Pro for it.

Fixed!

[js1138]

As for the RAM, I'd want at least 1 GB [preferably 2 GB].

Two gigs of RAM from Newegg add $44 to the price of a barebones computer from Newegg.

[pilipo]

QFT

[Woodman]

Here’s my take:
I’m running VISTA Home Premium, 1.5 Core2 Duo w/2mb L2 cache and 866mhz FSB, 3Gb Ram, 160Gb 5400 rpm drive, and an Intel 965 Graphics Chip.

It runs well and although I have had to do some tweaking it is really no better or worse than any of my XP Pro installs.

The biggest issues I have had are with Media Center (a pig that I have never had on XP, so I can’t compare it to anything in my experience).

I would not recommend doing any of the following in today’s market regardless of the OS you choose to run, and especially if you ever want to run Vista: Less than 2Gb Ram, Less than 256Mb system ram dedicated to video, a slower Front Side Bus, or less than 2Mb L2 Cache.

My 2 cents
(FWIW I also had a properly spec-ed ME PC that ran as good as 98, but now I am running XP Pro on it with good results).

[goldstategop]

2 GB RAM is cheap these days. Only $50-60. You can run it with 512 MB but it'll be slow as molasses and crash frequently. Windows Visa is happy with 2 GB of RAM. 4 GB is optimal. I upgraded my RAM this week and the first thing to go was the mouse freezing up after a session.