Need to upgrade RAM

[dsilva]

Hi,

i would like to install Windows Vista on my laptop but i don't think it would work well with the 512 MB memory i have on it.
what are your suggestions.

i appreciate your replies

Thanks,
Rosario

[picch]

I would suggest an absolute minimum of 1GB, 2GB if you have the extra cash.
What kind of laptop do you have? That will be the deciding factor on what type of RAM you can purchase. In terms of brands, I'm a fan of Corsair or Kingston

[dparm]

1GB is fine for the basics. 2GB will make it run like a dream (I speak from experience).

[moser]

Wasn't there a website that at least Matt used a couple of times at work to find what type of RAM was needed for a computer? I think it might have been done by Crucial...not positive however.

[dcv]

http://www.crucial.com/index.asp

Yes, Crucial has a "memory advisor" tool on their site to find the proper Crucial RAM to put in your system. It only finds compatible Crucial-branded RAM, though.

Still, Crucial is a top-quality RAM manufacturer, and going with them is not a bad idea. Just make sure to purchase from a third-party *cough Newegg cough* to save some cash.

I run Vista on a machine with only 512MB of RAM, and I don't think that it's offputting at all - performance is more or less the same as running XP on the same machine (maybe a hair slower). However, you may want more RAM to run Vista for this reason - Vista has a great feature called SuperFetch that really benefits from having more RAM.


SuperFetch prioritizes the programs you're currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often, at what times of day that applications are used and intelligently preloading these into memory. This also improves performance in situations where running an anti-virus scan or back-up utility would result in otherwise recently-used information being paged out to disk, or disposed from in-memory caches, resulting in lengthy delays when a user comes back to their computer after a period of non-use.

SuperFetch basically preloads applications and whatnot into memory when it thinks you're going to use them.