Posted on 03/02/2007 8:38:09 PM PST by Swordmaker
HEres an article similar to the other article I read.
http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/vintagevista.ars/2
Very informative, some horror story some good.
snippet:
Momma's five-year-old workhorse (July 2001)
"Upgrading into the future"
We were extremely impressed with Vista on the five-year-old Gateway. This machine has been a dedicated Sims game machine for the last several years, and has modest hardware as a result. It was originally equipped with 128MB of PC133 and a Radeon 7000. It is now equipped with 512MB of RAM and a NVIDIA FX5200 GPU with 128MB of VRAM. These are bargain-basement upgrades and have allowed a relatively modest PC the ability to run Vista with all the fancy effects turned on, and performance was reasonable given the age of the machine.
While the Gateway had the graphical muscle to support all of Vista's capabilities, the system itself was usually taxed before the graphics system showed signs of heavy lifting. For example, hard drive performance was again an issue, making the system sluggish at times as Vista pummeled the hard drive. It was nowhere near as bad as the ThinkPad, but on occasion there would be notable disc thrashing and performance dips, such that one was rewarded for keeping as few programs running as possible.
This wasn't a big surprise, however. The Performance Index results on the Gateway made it clear to us that 512MB of RAM was not optimal, and with a Microsoft OS, suboptimal RAM means that your disc subsystem will be busy with paging. Was this the red-haired step child? Inside was 20GB hard drive spinning at 5400rpm on a UDMA100 interface.
Unlike the ThinkPad, the Gateway was usable, and its I/O problems can be almost completely blamed on the RAM. How much RAM you should have is a matter of taste, but you'll look like you're bringing boxed wine to the party if you have less than 1GB. Just don't do it.
It is clear that this kind of machine can run Vista. Whether or not it's worth the money to upgrade a machine like this is a subjective question, but we would recommend that you save your money. Vista will not outperform Windows XP on a box like this, so one must really consider the merits of upgrading older hardware.
Read more at the link.
Thanks!! Interesting! The pundits say few will upgrade to Vista. Few meaning 10% is my guess. But Vista will spread because all new Windows computers have Vista. No more XP machines at Best Buy. I would say the hardware will work great with any Vista machine at Best Buy etc. The configurations were tested and some hardware SIMPLY not used due to incompatibility
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Your typical PC's hardware only has a lifespan of about five years anyways. Once you get to a certain point you have to replace everything. Mac user conveniently fail to mention that the new OS coming out from Apple wont work on anything older than a G4 meaning lots of Apple users who want to have the latest and greatest from Apple have to replace there entire system. Not saying its bad but thats reality as OS's mature older technologies get left behind.
Anyways back to my main point on upgrades, simply put there will be a natural migration to Vista because consumers will replace there computer and choose that path as an upgrade rather then trying to trump up there old computer to Vista requirements. Besides Dell,Gateway and other build PC's so cheaply now that it really is cheaper to buy a whole computer with the OS installed.
The way I look at it, its no different than any other OS release since 95. If OS's are going to advance, technology has to go along with it. 512mb is the recommended for XP, which is a 5 year old OS. This is a new OS, 512mb more isnt that bad of a number. Heck I only had 256megs when XP pro came out by the time I switched to Vista I had 2 gigs in my XP Pro box. Frankly memory is so cheap right now all PC's should just come out with 1 gig minimum, 2 gigs would be better.
I suspected as much
Because my current system works just fine under windows XP Pro, plus I never update to the newest OS until it's had 2 to 3 years running time.
I refuse to be part of Microsoft's perma-beta-test (otherwise called users)
I'll wait until they have it stable
Did a test of Vista XP on a new laptop (imaged the drive that had Vista Basic on it so I could restore it later, and Vista Basic *definitely* ran faster than XP and handled memory usage better...with the caveat that I did have 1 GB of RAM.
Quite happy with Vista Basic since it came with the computer. Might be less so if I was paying for an upgrade. Just like after XP's release, you do need to be wary of driver issues for awhile (or wait).
Today I took out my hard drive that has already has Vista on it, put hard drive into my computer. My "Windows experience" is 1. Due to my graphics which are at 1. This drags down my other Vista numbers for memory processor and hard drive which get a 4
Vista measures 5 computer components and your lowest number (1 for me) is your "Windows experience". To be fair this is with a 64mb graphics card, not integrated graphics on the motherboard
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