Vista on a 512MB system

Sagalout

Sagalout

Sagalout

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Hi guys, hoping some of you can help.

I havent touched vista yet as I'm still happy running XP, but my mum just bought a new ACER pc. Its a nice little unit for the price, but it came with Vista Home Basic. I set it up for her, but my god its slow! The spec is obviously to blame - Sempron 3200, 512MB RAM.

Thing is, whilst I'm going to try and persuade her to buy some extra memory, I could really do with a few tips for turning stuff off to make it run faster. Shes a low power user - uses it for broswing the internet and MS word - thats about it. I'm hoping that like when XP came out and you could basically set it back to 2000 and save memory, theres something similiar to Vista.

Any suggestions?
 
Right click on computer and properties. Then Performance in the bottom left hand corner. Go to visual affects and change it to best performance.

Also go to the Theme settings and change it to windows classic.
This should speed it up a bit.
 
No matter what "tweaks" you do, it's still going to have royally **** performance. Upgrade the memory for a couple quid.
 
You could disable stuff like indexing and system restore, but it depends where you draw the line between performance and usability.

Seeing as it's a pre-built machine, it probably came with a fair bit of trial/pre-installed software, which most-likely have background processes and system try icons, so get rid of any of those. Also perhaps worth doing a proper defrag with something like Perfectdisk - it can produce quite noticeable results, especially in reducing boot-times.
 
Hard to believe that they are making new machines with only 512MB these days :( RAM is very cheap compared to in the past and Vista truthfully needs 1 gig as a bare minimum, so it's a pretty poor show.
 
Microsoft was set to give Vista a 1GB minimum requirement on their official recommendations but Dell got stroppy and somehow got them to reduce it to 512MB.
 
dirtydog said:
Hard to believe that they are making new machines with only 512MB these days :( RAM is very cheap compared to in the past and Vista truthfully needs 1 gig as a bare minimum, so it's a pretty poor show.
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Makes sense from a sales POV

"My 2.6ghz dual core, 128MB system RAM computer is really slow"
"You need a quad core PC"
 
Vista is usuable - just about. I would upgrade my memory from 512Mb but Rambus memory seems like gold dust these days.
 
ic1male said:
Vista is usuable - just about. I would upgrade my memory from 512Mb but Rambus memory seems like gold dust these days.
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I doubt a system still running Rambus will be up to spec even if you did spend a fortune upgrading the memory :(
 
I know that RAM is always getting cheaper, but it's gotten a hell of a lot cheaper lately. I bought 2GB of Corsair XMS DDR400 last September for about £130, and that was basically the same price as the equivalent ValueRAM stuff. Crazy that it's not less than half the price for similar (if not better) stuff.
 
Just tell her that the lack of memory will mean that the laptop will then start to use the hard drive as memory and this will slow it down HUGE amounts, as well as making it very likely the hard drive will have a much SHORTER life due to constant reading and writing from the cpu when you exceed 512mb.

Use task manager ( Ctrl, Alt & Del) to show her the memory usage, I have had to replace a friends hard drive in a laptop less than 2 years old and it only had 256mb for XP. She was amazed at the speed increase when adding more memory. Vista needs 1GB min, XP you can get away with 512mb min.

Make sure your mum realises memory and hard drive are NOT the same thing. :) Still can't make my mum understand the difference!


If you wish to explain it to your mum in terms she can understand just say it's like trying to make sunday lunch with only 1 small worktop to work on. :D

No tweaks can make up for lack of memory.
 
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running vista with 512mb is like running xp with 64 or 128 (which is pointless)

bump it up to a gb, and set the display options to 'performance'
 
Oh I know - I have 2GB in my machine - but this whole ACER PC only cost £198, so its understandable they will cut corners.

Ta for the advice - I'm going round later today so will see what I can do
 
Sagalout said:
Oh I know - I have 2GB in my machine - but this whole ACER PC only cost £198, so its understandable they will cut corners.

Ta for the advice - I'm going round later today so will see what I can do
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Did your mum not seek your advice before buying a PC? You could have explained that such a budget choice would be a false economy. If all else fails, show her this thread ;)
 
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