More RAM or scrap Vista?

[Darkforge]

Ok, my other half has a computer running Vista and I've just found out its oneof the first ones that came out with Vista and was cheap at the time.

Basically she's trying to run vista with 512mb of RAM.

I say trying cos i tried to use it for the first time yesterday and after 5 minutes of waiting for firefox to load I gave up. I tried to see what system processes were running and it was pretty much just Vista (though it took 3 minutes to bring up that screen)

Now we have two options,

1) back it all up onto her portable harddrive, reformat and install windows XP

or

2) upgrade the ram to 1gig (add an extra stick of 512 ram) and keep vista

(I'd get more ram, but money is tight at the moment)

Which would you honestly recommend?

To be honest there may be a hidden option three of putting 1gig of ram on a fresh xp install, but because of where I live i'll only have time on saturday (the next time I'll see her) to either reinstall or go to the computer shop as its so far away.

so honestly, is it worth trying to run vista on 1 gig of ram or should I just put xp on it?

also what is the minimum you would try and run vista on

[RichS]

Go with XP independent on if you can afford the memory or not.

I would try to do both, if you can - Once you get XP and all of the service packs and updates installed, you're going to see slow performance with 512MB. You'll see a definite performance increase going from 512MB to 1 GB with XP.

But that's doubly so for Vista - I wouldn't run that on anything less than 2 GB, and I'd preferably install as much RAM as I could afford or the max that the machine allows for that particular OS.

[fma_fanatic]

I have to agree with more RAM if things are running slow. I just upgraded the husband's computer with a video card since his computer was pretty much eating RAM when he used the on-board graphics *twitch*. He's mentioned wanting more RAM, so we're going to get some once the Best Buy gift card he ordered with his points shows up.

I've always gone with the more RAM the better, but that's not necessarily so in every case. With Vista, oh hell yeah. You need as much RAM as you can get with that OS.

[Geek King]

512 is really low for Vista, if you can get things up to ~ 1.5-2 Gig, it should work quite well. I have Vista with 2Gig of RAM running in my gaming box at home, and it works just fine. One more thing to do, though, is cut out any unneeded startup items. Too many boxes have stuff running at startup that really doesn't need to be. Also make sure you're fully updated with your services packs and whatnot.

[Darkforge]

so if 1gig of ram ain't enough for vista it looks like i'll be installing XP for now, and then between this weekend and the next time I see her i'll buy some more RAM for her machine (though that is a rather boring christmas present) as i'll have time to shop around.

thanks for the help guys

[dalesys]

Tell her her computer is suffering from acute micromastia, and you're giving it bigger memories.