XPS M1530 with 32bit Vista and 4gb RAM - Will it work ?

Hi,

Last week I ordered a XPS laptop from Dell with 4gb Ram. I had read that the full 4gb would not be available as the sipplied Vista would only be 32bit ? When I was on the Dell site configuring my purchase it wouldn't allow me to upgrade to the 64bit Vista although the option was there. When I selected the 64bit option I just kept getting a box saying there were compatibility issues with the Resource DVD ?

Does this mean that I will be unable to 'ever' upgrade to 64bit ?

I have also read that I may be better 'downgrading' the operating system to XP. Is this simple enough to do, what advantages would it give, and where would I get the disks from, Is it something which Dell could supply ?

The system I have ordered is as follows

XPS M1530 CORE 2 DUO T9300 2.50GHz,800,6M

15.4" Widescreen WUXGA (1920x1200) TFT Display with TrueLife¿

Memory Dual Channel 4.0GB (2x2048) 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Hard Drive : 500GB Serial ATA (5400RPM)

Blu Ray Slim Slot-Load Drive, including SW

Graphics Card 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT

For Vista only: Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy ADVANCED HD Audio

Operating System : English Genuine Windows Vista SP1 Home Premium including Media



Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.



Thanks

 

Yes it will work, on your welcome center in vista 32 you will see the 4 GB of ram, but in the performance of the computer you only gona use 3.5 GB.

I must say win Vista 64X is the best OS for daily use, believe me , I installed in mi PC x86 XP, XP 64bit, x86 vista, vista 64, hackintosh, ubutnu 32 and 64, kubuntu...... and for all of those OSes the best looking and more stable was Vista 64X... but i you planing to do some gaming I will recomend you a dual boot XP32 and Vista 64.

I'm sure you will not regret it, you can keep XP only for gaming (you have 500 GB you easy can have even 3 OS with out a problem in you new HOT XPS)

 

I have an XPS m1530, configured almost like yours. I do not have the blu-ray drive, I use a 320GB 7200 RPM hard drive, and have 64bit Vista.

As for your first question, that is correct. Not all 4 GB will be used by Vista. It will say 4GB when you look at your system properties, but it cannot use all of it due to the 32-bit limitations (I believe that's why, there is a whole discussion about why it can't use it all). Using 64-bit vista will enable use of all that RAM.

As for your question regarding compatibility with the Resource DVD, that is correct. There will be issues using the DVD if you have 64-bit Vista on there. I do not know if there is an option on the ordering page for a 64-bit Vista Resource DVD, but in any event you shouldn't worry about it. Drivers for >>everything<< (the fingerprint reader is kind of tricky) can be found on Dell's website for Vista 64-bit (which, to answer your 3rd question, you can upgrade to 64-bit, although I don't know if you can keep all your files intact. i.e., you may need to reformat)

Downgrading to XP I believe is not provided as an option for the XPS m1530s. It is probably doable (and I think there is a thread somewhere on the Dell forums as to how to do it), but I dont think Dell provides it if it is not an option in the configuration process.

Oh, and that Sound Blaster Audigy I believe is just software (I ordered it too) that does not work with Vista 64-bit.

 

Thanks for the quick replies

The Dell site would not let me order the 64bit Vista as the conflict was showing with the DVD. This meant I had to proceed with ordering the 32bit Vista. The Dell site is showing my expected delivery date as being 14th January. Should I contact them and ask for the 64bit Vista ?

I have an XBox 360 so will not be using my laptop for gaming so it seems there would be no reason for me to install XP.

(I have also noticed on my acknowledgement email from Dell that I am also getting a 'Dell Dock 1.0'. Does anybody know what this is as I didn't see any reference to it when I was ordering and I can't find it on the Dell site.)

 

You should definitely try to call them and ask for Vista 64-bit along with the 64-bit corresponding Resource DVD. From my experience with manufacturers (such as Dell, HP, Lenovo) they do not charge anything extra as long as it is the same edition (i.e., You ordered Vista Home Premium SP1. As long as it is Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit that you are ordering they shouldn't charge you extra. If you ask for Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit, then that's another story )

Dell Dock 1.0 is a joint product between StarDock and Dell to create a customized version of StarDock's popular ObjectDock software. With this you can customize the dock with useful shortcuts to programs, documents, settings, etc. I personally use RocketDock, as it seems to be more flexible, but Dell's Dock is still very useful

 

To correct a couple of things here...

A 32-bit version of Windows will use all 4GB. Since the machine in question is byte addressable, meaning each byte has a unique address, a 32-bit address can be used to uniquely identify 2^32 bytes (4GB) of main memory. Much of the confusion surrounding this issue is due to the way in which Windows XP (and I believe pre-SP1 Vista) reported the total amount of RAM. It counted all 4GB, but reported to the user less than this after mapping applicable devices (such as your video card) to main memory. The OS reads and writes to this allocated memory as a means of communicating with said memory-mapped devices; this is better-known simply as memory-mapped I/O. If your video card contained 256MB of memory, 256MB of system memory was allocated for this purpose.

My point being, the OS counts and recognizes all 4GB of memory. What it directly reports, though, may be different. 64-bit removes the 4GB boundary, providing virtually limitless addressability in terms of memory (to most users, anyway ).