Enough to run vista smoothly

Hey all, I was just wondering if anyone could tell me what the minimum requirements for a notebook should be for vista to run smoothly. The reason I ask is... my little sister bought a laptop with vista, she was on a tight budget so obviously she wasn't going to get a flawless machine, but something I notice on start-up is that when the log-in tune plays, its a bit bitty and the screen transition between her desktop background & the loading screen just before that is just an instant change, its not a smooth fade between screens (it may just be vista, but i had a feeling it was due to her poor system configuration) Don't get me wrong though, the system shes got is right for her as she does nothing demanding at all, but for me... I need a far superior experience.
So could the bittiness of the start up be due to the fact that she only has 1gb or RAM? (shes running Vista Home Premium BTW) Also what about the graphics card, does that affect the smoothness of screen transitions?

I want everything to be smooth, so what do you recommend graphics card, hard drive & RAM wise?

 

well, Im not sure about what type of GFX you should have but I can tell you that 2GB tends to be a good amount for Vista. 1GB is doable but if you are doing stuff outside of office apps then 2GB would probably suit you better.
If you are going to be using this system for mainly office apps and web browsing then the base card/module should suffice but I always go with at least the mid range option just to be on the safe side.

hope this helps somehow

Fry

 

Yeah thats great thanks, although do you think that 4gb would be anymore of a performance increase compared with 2gb in just doing web-browsing, MSN & office app's?

 

Personally I don't think 4GB is worth it for those types of tasks. You can always get more memory; start with a single 2GB DIMM and go from there.

 

Great!! Thanks all

 

4gb if ur on the 64bit theres no such thing as too much ram ^^

2gb if ur on the 32bit coz thats as much as it supports. and its standard. 2gb

 

Intel GMA 950, Celeron M based on Yonah, 1 GB DDR2 RAM will run any version of Vista smoothly.

 

What's the difference between 32Bit and 64Bit?

 

32 bits!

64 is coming but is not very common yet. Most processors are capable of it, but very little software will use the capability.

 

lol! Well I gathered that! I was just curious what the benefit of it was, or is it quite a complex thing?

 

64-bit can utilise the full 4GB system RAM which is a big reason why lots of users like x64 OS. Other than that having more bits to work with makes applications operate more efficiently.

Search this forum for the thread on differences between x86 and x64 to learn more.

 

By using 64bit operating system, means you can max out your memory usage. 32bit OS will limit your memory around ~3+ Gig. Then, the 64-bit systems offer direct access to more virtual and physical memory than 32-bit systems and process more data per clock cycle, enabling more scalable, higher performing computing solutions.

 

With a modern CPU and video, you really shouldn't be experiencing any kind of audio/video stuttering under Vista even with just 1 GB of RAM. So before investing in more RAM (though more is often better ) try going down the list of software that was pre loaded onto the machine and start uninstalling stuff you don't need or use. In my case, I immediately do a seek and destroy on everything by Norton and I swear it feels like a whole new machine right afterwards. After uninstalling all the bloatware, do a search for common Vista tweaks and apply them. Then upgrade your drivers, do a disk defrag and after all is said and done then determine if you still need more RAM.