Installing Vista on 'older' systems?

Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and if
so, how you found it?

I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering installing
Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
similar machine specs:

Athlon 1000/1800
512MB RAM
32MB Geforce 2 MX

Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed the
graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
processors are quite old (relatively speaking).

People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
also be of interest to me..

(*i.e. in real life, not just meeting MS's miminum operating requirements!)

The reason I am asking is that I need a new monitor and am trying to decide
between upgrading one or both of these machines or buying a complete system
from Dell (something like a Core2duo 4300, 1024MB RAM and a 256MB Geforce
7300) rather than just a monitor.

Alternatively, if one/both of these machines could be upgraded sucessfully -
that would be a lot cheaper than buying a new base unit.. however, these two
machines are getting slightly 'long in the tooth' and if upgrading them
isn't going to be of much benefit, then a new system would seem to be the
way to go..

While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
watching video etc..

Any advice welcome.

Regards
Sunil

"Sunil Sood" <news@soods.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:581a22F2df6uqU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
> if
> so, how you found it?
>
> I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
> installing
> Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
> similar machine specs:
>
> Athlon 1000/1800
> 512MB RAM
> 32MB Geforce 2 MX
>
> Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
> the
> graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
> you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
> processors are quite old (relatively speaking).



> While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
> I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
> watching video etc..
>
> Any advice welcome.
>
> Regards
> Sunil
>


Here's my advice. If you want to "experience" vista, go down to you local
computer store, sit down at one of the machines on display-- and experience
to your heart's content. If you want to "experience" it at home, go buy
yourself another computer. A low-ender with vista is yours for just a few
hindered bucks....

Doc

Sunil Sood wrote:

>
> Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
> if so, how you found it?
>
> I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
> installing Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working
> 'well'* on similar machine specs:
>
> Athlon 1000/1800
> 512MB RAM
> 32MB Geforce 2 MX
>

I tried it on an Athlon XP 3200, 1GB, and a GeForce 5200. It ran like a
slug.

It might be interesting to try it on one of your boxes, but IMHO it would
not be remotely usable.

Chris

--
Remove prejudice to reply.

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:17:15 +0100, "Sunil Sood"
<news@soods.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

>
>Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and if
>so, how you found it?
>
>I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering installing
>Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
>similar machine specs:
>
>Athlon 1000/1800
>512MB RAM
>32MB Geforce 2 MX
>
>Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed the
>graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
>you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
>processors are quite old (relatively speaking).
>
>People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
>also be of interest to me..
>
>(*i.e. in real life, not just meeting MS's miminum operating requirements!)
>
>The reason I am asking is that I need a new monitor and am trying to decide
>between upgrading one or both of these machines or buying a complete system
>from Dell (something like a Core2duo 4300, 1024MB RAM and a 256MB Geforce
>7300) rather than just a monitor.
>
>Alternatively, if one/both of these machines could be upgraded sucessfully -
>that would be a lot cheaper than buying a new base unit.. however, these two
>machines are getting slightly 'long in the tooth' and if upgrading them
>isn't going to be of much benefit, then a new system would seem to be the
>way to go..
>
>While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
>I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
>watching video etc..
>
>Any advice welcome.
>
>Regards
>Sunil
>
>
>

I just bought a laptop that runs Vista Home Premium and it came with
1gb ram. There is a gadget that shows the CPU and memory utilization
and without doing anything the memory utilization hovers around 65%.
This laptop does not have bloatware installed. I think a system with
512 would be accessing the disk constantly. That would not be good.

One of the reasons I bought this laptop (Everex XT5000T) is because
the ram was a single 1gb stick (instead of two 512s), so I put in
another 1gb and it is quite fast. But I sure wouldn't run it with 512.

Sunil Sood wrote:
> Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
> if
> so, how you found it?
>
> I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
> installing
> Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
> similar machine specs:
>
> Athlon 1000/1800
> 512MB RAM
> 32MB Geforce 2 MX

Well, as you already know, you need 1gb of memory.


> Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
> the
> graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
> you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
> processors are quite old (relatively speaking).
>
> People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
> also be of interest to me..

Painfull. It is pretty much intolerable. but the performance improvement at
1gb is substantial

Stick yourself a cheap geforce 6200 in there as well and you will be fine
for aero.

Gaz

Leythos wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:17:15 +0100, Sunil Sood wrote:
>
>> Athlon 1000/1800
>> 512MB RAM
>> 32MB Geforce 2 MX
>>
>> Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
>> the
>> graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
>> you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
>> processors are quite old (relatively speaking).
>>
>> People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
>> also be of interest to me..
>
> Don't bother, vista doesn't offer anything worth having at this time, at
> least not above XP.
>
> A typical system needs to have a FAST CPU, 1GB or more of RAM, and a fast
> video card just to be considered the minimum.
>
> I have a 3.2ghz P4 (hyper-threaded), 2GB RAM, 128MB RAM video, 120GB
> Drive, in my laptop and vista runs dang slow on it. It loaded vista on a
> Dual Xeon 3ghz with 4GB RAM, 512MB Video card, and it also ran slowly.
> Both machines used 600+MB (890MB on the 4GB system) at idle with just
> vista installed.

I found vista reasonably snappy on my centrino laptop with 9700mobile ati
graphics and 2gb of memory. Memory was the biggest improvement, going from
512mb to 2gb, i get something like 3.9 on the performance rating.

What is stopping me moving over, is more to do with the laziness of
transferring my installed programmes etc on my dual boot xp.

Gaz

Well my 9yo socket 7 (?) motherboard equipped PC upgraded to Vista Home
Premium no probs. BIOS was, according to upgrade advisor, a potential
issue...nup, no prob!

I have a 2.8ghz Celeron, nothing special there, and 2.75GB PC3300 Ram, not
quick stuff, but a fair bit of it! An old 30GB WD 7200 seek HDD (or
something like that!) and PCI - NOT PCI Express, slots, and USB1 (YES USB1 -
but that's going to change tomorrow!).

Vista for me (apart from some very minor quirks and a MAJOR networking issue
with wifey's XP Pro pc!) is SO MUCH better than having the same PC run XP
Pro its not funny.

Much quicker, intuitive, much more STABLE, prettier, and, did I say this
already?, quicker than XP.

Installer beware - but I went for the upgrade on an O-L-D box, and so far so
good.

Rgds


"Sunil Sood" <news@soods.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:581a22F2df6uqU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
> if
> so, how you found it?
>
> I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
> installing
> Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
> similar machine specs:
>
> Athlon 1000/1800
> 512MB RAM
> 32MB Geforce 2 MX
>
> Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
> the
> graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
> you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
> processors are quite old (relatively speaking).
>
> People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
> also be of interest to me..
>
> (*i.e. in real life, not just meeting MS's miminum operating
> requirements!)
>
> The reason I am asking is that I need a new monitor and am trying to
> decide
> between upgrading one or both of these machines or buying a complete
> system
> from Dell (something like a Core2duo 4300, 1024MB RAM and a 256MB Geforce
> 7300) rather than just a monitor.
>
> Alternatively, if one/both of these machines could be upgraded
> sucessfully -
> that would be a lot cheaper than buying a new base unit.. however, these
> two
> machines are getting slightly 'long in the tooth' and if upgrading them
> isn't going to be of much benefit, then a new system would seem to be the
> way to go..
>
> While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
> I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
> watching video etc..
>
> Any advice welcome.
>
> Regards
> Sunil
>
>
>
>

I had it installed on an AMD 3500+ 2 gig ram and was always waiting for
activities to stop hanging. Now using a 5200+ and it works great.


"Sunil Sood" <news@soods.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:581a22F2df6uqU1@mid.individual.net...
>
> Does anyone have any experience of installing Vista on older machines and
> if
> so, how you found it?
>
> I have a couple of old base units here on which I am considering
> installing
> Vista and was wondering if anyone else had got Vista working 'well'* on
> similar machine specs:
>
> Athlon 1000/1800
> 512MB RAM
> 32MB Geforce 2 MX
>
> Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed
> the
> graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
> you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
> processors are quite old (relatively speaking).
>
> People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
> also be of interest to me..
>
> (*i.e. in real life, not just meeting MS's miminum operating
> requirements!)
>
> The reason I am asking is that I need a new monitor and am trying to
> decide
> between upgrading one or both of these machines or buying a complete
> system
> from Dell (something like a Core2duo 4300, 1024MB RAM and a 256MB Geforce
> 7300) rather than just a monitor.
>
> Alternatively, if one/both of these machines could be upgraded
> sucessfully -
> that would be a lot cheaper than buying a new base unit.. however, these
> two
> machines are getting slightly 'long in the tooth' and if upgrading them
> isn't going to be of much benefit, then a new system would seem to be the
> way to go..
>
> While I would like to 'experience' Aero/Vista as you can probably gather,
> I'm not a 'gamer' and just need some machines for office/internet use +
> watching video etc..
>
> Any advice welcome.
>
> Regards
> Sunil
>
>
>
>

Leythos wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:50:50 +0100, Gaz wrote:
>>
>> Painfull. It is pretty much intolerable. but the performance improvement
>> at 1gb is substantial
>
> But the performance is still less than XP at 512MB and even XP with 1GB.

I didnt find performance hit that bad. The os in a few ways felt as quick ,
i have to say though, turning aero off, the OS looked far uglier then XP.

Do you not find that XP though was quit a bit slower then 98se and w2k??
Turn off the visuals on XP though and you get a massive improvement in
speed.

Gaz

Leythos wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:17:15 +0100, Sunil Sood wrote:
>
>> Athlon 1000/1800
>> 512MB RAM
>> 32MB Geforce 2 MX
>>
>> Now I realise that I woudn't get Aero working on these but if I changed the
>> graphics card to a 256MB Radeon 9550 and perhaps doubled the RAM - how do
>> you think these two machines would cope with Vista (inc Aero?), given the
>> processors are quite old (relatively speaking).
>>
>> People's experiences of running Vista on machines with 512MB of RAM would
>> also be of interest to me..
>
> Don't bother, vista doesn't offer anything worth having at this time, at
> least not above XP.
>
> A typical system needs to have a FAST CPU, 1GB or more of RAM, and a fast
> video card just to be considered the minimum.
>
> I have a 3.2ghz P4 (hyper-threaded), 2GB RAM, 128MB RAM video, 120GB
> Drive, in my laptop and vista runs dang slow on it. It loaded vista on a
> Dual Xeon 3ghz with 4GB RAM, 512MB Video card, and it also ran slowly.

Looks like you have driver issues then.

> Both machines used 600+MB (890MB on the 4GB system) at idle with just
> vista installed.

That'll be Superfetch. If you really want to have expensive memory
sitting there doing nothing instead of using it for caching, you can
turn off the Superfetch service.

Alun Harford