Thanks for the memories: Dell CEO says Vista needs 2Gb of RAM

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Sunday, 29 October 2006

Think you’ll be able to run Windows Vista on your existing hardware? If all the visual bells and whistles are turned off, it’ll probably run just fine, and should even make your hardware run better. But Dell’s CEO thinks you’ll need more memory, with 2Gb the sweet spot. Is he right?

From what we can tell, gleaned from years of running different versions of Windows, various reviews of Vista from around the Internet, and our own experience with the new OS, the more memory you have in your computer, the better.

For those who might point to Microsoft’s system recommendations, well, everyone knows that the specs that serve as the baseline for what’s required to run Vista will indeed run Windows Vista, but the performance, and especially in this case, the look and feel, may not be what you had expected.

A simple and easy rule of thumb for the amount of memory your computer should have installed is to take the minimum memory requirement for Vista, in this case 512Mb of RAM, then double it... and then double it again. This takes you to 2Gb of memory.

This is also the amount of memory I have installed in my Core Duo Tablet PC, which is still running Vista RC1 since it became available several weeks ago. Aside from niggly things like the need to use a USB headset/microphone from Logitech to be able to use Skype, or listen to audio and video, and other minor, non-showstopping, little things you’d expect in a beta, my Vista experience has been excellent.

Using Office 2007 to get work done, Outlook 2007 for emails, IE 7.0 and Maxthon for web browsing, and other assorted software, I’ve actually had better performance from Vista RC1 than I had with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 – the operating system I was using previously.

Naturally, having a dual-core processor helps a lot, but having 2Gb of memory has no doubt helped greatly. This feeling is especially reinforced when reading reviews where users have tested Vista on machines with 512Mb and 1Gb of memory.

With 512Mb, performance is said to not be the greatest. 1Gb of memory is better, but reviewers have reported being unsure whether the occasional performance lags experienced were due to a processor not being dual-core, or to the 1Gb of memory in use.

With 2Gb of memory, everyone seems to be happy, and of course if you plan on installing more, even better.

It would seem that Dell CEO Kevin Rollins has had the same kind of experience. Not only did he predict Vista would be fantastic for PC makers, he predicted that: "Everyone is going to want Vista when it's ready."

However he was quick to point out that the amount of memory installed in your machine is important. "I think they tell you maybe 1GB of memory is OK," said Rollins. "No- 2GB of memory would be great."

Of course, some will just accuse Rollins of wanting to sell more memory with every machine they build.

But with Microsoft’s new operating systems always seeming to soak up the extra power that Intel delivers, it’s no surprise that for the best performance, 2Gb of memory should be on your shopping list, whether for a new computer, or a simple memory upgrade to your existing model. {moscomment}

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