Vista Ultimate on 1505/6400.

I just want to know if it's worth it to switch to Vista, will it run flawlessly on a Core 2 Duo 1.66Ghz with 1GIG of DDR2, 256mb video card ? I don't really play games, it's for my college notebook

Also, will I have to download the 64 bits drivers of all my components or 32 ?

Thanks!

 

should run fine but maybe upgrade to 2gb of ram.

As for drivers, use 32 bit versions.

 

Are u installing 64bit version of Vista? If so, download the 64bit drivers, othewise
go with the 32bit vista drivers.
Vista should run on your laptop perfectly but if you are using some large softwares at the same time, you should consider upgrading to 2*1GB

 

Does RAM dimms comes in 1.5GB on notebooks ? I bought 2 x 512mb...I would've to either scrap the two and get 2 x 1GB or scrap one and have 1.5GB.

 

You don't need to worry about that. As long as you feel that the ram is not enough, you can sell one of your 512 sticks on ebay and buy a 1GB stick or if you think it's necessary, you can sell both of them and buy 2 1GB sticks. Remember that the 945 chipset also allows 512 stick and 1gb stick for dual channel.

 

Didn't know that, thanks for the infos.

 

I think not.

Because Vista is slower than XP in almost every task. Look at some reviews and benchmarks; you will see what I mean. As for 64bit, I don't think there is much of a point in upgrading right now. Most of the applications are still 32bit, and IMO 64 bit drives are still not mature enough. Of course you can run 32bit apps on Vista 64bit but they will run on something like a 32 bit virtual machine / translation layer. Therefore 32bit apps wont run any faster than they would in a 32bit environment (maybe slightly slower due to the translation later). Considering all that I don't see the point in upgrading. However in the future Vista will become prominent and most probably 64bit computing will also gain popularity. Then you can upgrade. Right now I think XP is the more stable and faster platform.

However if you have already made up your mind about upgrading, then you will need 2GBs to make it run flawlessly or as smooth as XP runs with 1GB.

 

I am planning to install dual operating systems (Vista n XP), vista is still in evolution state and it might take 5 – 6 mnths before it becomes stable and self sustaining.

 

I'm running Ultimate on a 6400 with the same specs with the exception I have a core duo T2050. Runs perfectly fine and better than XP in my opinion (I'm not a gamer or HEAVY multi-tasker). I will likely be upgrading to 2gb in the future, but 1gb will get the job done nicely.

 

Thanks for the infos guys, I'll wait a bit before installing it since I installed Linux instead