wow... 2gb of ram is a must for vista....

I thought my fe790 was fast with my core 2 duo and 2 gigs of ram... but man when it meets vista its a totaly new story. I have windows sidebar on at all times. Aero is on at all times. When i have internet explorer and itunes on, 47% OF MY RAM IS IN USE!

programs are still quick to load up but start up now takes about 1 minute instead of 20 seconds with xp...
Im go to defrag the hd one more time to see if that can reduce the time. Window's side bar TAKES FOR EVER TO START UP.

 

Use readyboost.

 

thats real real bad..........that means i also gotta upgrade my notebook to 2GB

although you can increase your start up times to upgrading your hard disk to a 7200 rpm one

 

It does take forever to start, and the "idle" load on the RAM is quite a bit, I wonder if that's because of the pre-caching?

Anyhow, I have noticed however that once its started, its runs faster/smoother than XP

 

i noticed that too.... programs load quicker and rum much more smooth. But still it annoys me to see 47% of my ram used up with sidebar, anti-virus, ie, and itunes with some small background programs.

 

Even with the Sidebar off and I only have Firefox and AIM on my ram is 817mb in use. Pretty ridiculous. I've heard that the Aero theme doesn't take that much and it is something else that Windows have that is making it use up a lot of ram.

 

Vista uses memory management more like OSX now. So it gobbles up your RAM. But its not like you are lacking or anything. Long startup sounds like someother issue not ram.

 

Granted, I have 3GB of memory, but right now I have a browser, AV, Outlook 2007, etc. going and I'm using up 1.28GB of memory - well under 2GB.

I definitely find Vista is much snappier than XP by a long shot. I don't miss XP.

 

Windows Vista is designed to cache your frequently used programs on boot up. This is why it takes longer to boot up and uses more ram. The result is that programs such as IE or Office launch almost instantly on a fast machine whereas with XP there is a several second wait. If you have 2GB of ram Vista will take full advantage of it, this is why you see 47% usage. If you only have 1GB of ram Vista will scale back and use less memory for caching. I personally love the way Vista manages memory as I see a substantial increase in performance. I have 2GB+ installed in all my computers.

 

I agree, if you have the RAM, Vista is making use of it by pre-caching.

So I don't mind it sitting around 40-50%, especially since major programs don't affect the RAM much. I'll get concerned when it starts floating around 80%

 

vista has more dynamic memory management, when i had 512 IE+GAIM + Sidebar was about 300, when i switched up to !GB, that same setup went too 550MB. So i think its more then meets the eye. I have never seen 900~ used ever, even when i have office, Gaim, IE7, sidebar, mail and calander running, so yeah. The more you have, the more you use.