RAM hysteria
- Published May 8th, 2007 in Rant
All this RAM hysteria around Vista makes me think people are getting crazy!
With 2GB of RAM on my MacBook, I can have a plethora of applications opened including virtualizing Windows XP/Debian with 1GB dedicated! That leaves 1GB to the other system where I usually have Safari, Firefox, AdiumX, Textmate and Eclipse running.
With Vista you need at least 1GB just to run the freakin’ OS. And people are willing to pay for it?
When I wrote a review of my (short - 2 weeks) usage of Windows Vista, I showed a screenshot of the amount of RAM Vista takes after a cold reboot and only with IE7 open. 430MB! That leaves you with ~570MB if you’re fortunate enough to have 1GB.
Mac OS X or Linux need a lot of applications to suck up so much RAM.
It’s unbelievable if people fall in this PR stuff and upgrade their computers just for running Vista. Ditch Vista!
Actually, I’ve been running Vista for almost two months now on 1G of RAM just fine. I’ve maintained my XP setup for gaming so I’ve never had happenstance to bump into anything too intensive.
Additionally, what I’ve heard is that Vista uses part of the RAM for pre-caching and will happily give it over if an application needs it. There’s a link to the Super-Fetching article over in the comments section on my blog.
Jordan,
The mileage may vary depending on your system. If you open a very RAM intensive application like Eclipse or Visual Studio then it will definitely become sluggish.
The point I was trying to make is that all evidence points to the fact that XP is faster than Vista with the same amount of RAM. That was my anecdotal evidence.
For browsing the web, writing a couple of emails and using Office it will do fine. But then, what’s the point in upgrading from XP :-) ?
Hi Mário! I’m always beating on your posts :-) nothing personal as I like to read your blog (via P*). As far as I remember my MBP uses the approximately the same amount (400-500) of memory after booting and “only” with the Finder.App. I don’t remember the amount it used before the update to 2Gb (from 1,5Gb) but I think it was less. So I think that MacOS X and Vista adjust the usage of RAM depending on total available RAM.
I never seen Vista in my life. But I can compare 2000 to XP and I find that 2000 under Parallels is far less memory hunger and faster than XP. I tend to boot XP natively (Boot Camp) when running memory intensive applications (but i have to connect the ethernet cable because XP lost the capability to connect via WiFi and I don’t have the patience to solve it, I don’t reinstall Windows, thats my policy).
Finally I have two questions for you about Vista:
- Do you now if in list view I can see the size of the folders as you can do in MacOS (X)?
- Can you open folders that are in the trash can?
Sorry for the off topic questions, but I’m curious because are two of the things that make me mad in Windows 2K/XP.
mlopes, huh. I’ve had good luck w/ Visual Studio 2005 and reasonable sized projects on 1Gb of RAM and very large mysql databases. I have disabled Windows Defender though, perhaps that’s a big RAM hog?
As to it being slower than XP, I agree for sure. Windows 3.11 is much faster than any of them though. :) Either way, there are a number of reasons to investigate an upgrade. Improved Explorer, better aesthetics, improved networking stack, better file system support, embedded kittens and refined user interface come to mind.
Jordan, the point with the speed is that Windows 3.11 does not do what his successor, Windows 98, did. On the other hand, XP does everything Vista does and does it faster.
Reviewing your suggestions for an upgrade:
I still think that there’s no valid reason for upgrading at least for the huge majority of people (99%). Perhaps when more DX10 games show up (ahh, good old Microsoft lock-in).