Quote:
Originally Posted by eryque
I'm at the tail end of setting up a new computer. I couldn't pass up the deal, $300 for a Compaq with a P4-3.4Ghz and 1GB of ram. It came with Vista and I thought I'd give a shot.
I wanted to give Vista a shot, even though I'm usually a curmudgeon about upgrading an OS. Well, that shot didn't last long. Just the OS consumed an average of 50% of the processor and 60% of the RAM, and any multimedia bogged it right down.
Installing XP has been a long and arduous process, thanks to a couple of hardware issues, but man is this box fast now! iTunes is busily converting my music library, and when the CPU usage spikes it's all the way up at 30%, and less than 25% of the RAM is being used.
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YMMV, but I'm not giving up better user rights, DEP by default, ASLR and wasting time and money with upgrades when XP is obsolete when RAM is a fast and cheap fix. Opinion made even stronger after fixing up a site where the Vista systems did not get a root kit and XP systems did.
I would question the original load as well as the amount of RAM considering my lack of big performance differences between the two. A $300 computer may well have had crapware loaded and running.
Bottom line is all's well as long as you're happy and it's not rocket science to think performance would be poor when even an XP system does better with 2 GB if you're patched and running AV and malware apps.
Good luck and don't forget that backing up is not just for truck drivers.