Quote from Lible :

Can't confirm that, works nicely using UP to 1 MB.

im new to vista(surprised how much of the old commands work) this last week, I think sidebar apps that rely on network info get pissed off sometimes and start going bonkers, I did see it hit 100,000k mem

I'm going to be positive again

How do you get Vista to use 900mb of memory :s, my installation of 64-bits only uses 450 mb on startup, and Vista automatically kills every unneeded proces when you are gaming. I'm using Vista for about 5 months now and I'm happy with it, works fast, looks good, no errors yet.

I only have 1 gig memory

From looking at my firefox it said i have 1000 MB of RAM left, but thats with Firefox using 70 MB, teamspeak, messenger, Ultramon, AVG, SetPoint and my Keyboard drivers.

Quote from JTbo :

XP SP2 made big jump for ram usage also, before that XP was usable with 256MB of ram, after that 512MB was required and with all latest patches 1GB was not going to be overhelming indeed.

Wait till XP SP3 is released then you need more ram.

Hmm, thats a lot of RAM its using. Here's mine;

Since this thread originally asked for advice about good sidebar gadgets, it has served no useful purpose other than the inevitable boring round of slagging off Vista and Bill Gates.
I don't mind Vista. It boots up very quickly for me, (well under 10 mins - JTbo, you need your pc seriously seen to) I don't have a ram problem and I like the gadgets in the sidebar, my pc does not suffer performance problems from having 5 running at once.
The ones I use are the CPU dials, weather, clock, post-it pad and the LFS S3 countdown timer.

Very good weather gadget, if you have a weather station nearby it supports:
http://weather.cobbnz.com/weather/VistaGadget.aspx

A few meter gadgets:
http://thehobbylounge.com/inde ... w&id=12&Itemid=26

Al, don't get me wrong, my PC runs Vista perfectly, I just think that Jakg's problems are supplemented by his 64bit-ness. Although my PC struggles if I have Aero enabled due to RAM, but I personally don't care about Aero, hell, I wouldn't even be using Vista if my XP install hadn't died a while ago, and could only find Vista disk.

Personally, I find Sidebar as useful as Dashboard is on a mac.

Utterly useless (other than to use Safari's web clips to check shipping status on Dashboard)

My problems (re. the wierd-ness of the changing resolutions) were the fault of the nVidia Drivers, namely that while their drivers aren't great on Vista 32-bit, they're even worse on 64-bit.

I'm getting the hang of it now, and now i'm busy customising it rather than trying to work out why it doesn't work. It's feeling more "like" my copy of XP, although i'm yet to be "wowed"

Well I've got Vista Ultimate 64bit installed in a dual-boot with XP. And I've not actually used Xp for over a month now.
Vista boots up in about 1 min.
I did have some fairly major problems getting it to run stable initially, but once the motherboard manufacturer brought out a BIOS update, all those problems went away.
Most of the problems people are having with Vista are driver related, once the manufacturers get their act together and sort out the drivers, it'll be a decent OS. Pretty much the same as when XP first came out, with the difference that fewer of the XP driver's work with Vista than the 2000 drivers worked with XP.

You really do need 2Gb of RAM though before Vista starts running at anything like properly usable speeds.

Jakg - don't you have SLI'd 8800's? I'm not sure SLI is supported properly by the nVidia drivers within Vista as yet. Haven't looked into it recently since I've only got a single 8600 myself, but I'm sure I read recently that that ws the case.

JTbo - as Al says - I'd think about getting that system looked at, 10 mins to boot up suggest's somthing is wrong, either hardware, or software. Maybe as simple as the install not being quite right, or too many programs trying to start at boot, but no system should take more than a couple of mins to start up.

Quote from need :

Jakg - don't you have SLI'd 8800's? I'm not sure SLI is supported properly by the nVidia drivers within Vista as yet. Haven't looked into it recently since I've only got a single 8600 myself, but I'm sure I read recently that that ws the case.

I wish, a single 7950GT which seems to be on its last legs

Not crashed yet though!

If only i could get Firefox to use the "ALT + S" for posting, not opening the History!

thats how much ram i use and i have 2 gb but does use quite a lot of cpu mostly 10-23% for sidebar alone

Quote from anik360 :

thats how much ram i use and i have 2 gb but does use quite a lot of cpu mostly 10-23% for sidebar alone

What OS / CPU are you running there?

home premium 64bit and Pentuim d 920 @3.03

One question, I got hooked up with a free copy of Home Premium from HP, (Took 6 MONTHS for it to arrive in the mail), My laptop came with a sticker that says "Vista Compatible." Should I bother with installing it?

yea if its free THEN YEA but you need to have at least 2GB as minimum as ram

EDIT: do i need to buy kaspersky internet security or do i just keep windows defender and firewall?

Quote from h3adbang3r :

One question, I got hooked up with a free copy of Home Premium from HP, (Took 6 MONTHS for it to arrive in the mail), My laptop came with a sticker that says "Vista Compatible." Should I bother with installing it?

If you've got 2Gb of RAM, then maybe....

Is it an upgrade version, or a full install version?
Cause if it's an upgrade version, and you upgrade your XP, you won't be able to go back to XP once you activate Vista.
Best bet, would be to do a clean install of Vista onto a seperate harddrive, that way if you don't like it, or it doesn't run well enough for you, then you can ditch it without losing your XP install.
Keep in mind that a lot of 'Vista Compatible' systems are at the minimum level of hardware to run Vista, and may not always have Vista drivers available for all the hardware on them.
Also check that all your other software can run on Vista before you even think about upgrading.
There's a fair amount of software out there which won't run on Vista, or for which you have to buy a new Vista capable version, cause the older XP version won't run on Vista.

The Firewall in Vista is better than the firwall in XP, but not by much, and you have to manually enable the outbound protection part of it. Windows Defender is anti-malware, not anti-virus, so you'd probably be better off getting Kaspersky.

I had to buy a new pc when my old one blew up, it came with vista home premium 32 bit. Sure the sidebar gadgets are a bit of fun, they're not essential, but then 80% of what is on my pc is fun but non-essential.
I like the aero and the llok of vista but I'd still have been happy to stick with XP if I didn't have to upgrade.

Quote from need :

If you've got 2Gb of RAM, then maybe....

Is it an upgrade version, or a full install version?
Cause if it's an upgrade version, and you upgrade your XP, you won't be able to go back to XP once you activate Vista.
Best bet, would be to do a clean install of Vista onto a seperate harddrive, that way if you don't like it, or it doesn't run well enough for you, then you can ditch it without losing your XP install.
Keep in mind that a lot of 'Vista Compatible' systems are at the minimum level of hardware to run Vista, and may not always have Vista drivers available for all the hardware on them.
Also check that all your other software can run on Vista before you even think about upgrading.
There's a fair amount of software out there which won't run on Vista, or for which you have to buy a new Vista capable version, cause the older XP version won't run on Vista.

The Firewall in Vista is better than the firwall in XP, but not by much, and you have to manually enable the outbound protection part of it. Windows Defender is anti-malware, not anti-virus, so you'd probably be better off getting Kaspersky.

The CD has an option to do either a clean install or an upgrade. I am currently running Windows XP Media Center Edition, this laptop model was one of the last to come with Windows XP. From what you said, I think I will stay with XP for a while longer, because I don't have a seperate hard drive to test it out on.

just make a new partition to install vista and install vista boot pro to remove the annoying vista boot manager after you delete vista which you eventually will and i use xp most of the time rather that vista because 3ds max acts wierd in vista

Quote from arco :

Very good weather gadget, if you have a weather station nearby it supports:
http://weather.cobbnz.com/weather/VistaGadget.aspx

I'd love to know how to input some UK weather stations closer to my area.

Quote from anik360 :

just make a new partition to install vista and install vista boot pro to remove the annoying vista boot manager after you delete vista which you eventually will and i use xp most of the time rather that vista because 3ds max acts wierd in vista

My PC seems to have come with an 11 GB partition. How would i get Vista to install on that drive?

damn thats small but you can do it on an external drive too just google for it

Quote from JTbo :

Here you can find something http://gallery.live.com/

http://gallery.live.com/liveit ... c6d1fe3&pl=1&bt=1


"Hours of mindless fun"...just about sums up Vista!

Just opened browser after starting computer and did open this thread + those two links into it, then clicked to download updates and this is how taskmanager tells me.

Bloatware or what?

Edit: After restart when I spend few moments killing stuff Acer put there and killing stuff that Brother put there (printer) and spending little more time killing what VMWare and Ati catalyst drivers put there, it starts to run ok, then I kill sidebar and computer feels lot more responsive already. But with default install it is that shitty.

Anything above 200mb for OS is bloatware, imho, it does not do anything such things that it should need that much of memory.

Edit2: I thought that maybe I need to clear a bit of what I mean just started, I always keep it in hibernate mode, never really shut it down as it takes so long... Just so that some smart ass is not going to bitch from that