Mr. K bought me a new Gateway laptop for christmas…sort of. It only has one gig and the guy at the store said I really need 2 gigs with Vista because it’s such a resource sucker. However, the laptop cannot be expanded beyond 2 gigs. Mr. K’s plan was to add the additional gig later this week, if this is the computer I really want. Otherwise, we can exchange it.
I don’t play games. I don’t watch or download movies, and I don’t do music downloads. I have some office programs and I mess around with my digital photos. Do I really need the capability to expand to 3.2 gigs? I don’t anticipate ever playing a videogame. What to do?
So…should I just add the gig and be done with it, or should I return this one and go for something that has more of a future?
I have a Toshiba laptop running Vista. It has 2 gigs of RAM (expandable to 4). I use it for all sorts of stuff, and 2 gigs seems to be enough for my purposes so far… especially if you turn off all the pretty but useless crap that Vista wants to run all the time.
If there is a significant cost involved (time, money, hassle, etc.) in exchanging the laptop for one with more memory capacity, then skip it. 2 GB is more than enough for what you’re doing.
Realistically, the laptop will be old and beat up by the time you get around to thinking about adding memory beyond 2 GB to it - at which point you’ll probably want to just buy a new one anyway.
However, if it’s simple and easy to exchange it, you might as well go for it.
Hmm…the way you’re using “gigs” here is making me wonder whether or not you’re talking memory or processor.
These days, memory is referred to like 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G (G = Gigabytes). Processors, on the other hand, would be something like 1gHz, 1.4gHz, 2gHz, 3.2gHz (gHz = gigahertz)…
It’s the “3.2 gigs” you mention that makes me wonder if you are confusing memory with processor speed. Make sure you know the difference before you decide on what to do. If you upgrade, say, a 1.4gHz processor to a 3.2gHz processor that’d be nice, but if they both still only have 1G of memory then you will be back to buying memory.
Anyway, I don’t run Vista but from everything I’ve read and reading what you plan to do with it, 2G of memory will be plenty for you for a long while. Just make sure it’s memory you’re talking about and not something else
Thanks for the responses. It is a 1 mb L2 cache, 1.73 GHz 533 MHz FSB processor. The memory is 1024 MB DD2R dual channel, and the hard drive is 160 GB. The memory is what they told me should be increased to 2 GB.
When you say to take off all the fancy schmancy stuff Vista does, what exactly do you mean by that? We are paying to take off a bunch of marketing crap, but I was unaware that part of the actual Vista program could/should be removed as well.
Should I be looking at a bigger hard drive? Many I’ve seen are 200 and 260 GB. We really don’t want to go much over $950 if we can avoid it. Best Buy offers an “idiot proof” warranty that covers everything…including stupid mistakes like spilled coffee. We’re also paying for in-home wireless set up and encryption. So the whole package is considerably more than just the cost of the computer itself.
Not removed, but disabled/turned off. See here for an example of stuff you can turn off that will make Vista run faster. There’s a bunch of stuff that Vista wants to do that suck up memory/processing cycles that are unnecessary.
FYI linksys routers are childs play to set up these days. drop in disk follow instructions, done in 30min or so.
I do in part say this because it causes me pain to see anyone give a penny to BB. Especially when you can buy the same machines direct from the manufacturer.
Those idiotproof warranties are full of fine print and abuse as well. spilled coffee on puter…had valuable data…oh you need our not covered data recovery service for $299 to save those docs.
then proceed to pull your perfectly functional drive out and move it to 8 dvd’s charging you $299 for two hours work, then reimage your machine. and then replacing the keyboard that costs them $30-$40 dollars. so effectively you paid 300 for an under warranty repair. that cost BB under $100 to execute.
My advice is just add a gig of RAM memory and no need to trade in your machine. You definately will be better off having 2 gig instead of 1 gig RAM (although I used my upgraded to Vista toshiba tablet with 1 gig for about 6 months).
another option is to use a 2+ gig USB memory stick as your “turbo” RAM. Vista will automatically recognize your USB and ask if you want to configure this option. It will configure your memory stick so it is an external RAM and you won’t be able to use it for storage.
Well, the way it was presented to me, the warranty that comes with it is extremely limited. And short-lived. This warranty covers everything. Including replacing a crapped-out battery. Including cat hair and dust. Including a kid that launched a missile into the screen, cracking the bejeezus out of it. Dude said it would cost me nothing. I’ll take another look at it, but I think for my purposes, it will be worth it. Plus, it’s 3 years! Don’t get me wrong…I hate giving them money too, but not as much as I hate doing anything with a computer that goes beyond operating it. The rest of it makes my head hurt.
I haven’t opened the box yet so I haven’t had a chance to cruise around, but it sounds like the options are there…somewhere…
Just out of curiosity…how are people feeling about Vista in general…now that it’s been out there a while? I know there was deep hatred in the beginning. Is it getting better?
Tell you what. Your machine will be fine out of the box. I got a slower machine than you have (Gateway, 1.66X2, 1G ram) and it ran/runs fine a year later with still 1G ram on it. And when I first got it I had all the options turned on (Side bar with like 6 things running, (weather, news, etc), for Vista and I also had the Google sidebar running) and it flew along without a hitch.
It’s fine.
If it ever slows down noticeably than I’ll add some more ram.
You’re worrying over nothing, leave it alone, it’ll be perfect.
Oh, and Vista’s fine. A little different than XP but nothing you can’t figure out. The Aero look is kinda cool and the quick file search is awesome too.
Your laptop is designed to run Vista so you won’t have any problems with the operating system on that unit. You may encounter some issues when you start connecting older peripherals or installing older software.
I’ve also got mine networked to the other XP computers in the house wirelessly (like you’ll have) and it plays perfectly nice with everyone else.
Thank you! I have decided to ditch all old software. I have the new office suite (contains a couple programs I’ve never even heard of!) that is designed for Vista. I will eventually add a new version of photoshop and that’s prolly about it. I’ve never had my computers networked before. I guess Geek Dude will set that up for me, as well. Ought to be pretty cool!
Oh? If that’s the case, my apologies… I haven’t tried it myself; I was just pointing out that it is possible to turn off a bunch of the pretty graphics if you find it takes too much bounce out of your system (I just did a quick google and posted what I found untested). If I remember when I get home, I’ll try it out myself and see if I can find the correct locations for turning that stuff off…
Eh, I’m not too impressed with it. It doesn’t seem to be any kind of an upgrade from XP that I can see, so far. Then again, the laptop I have that runs Vista I only use for surfing the net, etc. I haven’t really put Vista through it’s paces at all…
I have noticed one annoying little glitch with Vista and Firefox; but don’t know whether it’s the fault of Microsoft or Mozilla, or simply my particular laptop. The glitch: when I am using Firefox for browsing (all the time, in other words), I have Firefox maximized so that it takes up the entire screen. When I click on a link, about 20% of the time, instead of opening that link, Firefox will shrink it’s browser window so that it now occupies maybe 98% of the screen. Try to click again, and the browser maximizes again. It sometimes takes many clicks before I can get the link to open up. As I said, dunno whether that is Firefox, Vista, or just my computer, but it is annoying. Anyone else notice this?
It doesn’t supplement system RAM, it’s only used as disk cache. It may speed up hard drive access, but I’ve seen mixed reviews about that as well. By the way, if the PC has a SD memory card slot, that can be used for the same purpose as well.
I bought a new PC with Vista a month ago. It works OK, but I think XP is more reliable at this point. Vista is more resource-hungry as well. And I’ve had some software compatibility issues - iTunes crashes all the time, for example. (Not sure if that’s Apple’s fault or MS’s, but I never had much trouble with iTunes on XP.)
All the manufacturers offer similar warranty packages. BB is just selling you their own. Last I heard from dell it was $99 on top of your existing plan to add this coverage. I’m poking around on gateways site, not sure if they do this.
The way the extremely limited warranties work is, BB buys them that way on purpose so you have to buy their warranty if you want longer support/repairs. Gateway will also do a warranty upgrade to 3 years for $149. Still not sure on the damage side, I can’t get into the details without a serial number.
BBdrone: For $199 we can give you a 3 year warranty
Customer: and if I don’t
BBdrone: 15 days
Customer: sign me up
Problem is they always have longer warranties than that from the manufacturer no matter where you buy it new, in your case probably at least a year. The bare minimum from gateway is 90 days, IIRC thats on their refurbished units.
Anytime you are buying a “brand name” laptop, look at the maufacturers direct offerings.
Except for the rabid fanboys, the general reaction has been “Meh” or outright hatred. There are still a number of driver issues (not something you’ll really have to worry about, since you’ve got a laptop) and depending upon whether or not you’ve got a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Vista, you may have some software compatibility issues.
Vista’s more annoying than XP is, with apparently repeated requests asking you if you really want to do something (these can be turned off, for the most part).
Also, which version of Vista does your machine come with? Home? Home Premium? Ultimate? (There’s six or seven variants as well as 32 and 64 bit incarnations.) Depending upon what you intend to do with the machine, you may find that your version can’t do it, however, I don’t think it will really affect you since you don’t intend to play games or similar with your machine.
Well, the deed is done. I’m adding the gig and the Geek will be over Sunday to set up my wireless network. I really appreciate the opinions. I know I may be making a mistake with the warranty, but I went ahead with it. I have the Home Premium version of Vista, which I think should be sufficient for my purposes.
I’ll check back with you in a week and let you know whether I cashed in on the warranty after winging the thing through the picture window.