I really like that build. Looks really nice. I would personally go with a radeon 4870, but if you only play wow, then the 4600 is more than adequate.
Windows XP Pro Requirements
Pentium 300MHz
128MB RAM
1.5GB drive space
Vista Business
1GHz x86 processor
1GB RAM
15GB drive space
These are just the resources recommended to run the base OS. Vista is fully deserving of its reputation as a resource hog, IMO (more so on the memory side, since CPU cycles tend to be plentiful nowadays in typical desktop environments. Still, no sense in wasting resources when you don’t have to.).
A couple of other things that popped into my mind reading the replies above:
CPU - Passmark Software’s website shows benchmark scores for a wide variety of processors. They boil each CPU, Intel and AMD alike, down to a number that you can use to compare apples to apples.
Memory - 32-bit versions of Windows (like XP Home and Professional) can’t use more than 4GB of RAM. Putting more into your computer is overkill.
dealnews.com is a great place to watch for good prices on various upgrades. Their sister site, dealram.com, is my favorite site to comparison shop for memory.
There is no way in holy hell that windows XP Pro with SP3 will run in any way anyone could consider well on a pentium 300 Mhz and 128 MB of ram.
Vista on the other hand WILL run very well on a 1 Ghz processor and a gig of RAM.
The comparison worthless anyway. The XP one is obviously a complete and total minimum, as in anything less and the OS won’t boot. It does not represent a usable system.
The vista requirements are also based on newer hardware. Who doesn’t have a 1ghz x86 processor now a days?
It really depends. Sometimes the vendors practically give this stuff away; other times they rip you off. In general, I would say that if the vendor is including it as part of a bundle, you’re probably getting a reasonable deal. If you have to add it on as an extra to an existing bundle, you’re probably better buying it off separately. But do shop around.
I would ask anyway. Sometimes they are willing to sell you a downgrade license. Microsoft permits downgrades to Windows XP Professional if you obtain an OEM license of Windows Vista Business, for instance. Dell is sometimes willing to sell you XP Home instead of Vista Home for an additional fee (if it’s convenient for them to do so). However, it’s not like basic Vista user interface is all that different from the XP one, so there isn’t much of a learning curve (IMO, of course). At some point, it’s just easier to pick up the extra RAM and deal with Vista rather than try to jump through hoops and pay additional OS license fees just to avoid change.
Of course. These are just the requirements to get a system booted and sitting idle. As I said, these are the resources you can expect the OS itself to occupy. You wouldn’t actually be able to do anything useful without additional resources.
And in my experience, the Vista side is similar; a 1GHz CPU and a gig of RAM will get you booted in a reasonable time frame, but you wouldn’t be able to run apps (had to upgrade my RAM to 2GB on one of my work laptops to do anything useful in Vista in some reasonable amount of time).
Of course most new machines have more CPU power than these minimums. And a good number have way more RAM. The point is that the more resources the OS is occupy, the fewer are left for the apps you want to run. Why buy 3GB of RAM and run Vista when you can buy 2GB of RAM and run XP? Unless you actually have a use for Vista functionality that is not provided in XP, you’re just paying more money for no benefit.
You’re probably right, but I tend to use Windows XP in “Classic view” because I always felt like the native interfaces treated me like an idiot. My concern is not so much how the OS itself behaves, but Microsoft’s tendency to make it tough to use stuff that they don’t like. Took about 3 patch upgrades before Mozilla/Firefox started showing up in my start up menus, for example. Vista is probably no worse than XP when it comes to this, but on the other hand, after all of these years I’ve finally got most of the core MS stuff sorted out the way I like to see it and use it. I’m frankly drifting into old fart territory, and would prefer not to have to relearn an OS when the one I have now is at least useable, if not exactly always stable.
Which is exactly why I would suggest you stick with Vista. you can make it act/resemble XP pretty closely if you need to, with the added bonus that the extra features are there if you want them, and you have less to worry about when it comes to viruses and worms.
Now, if they aren’t going to charge you MORE for an XP “downgrade” and you really want XP for some reason, then go for it. But it sounds like they want you pay MORE for XP which is ridiculous.
Yes, yes it is. Of course I was thinking about it and I have an XP license from my other, other laptop that I could use if I need to on a new machine. So I’ve got that going for me.
That depends. there are different licence types. Is this an XP retail version you bought for your laptop? If so, it should work. however, if it was a licence that came with a preloaded copy of xp on your laptop, then it is probably tied to that hardware and you might not be able to install it on another machine.
That laptop came with XP Home. I bought a (full) version of XP Pro in order to upgrade it. I should be fine.