Is 1gb of RAM enough...

To run a Vista Home Basic equipped desktop at a decent speed?

No I would advise to have as much as youcan afford.

For XP: 1gb Minimum up to whatever you can afford
Vista & Win 7: Minimum 2gb but 4gb is better.

It should be ok if not too many apps or services are run together, 2gb would be much better though.

I wouldn't personally buy a computer with less than 2GB of DDR3. Ideally I'd want a minimum of 4GB, expandable upto 16/32

2GB would be far better.

My 'slicked' Vista system boots up and once idling is using 1.2GB (30%). However, that's with a couple of security suites onboard. You might want to consider some extra-clever optimisation. If so, PM me.

I run Pentium 4, 2Ghz, laptop with 1Gb, Win7 Pro and Office 2007 on 40GB HD, and it's perfectly fine for home user. Seems faster then it was with XP.

It may not be with Vista though....
Regards,
Martin

It's my friends box and I've killed just about everything using msconfig. Yet it still starts very slowly. Full virus scan, ccleaner (inc registry), malwarebytes, superantispyware all used with little effect.

Next time I'm at his house I'll grab some specs.

In reply to a post by wingco1:

It's my friends box and I've killed just about everything using msconfig. Yet it still starts very slowly. Full virus scan, ccleaner (inc registry), malwarebytes, superantispyware all used with little effect.

Next time I'm at his house I'll grab some specs.

If you do mean very slow chances are its probably mucked up beyond feasible repair without reinstalling windows.. It is quite possible some of the hardware is degrading though.

Have you checked CPU utlization in task manager to check if anything is constantly using a lot of CPU?

Perhaps a mass removal of programs (including security programs) and then reinstall minimal neccessary might get some performance back. Stale Java, flash, shockwave, etc.

If not on SP2, upgrading to SP2 might help.

Check no missing device drivers.

Check it's running the high performance power plan and that it hasn't been modified.

Check paging file settings are on automatic.

1GB should be enough to run Vista smoothly, with web browsing and office applications and media playing, providing a lightweight AV is installed and minimal other stuff.

Thanks for the advice. I'll see what he wants to do.

you have possibly done it but my win7 uses 1.7G so I would have thought 2G is about right

Er no, W7 uses what it can. It will run happily on 1G of RAM but given more it'll use more. In fact it'll run quite well on 512mb so long as you don't use aero and only open one program at a time. Anything more and it starts hitting the swap too often.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

In fact it'll run quite well on 512mb so long as you don't use aero and only open one program at a time.

Might as well run DOS in that case.

Even Microsoft say you need a minimum of 1 gig. I wouldn't run it on less than 2. The more you can afford the better.

RAM is so cheap nowadays (again, suddenly, for no reason) that I'd go with 4 as a minimum. But that aside, you can install it on a system with 512mb, although I think you have to tweak something on the installer iirc. For me, it ran quite happily on a P4 with 512mb of RDRAM and an fx5200 with aero enabled, but if you pushed it too hard it would start killing the HD.