[Ebola]

Just thought some of you may be interested in how Vista performs on an older computer. I was skeptical of all of the complaints about Vista not being able to run on old hardware. I took my old Poweredge SC400 and upgraded to Vista Enterprise. Here are the Specs:

2.4 Ghz P4 (Pre-HT, no EMT64)
640 MB ram
Radeon 9250 256 MB PCI GPU
2 40GB x 5400 RPM IDE HDs (no raid)
CD Rom Drive (no-DVD drive)

About three weeks ago I noticed Technet had Vista on CD so I figured I'd give it a shot. I was running XP on the box previously and everything was running fine. Fairly quick too for a non-gaming machine. I chose to install the Vista 32 bit Enterprise build which I think is pretty much equivalent to Vista Business. The install went fine and Vista recognized all of my hardware including the onboard audio and my second HD showed up without me having to add it through disk manager. The installation media is unpatched RTM so it was a bit buggy and slow at first.

I defragged the HDs and applied all patches through autoupdate. I haven't done SP1 yet. For antivirus I installed Forefront security and enabled Windows Defender. I left UAC enabled. The install did not recognize the computer as being good enough to run Aero. I would have been surprised if it had.

After a few tweaks and letting the PC run for a few days to index, it seems to be running fine. In terms of speed, XP booted about 10 seconds faster but once in the OS I couldn't tell any difference. Both use the same amount of memory on this system.

Here's my conclusion from the experience. The first thing to note is that it does work and performance is near that of XP. If you organization has a site license and want everyone on the same OS it may be worth looking into. For a home users who have to buy a license its most likely not worth it.

[johnz]

That's interesting. The only bottom end computer I put Vista on was just a touch worse than yours. It ran like crap, but it ran like crap anyway. I had heat problems with the cpu. It appeared that the heatpipe went bad??? and I had a old P3 hs just sitting on top of the cpu(this was a laptop) :^D

It didn't run too bad for the first minute or so, but then the cpu would start cooking and the performance went to hell. My daughter wants Vista on her machine, but I've been holding off. Performance concerns are 1 aspect, but she also has some old software that I'm not sure would run on Vista. Some of that stuff is pretty marginal on XP.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by Ebola

The install did not recognize the computer as being good enough to run Aero.

You need to upgrade the video card. I recommend the eVGA e-GeForce 7600 GS for a start.

[Ebola]

Again old computer. LOL no PCI-E.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by Ebola

Again old computer. LOL no PCI-E.

There's an AGP version of that video card. I have the AGP version on my Asus A7N8X-X.

[curtis1552]

I wouldn't think that it would run very well with that little RAM.
Then agian, when you said old computer I was thinking of and old computer not one quite that new.
(I was hoping to see specs of a PIII with 256Mb RAM, it would have been a good laugh)

[Moto7451]

Not a bad setup for a non-Aero machine.

The Wiki-Scoop on Vista Enterprise:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Windows Vista Enterprise
This edition targets the enterprise segment of the market: it comprises a superset of the Vista Business edition. Additional features include support for Multilingual User Interface (MUI) packages, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and UNIX application-support. Not available through retail or OEM channels, this edition will get distributed through Microsoft Software Assurance (SA). Since Vista Enterprise classes as a benefit of Microsoft Software Assurance, it includes several SA-only benefits, including a license allowing the running of multiple virtual machines, access to Virtual PC Express, and activation via VLK.[9] Vista Enterprise supports up to two physical CPUs.[6] The 64-bit variant supports 128+ GB of memory. Microsoft "Mainstream Support" for Enterprise ends on April 10, 2012; "Extended Support" ends on April 11, 2017.

[mbigna]

Gads--you need more memory! I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this to you yet. I don't think you can even get Vista and one app to run in less than one (1) GB. TWO (2) would be ideal--if your mobo can take it.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Vista Buisness

P4 2.4 400mhz
512 ram
9250 as well
80G HD

ran fine for basic usage....

[gangaskan]

Originally Posted by Ebola

Just thought some of you may be interested in how Vista performs on an older computer. I was skeptical of all of the complaints about Vista not being able to run on old hardware. I took my old Poweredge SC400 and upgraded to Vista Enterprise. Here are the Specs:

2.4 Ghz P4 (Pre-HT, no EMT64)
640 MB ram
Radeon 9250 256 MB PCI GPU
2 40GB x 5400 RPM IDE HDs (no raid)
CD Rom Drive (no-DVD drive)

About three weeks ago I noticed Technet had Vista on CD so I figured I'd give it a shot. I was running XP on the box previously and everything was running fine. Fairly quick too for a non-gaming machine. I chose to install the Vista 32 bit Enterprise build which I think is pretty much equivalent to Vista Business. The install went fine and Vista recognized all of my hardware including the onboard audio and my second HD showed up without me having to add it through disk manager. The installation media is unpatched RTM so it was a bit buggy and slow at first.

I defragged the HDs and applied all patches through autoupdate. I haven't done SP1 yet. For antivirus I installed Forefront security and enabled Windows Defender. I left UAC enabled. The install did not recognize the computer as being good enough to run Aero. I would have been surprised if it had.

After a few tweaks and letting the PC run for a few days to index, it seems to be running fine. In terms of speed, XP booted about 10 seconds faster but once in the OS I couldn't tell any difference. Both use the same amount of memory on this system.

Here's my conclusion from the experience. The first thing to note is that it does work and performance is near that of XP. If you organization has a site license and want everyone on the same OS it may be worth looking into. For a home users who have to buy a license its most likely not worth it.

my friend converted a lab to vista, he doesn't like it much, one big issue is he has i think 1.8-2.4 ish p4's with RD ram (they speced out to upgrade the mem in the lab to 2 gigs each at 32,000 aka order new machines instead)

it takes quite a few to boot the machines, but he's got the whole campus building on vista, i don't think he had much of a choice being he usually is the ginnea pig with vista.

[Mr.Guvernment]

the dell i have here at work, 8250 dimension, use rambus as well, 512, too expensive to upgrade to say the least!

it seems fine to boot.. but it does have an 80G seagate 7200.10 drive

[gangaskan]

yeah, these have way old 40 gig ide's its a huge bottleneck.