Quote Originally Posted by mackynz View Post
I'm saying that compared to 7 Vista uses more resources. For people like you and me that's not an issue, I have 16GB of RAM so I can run multiple VMs, so it's not a problem. 99% of what my computer does while I'm using it is nothing unless I'm playing Crysis 3 on ultra, then things slow down a touch. But someone on say a laptop with limited resources will have noticable slowdown.

You can disable the UAC, but it does serve some purpose. And you misunderstood what I meant by complex menus. Having the control panel look different is no problem at all. It's when you're trying to get to things farther down than that. I just made my own MMCs so I didn't have to deal with it as much. Having to use the Vista GUI in Server 2008 is probably the thing I dislike most about it. And I didn't realize they extended the support cut off for XP again haha. Time to delay the Win7 rollout at work some more.

And as far as not seeing many differences aside from aesthetics, if you are actually looking and this is the case then you aren't looking very hard.
For someone getting a modern laptop, it's not going to be an issue. Generally, most laptops, even lower end ones, are going to be pretty good compared to how they were even five years ago. On most, four gigs of ram is standard, and if it doesn't have that, you're not getting a very good deal. I've never found found the menus to be complex, if anything, it keeps people who might be using my computer from screwing up my settings.


Me too! And at work since it's my job. But you brought up the good point of tweaking a game to get it running. That's another problem with Vista (Although 7 also has a lot, but less issues with it. Microsoft really dropped the ball) backwards compatibility is usually sketchy to noexistant for really old games. But even some 'newer' games like say Republic Commando have to be run on lower settings or they crap the bed. If you go too far back you end up having to use the DOSbox emulator.
I had to do that with just about any version of windows lol. I ran XP for six years and it had issues with backwards compatibility, as well. I remember buying an older game, installing it, and anytime I tried to run it, it'd blue screen the computer. I finally gave up. Quite honestly, I don't expect really old games to work on a newer system. It's going to cause the OS to take up even more room on the HD if they include everything that'll run 15+ years of games/programs.

Quote Originally Posted by mackynz View Post
And yes, 32-bit Windows cannot see more than 4GB of RAM whereas 64-bit can support up to I think it's 128GB. 64bit also uses a bit more ram. That being said, if you aren't really doing much but screwing around with the OS it's completely possible to run Win7 64-bit with only 1GB of RAM.
Depends on the edition. Home Basic 8GB, Home Premium 16GB, and the rest 128GB. Meaning, I could, if I dished out the money, stuff an additional six gigs into my laptop.