Gateway Upgrades Retail PCs To Up To 6 GB Of Memory

[lisacox128]

Gateway announced its updated retail notebook and desktop PC offering for the back-to-school season prices ranging from $549.99 to $1,149.99, with up to 6 GB memory, sounds nice:
http://www.freshbite.info/fnews_1214877064_10306.htm

[Unknown_K]

Too bad WinXP can't use 6GB of RAM, and Vista is still crud.

[Trixter]

Vista can't use 6G of RAM either, only 4 (3.2G to be exact). Which is amazing, IMO. I guess to use all the RAM you'd have to run another operating system like OpenSolaris or Linux, but those OSes don't need that much RAM to operate at full speed...

Me is confused.

[amouse]

Well that's strange, currently my master server runs Vista 64 with 16GB of memory no problem. I would have gone for 64GB of memory but the DIMMs were too expensive 1 year ago.

I think Vista 64's limit is 128GB physical. See this article for a gentle introduction: (http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/5709)
x64 capable processors are now the norm and not the exception for any new system build / design.

And to wander yet further off topic ...

Sure if you run Vista on yesterdays processors with yesterdays memory you are likely to have performance problems. The same sort when I tried to run OS/2 on early 286 machines, or NT 3.51 or lowspec 386 systems, or Windows 2000 on a lowspec Pentium.

You can currently buy 8GB of High quality DDR2 RAM (http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=782925) for under 200 GBP (400 USD), so really there is no excuse in 2008 for a swapper free fast paced system. Something of course we knew as Cromemco users with Cromix in 1981. :-)

[andyt31]

Too bad WinXP can't use 6GB of RAM, and Vista is still crud.

The 64bit version of XP can. Same as 64bit vista and 64bit Windows 2003.

[squirrel-steam]

Vista is not "crud", its actually very good. Its just when you try to run it on a old 1.99ghz a64 with 512mb ram (like a new compaq), like so many people try too, it will run crappily. Vista's minimum is a 800mhz processor and 512mb ram, which is rediculous. You definitly need at least a dual core processor (not a pentium dual core,) and 2gb ram to run it somewhat smoothly. Same thing happened with windows 98, lots of stability problems and people were generally not happy with the performance on their pentium 1's. But windows 98 was designed for a more speedy pentium 2 or 3. But they fixed the stability problems with the release of the second edition of 98.

[im_an_alien]

Vista's minimum is a 800mhz processor and 512mb ram

Wow... I should install vista on my 1GHz/512MB system and see what happens :p

[Yzzerdd]

I used to have a system that was capable of Vista. I took Vista off and put XP back on after a week. It was a Pentium 4 2.8GHz with 1.5GB RAM and a 6 month old 256MB video card, a GeForce, IIRC. Vista ran OK but was a bit slow when I ran multiple things, did poorly with games, and was pointless. And of course, my video card wasn't rated for DirectX 9.0, so I couldn't use any of the fancy features. Luckily when I got Vista I also got a new hard drive. All I did was put all my XP docs on an external drive and remove the 40GB HD with XP on it, then put in a new 160GB HD that I put Vista on. All I had to do was put the 40GB back in and I had XP again. To me and many others, Vista is just a high-graphic highly-pointless version of XP designed to satisfy us as they continue working on that new version of Windows (wasn't it Windows 11 or something?) just like they did with Millennium edition--Windows 98 with a new name and copyright.

--Jack

[im_an_alien]

Windows 7. I guess they count 3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, and 7, excluding the "professional" and "server" versions, ie NT, 2000, Windows Server, etc, and windows 1 & 2, since they weren't very successful. I think another reason for vista's existence is to force more money out of gamers. DX10 isn't (officially) compatible with XP, and there are a few games (eg. Halo 2 PC) that are vista only, even though they can run fine on XP with a crack...

[carlsson]

Windows 2000 was internally known as NT 5, XP as 5.1 and I believe Vista is NT 6 (?) so in that way Windows 7 makes sense.

[dongfeng]

Interesting... The comments above echo exactly what Windows 2000 users were saying when XP first came on the market... ;)

[Yzzerdd]

Interesting... The comments above echo exactly what Windows 2000 users were saying when XP first came on the market... ;)

Well in all honesty, the only difference I really notice between 2K pro and XP is that XP is more graphical and has more built in drivers. That's why I use Windows 2K professional, as it is better on my system. If the programs I use (IE explorer mainly) were DOS compatable, I'd be using DOS...imagine how much faster my system would be...

Oh, and between Windows 98/ME and 2K, there is a HUGE difference, and I think they should've just left it at 2K seems the new Windows O/Ses are all the same thing with new names and icons.

--Jack