Windows Xp

[Tomuk]

Hello All,

I know I am in the wrong Forum to be asking this question but I have a great deal of respect for our members opinions,

Here is my question; I have been lead to believe by my local computer shop that windows XP pro can only detect up to 3gb of memory on the motherboard, if I needed to upgrade further they suggest I move to Vista.

Is this correct or can I upgrade to the max the motherboard will accept and still run XP?

Tom,

[Davidh12]

Tom

I'm not sure about XP Pro but it is my understanding that only if you go to the new 64bit Vista will you be able to read 4Gb of Ram. 32 bit Vista only reads up to 3 Gb. You can have more but it won't use it. I stand to be corrected of course.

David

[Tomuk]

Tom

I'm not sure about XP Pro but it is my understanding that only if you go to the new 64bit Vista will you be able to read 4Gb of Ram. 32 bit Vista only reads up to 3 Gb. You can have more but it won't use it. I stand to be corrected of course.

David

Thanks for the Quick reply David, you have confirmed what the shop said. I can only hope that Xp will perform with 4

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

The "primary" reason Vista detects more RAM is that the operating system "needs" more RAM to run itself! Vista is a huge resource hog....

The XP Home addition on my Dell Inspiron 530 detects 3.2 Gig of my 4 Gig of RAM. I wouldn't trade if for "any" version of Vista regardless of RAM...

Best regards,

Lin

Thanks for the Quick reply David, you have confirmed what the shop said. I can only hope that Xp will perform with 4

[Tomuk]

Hi Tom,

The "primary" reason Vista detects more RAM is that the operating system "needs" more RAM to run itself! Vista is a huge resource hog....

The XP Home addition on my Dell Inspiron 530 detects 3.2 Gig of my 4 Gig of RAM. I wouldn't trade if for "any" version of Vista regardless of RAM...

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

Does that mean any programmes you have installed can only access 3.2 gig of your total memory?

Tom

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tom,

Yes, minus the amount used for housekeeping (operating system).... but that's a "lot" of memory. Most applications won't even use 3 gig of memory but rather use virtual memory by addressing a hard disk where there is nearly unlimited virtual memory available.

Only programs like Photoshop where one might have multiple layers of a huge file really need large amounts of RAM and even then 3 gigabytes is a huge amount. Think of a typical large digital 16 bit tiff image of say 30 megabytes. This could be duplicated over 90 times with three gigabytes!

Only if you were trying to stitch a couple hundred full size 30 megabyte images to make perhaps a gigapixel picture would you need huge amounts of RAM. That type thing has been done but it's not something most of us would spend a lot of time trying. Even those such as Max Lyons who does routinely make gigapixel stitches generally don't do it with 16 bit files.

I really think that the "need" for huge amounts of RAM is greatly exaggerated by many. I've been a professional photographer for over 40 years and have used Photoshop since it was introduced and I've gotten along really well with my largest medium format digital files using only one gigabyte of RAM. I've really never run into a situation where I needed much more that that regardless of what I was doing in Photoshop.

Perhaps business people who have absolutely huge spreadsheets running along with multiple other applications and files open simultaneously and Photoshop open at the same time could actually need over 3 gigabytes of RAM but that seems odd to me.

Best regards,

Lin

[Conflow]

Tomuk and Lin

Both the Shop and Lin are correct ~ Xp is designed to 'manipulate' up to 4.Gb of Ram (User Memory) ~ however thats

not the whole story, and in my view, the Shop should know better. Vista had many names before it became Vista and it

was primarily designed as a 'Business-Operating System' and as small/large Companies employ many people and they

use PC's ~ consequently they needed to Network these PC's and the concept of Networking was born. Networking is

called 'LAN' Local Area Network which uses a high-speed communications system called 'Ethernet'.

These 'Desktop Work-Stations' needed lots of user RAM (working-space) but very little HD Memory as the Mainframe stores

all Programs and all the Company archival Data in 'Hard-Memory'. This was expensive, but not so costly for the Company had it

provided large Hard-Drives on each Work-Station. Typical 'Work-Stations' could now be reduced to 8.Gb Hard-Drives or less.

So now you know where the 'Vista Concept' came from and why it is so resource hungry. Then Microsoft tried to foist it on

to the General Public, despite the fact that its an inappropriate System for private use ~ and by God did they try that with

every means within their resources even to actually stepping over the line !

Now its a matter of money, and Shareholders are 'rattled' with that decision and loss of profits, and loosing out to Apple and

the EU.Open Operating System. So now they are bringing out 'Windows-7' in 2009 which will incorporate Vista and they have

decided to clean up XP-Sp2 with "cross-compatible" XP-Sp3, leaving XP essentially in the Public Domain....or so they say ???.

Question is ?...Will XP-Sp3 remain the working mans' Horse, or will they 'nobble it' so badly it becomes practically useless ?

American Corporations have done this in the past, whereas a perfectly good stable Product was 'nobbled' simply because

it was not achieving Sales returns which it had enjoyed in its boom years ~ and had now fallen to its natural Sales plateau.

This is the fear in peoples mind's concerning XP ~ I do regret whats going on~ but Microsoft have themselves to blame for this.

Just keep on using your XP until the debris falls from the Sky...and forget those Memory issues...XP is perfectly adequate as it is.

Brian.

[shirleyhogan]

I know I'm asking a "wrong" question too but since you guys are talking about xp - here goes anyway.

My computer is Windows XP with SP1. I resisted putting SP2 on when it came out because I was hearing about so many problems with it.

I am now seeing some software (don't remember what at the moment) that requires SP2 so I am toying with the idea of upgrading now. Anybody have any suggestions or comments? (I am not exactly what you would call computer-savy.)

Thanks

Shirley

[Lin Evans]

Hi Shirley,

SP2 was a major improvemet to Win XP - do it with confidence...

Lin

I know I'm asking a "wrong" question too but since you guys are talking about xp - here goes anyway.

My computer is Windows XP with SP1. I resisted putting SP2 on when it came out because I was hearing about so many problems with it.

I am now seeing some software (don't remember what at the moment) that requires SP2 so I am toying with the idea of upgrading now. Anybody have any suggestions or comments? (I am not exactly what you would call computer-savy.)

Thanks

Shirley

[shirleyhogan]

Hi Shirley,

SP2 was a major improvemet to Win XP - do it with confidence...

Lin

Thanks for your help, Lin.

Shirley