Most of the ram "usage" in vista is for superfetch, which loads parts of commonly-used programs (like firefox and winamp or whatever you run on a daily basis) into ram so they'll load up quicker the next time you start them.
Now, lots of people think more ram used means slowdown, but that's because when programs use ram, and that ram space is needed, the program's data is paged out to the harddrive, and then paged back in when needed, which is what causes the slowdown since, compared to ram, harddrives are many times slower.
Superfetch is data that's already on the harddrive! So it doesn't need to be paged, so it causes no slowdown, and infact only speeds things up.
Now, while I did say that vista will run fine on half a gig of ram, vista's fancy UI (aero, the transparent/smooth windows and such) works best on an ACTUAL videocard (infact on the same specs, with an actual video card, vista can be faster than XP!), but most systems sold with a low amount of ram are done because it's cheap, so of course they have integrated graphics instead of a real graphics card, which slows things down.
So if you have the right specs for vista (meaning an actual graphics card and over half a gig of ram), then don't be fooled by the amount of ram it's "using", it'll perform fine.
Here's more info on superfetch and vista's ram usage.
psych0fish
Yeah, Vista will often use much more memory than Xp, and not only because it has a larger footprint.
Coding Horror has a good article (
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html ) on the subject.
Windows Xp didn't make very good use of memory for caching, while vista does alot more caching, which in theory should allow programs to start faster. If it needs more available memory for an active program it will shuffle things around. Vista just makes sure none of your ram is being wasted.
And here's a quote from another forum member.
psychic stalker
We don't need to rehash this. We've been over it eighty goddamn times this year and I'm sick of it repeatedly coming up.
Vista doesn't "use more resources." It
takes advantage of otherwise-unused resources,
the way every other OS besides Windows has been doing for decades. Vista doesn't "use more memory," it allows system caching to use more available memory resources,
which gets instantly evicted when more free memory is required; which other operating systems have been doing for decades - it's called a "cache." Vista doesn't "waste video resources," it takes advantage of 3D hardware that for the last several years has otherwise gone completely unused. The redesigned sound and video driver subsystems is a
long-overdue overhaul that should have been done in XP. The new UAC protection is also
long overdue, and is something that
every other OS has been doing for decades.
And this is a good thing.
Please stop making mountains of mole-hills.
