How low can you go? (No Limbo Contest)

DeaconFrost

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I have an old Compaq laptop I was going to set up for my mother-in-law to use, basically to play online games. I have several free licenses for XP, Vista Home Basic, and Windows 7 Home Basic/Starter. I'd rather not use XP if possible, because she's used to their newer computers in the house, all of which run Vista. If I have to, I will, but I'm curious to see what low-spec PCs have you gotten Vista or Windows 7 to run on...and run decent enough to use for the basics?

The laptop in question is an AMD 1800+ (1533 MHz), 1 GB DDR memory, and ATI IGP graphics (16 MB of dedicated memory).
 
Ran Vista home basic on a P4 2.0Ghz, 512MB of ram, integrated graphics (I'm guessing intel) - it ran fine for light computing, internet explorer, quicken, text document editing, etc. Have seen several posts on the internet of people running Vista on P3-1Ghz systems who said it was fine...don't believe the hype.
 
Just fine for day-to-day stuff. I never tried gaming on it, but as a workstation it had no issues.
 
This processor isn't x64 compatible, so I know I'll be using the x86 flavor.
Pentium 4 1.8Ghz, 1GB RAM - Win7 Ultimate.
That's probably very close to what this laptop would be, if I got by the purpose of the 1800+ naming convention.
 
Running Windows 7 32 bit on my 1.4 celeron laptop with 1 gig of ram. Runs well.
 
Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
Atom N280 (1.66 Ghz)
1 gig ram
Intel GMA950 Video Chipset

That's as low as I've got running 7 right now.
 
Compaq Presario with single core Intel Celeron 1.8ghz, but with 2gb of ram, vista home basic runs just ok for surfing, msn, music, etc. The computer actually runs better 7 than Vista.
 
1.6Ghz single core Turion (I think) with 512 MB of RAM. It ran Win7 at least as good if not better than XP. RAM is going to be the biggest factor for the OS and since it has 1GB of RAM there should be no problems.

 
I did install TinyVista on my netbook once.. Atom 1.6 GHz, 512MB RAM and 8GB SSD. It wasn't great though so I went back to TinyXP with the Flashfire SSD accelerator.
 
Ran Vista home basic on a P4 2.0Ghz, 512MB of ram, integrated graphics (I'm guessing intel) - it ran fine for light computing, internet explorer, quicken, text document editing, etc. Have seen several posts on the internet of people running Vista on P3-1Ghz systems who said it was fine...don't believe the hype.

Same here, Mine was 3.2Ghz P4 though...
It ran OK, but sticking 3GB of RAM in it sure helped though.
 
Windows 7 Ultimate x86 on an HP Pavillion DV1000 laptop. Pentium M 1.5ghz, 512mb of RAM, 80gb HDD, crappy integrated Intel graphics. Aero not supported, but that's not an issue. The OS runs considerably more snappy than XP did on the same machine. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it runs, actually.
 
Running windows 7 on my moms dell laptop. 1.3Ghz celeron, 512 ram, intel accelerator with shared memory and the slowest 30gb hardrive i've ever seen. Runs like a charm if you don't mind some pretty bad boot times.
 
I'm eyeballing this thread, because my wifes laptop has a current XP install that's old and getting sluggish. It's a P4 2.0 I believe, non-H/T. Some Dell Inspiron model with a useless maximum memory capacity of only 512 megs. Ugh. I installed Mint Linux dual boot, but she doens't like it, needs Windows 'n especialy IE for her real estate apps.

I've installed Win7 on early P4s with 1 gig of RAM and it's run well, was wary of trying it on 512. Guess I'll give it a go.
 
Running windows 7 on my moms dell laptop. 1.3Ghz celeron, 512 ram, intel accelerator with shared memory and the slowest 30gb hardrive i've ever seen. Runs like a charm if you don't mind some pretty bad boot times.

What’s Windows 7 idle memory usage on a 512MB of RAM machine?
 
Ran Vista on a Latitude D600 1.4 Ghz single core with 1 GB RAM. Performance when using Office and other productivity apps was acceptable. It would even handle some older games (C&C Generals).

Running 7 on a Latitude C840 2.0 P4m with 1 GB RAM. Performance is decent for average use. Boot times are even acceptable. Gaming isn't really an option on a Radeon 7500 GPU though. Also running 7 on a Latitude D600 1.7 Ghz with 1 GB. Performance is about the same as the c840.
 
I'm eyeballing this thread, because my wifes laptop has a current XP install that's old and getting sluggish. It's a P4 2.0 I believe, non-H/T. Some Dell Inspiron model with a useless maximum memory capacity of only 512 megs. Ugh. I installed Mint Linux dual boot, but she doens't like it, needs Windows 'n especialy IE for her real estate apps.

Is 512 the most that will work or is it what the specs say for that model? I ask because my Latitude c640s and c840s all spec 1GB as the max RAM, but I've had them up to 2GB.
 
great stuff, it’s using 750MB to 950MB memory @ Idle on 4GB RAM systems, but only using 350, 212 or even less than 96MB memory on low memory systems.

does this mean that it automatically turns off some windows services like indexing or SuperFetch, or is it just using the hard drive instead of the RAM?

edit: from mpeg4v3 link: 266MHz and 64MB memory
 
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