I can't believe people are upgrading to Vista. I can't wait to say "Told you so."

Why?  What do you really think is going to happen to people who upgrade to Vista?  I heard the same nonsense about XP.

Why? What do you really think is going to happen to people who upgrade to Vista?

Hunchbacks in black helicopters are going to steal your children and beat furry kittens to death with them......

 

....or so I heard....

"Why? What do you really think is going to happen to people who upgrade to Vista? I heard the same nonsense about XP."

We'll all be forced to have more than 32 megs of RAM, a fate so horrible Kona can't imagine it.

The Hunchback of WinCustomize... what an interesting thought   

What do you really think is going to happen to people who upgrade to Vista?

Well they're all gonna suffer XP wthdrawal symptoms and flood the insane asylums, entirely deplete Prozac supplies, of course.

I'm prepared with 18 months supply of Valium and Prozac....should be over by then

The probable reason your fan runs more often with broadband then dial-up, and this is an educated guess, is that your CPU is doing more, to crunch the data coming into your system at a faster rate.

The fact is fans should always be running to cool CPU's. Even if they are cpu controlled for optimum cooling vs noise they should always be at least on low speed. The reason is heat is generated by the electrons flowing through the circuits, and that heat is dumped into a heatsink via conduction. Then the heat is removed through radiation and largely convection. Unless you have a massive and expensive cooling system, and you'd know because you would have put it in, otherwise you have stock, and stock cooling systems are 99% of the time heatsink combined with fan.

Regarding RAM upgrades...
You only need to upgrade depending on what you are doing with your system. If you mainly word process and email, and play a a few non graphically intensive games, yahoo pool and the such. Then dropping more ram into your system isn't going to give you a huge performance improvement.

If you find your system is constantly moving system data from the RAM to the harddrive's pagefile/virtual memory, and that this is holding you up a lot then a RAM upgrade might be your best option.

RAM upgrades above the 2GB level are prety much wasted money, unless you routinely work with large databases, or meshes, realtime graphical memory, in which case you won't be using celeron technology anyway.

The cost effective place for RAM to be on your system is between 512MB and 1024MB(1GB). WIN XP can use up to 2GB to great value but each application can commonly only address 2GB of RAM meaning that upgrades to 4GB aren't necessary for the most part. Plus they are costly.

If you have 512 you might consider upgrading if the cost is less then $75. Otherwise screw it. Save the money for your next rig. If you have 1024 you may as well just stick with that.

The only user I would encourage to upgrade is anyone running 384MB or 256MB of RAM as you are very close to the bottom margin and I can almost assure you that your harddrive is working too hard to keep up.

Shutup Baker. Personal attacks aren't needed. And yes I have more than 32 megs of RAM.

The bad thing about Vista is mostly DRM. And the price.

The bad thing about Vista is mostly DRM. And the price.

And the fact that even after calling myself a business ta get it sooner, MS reckons I still gotta wait fer Vista like everybody (home user) else.

Honestly, Kona, I've been running Vista RC2 for a while and find it to be a stable and enjoyable OS to use, thus I shall follow the future direction of Windows and purchase Vista Ultimate when it hits the stores. Okay, there's still some 3rd party apps that don't run with it yet, but they'll catch up soon enough and things can only get better for MS' new flagship.

OK fair enough. I'll stick to XP and Linux.

How did this turn into a Vista thread. Anyways...

Thanks Dan, that's really informative.
I think I'll fix my fan, get vista and then see what happens. Then, I can improve if need be.
You guys have given me a lot to think about.
It's appreciated.

Now, I just have to turn my computer off. "Where was that plug-in again?".....

What exactly do you have for system specs. Are you able to run Vista?

System Specs
CPU speed
RAM Quantity
Hard Drive Space
Graphics Card

That kinda thing.

Are you using a Celeron processor or Pentium 4?

Here's an example, when I bought this system back in 2003, it came with a P4 2.4 ghz non Hyper threading processor, 256 MB RAM, a 60 gig HD, and a GeForce 4 MX 440 graphics card with 64 MB or ram on that.

The first upgrade I performed was adding another stick of 256 to two sticks of 128, for a total of 768, I had another stick of 256 laying around. So now I have 2 sticks of 128 and 2 sticks of 256 in the rig for a total of 896 MB RAM. Not great but good enough. My system has 4 slots for ram and many systems do but not all. If you got a celeron rig you probably have 2 slots. Which limits your upgrade options, because rather then add you must replace RAM sticks.

The next thing I upgraded was a Geforce 6600 with 256 onboard graphics ram, it pretty much kicks ass in this rig.

The original cost was about $800 and putting another $200-250 into it has extended it's life but it's time to get a new one any day now, I'm having major software issues, Thanks Dell with the Operating system, and this has both prevented my from upgrading the harddrive as well as using system restore because the OS is damaged some how. With 3 years of constant patching and hotfixes as well as plugins that's to be expected, and it's only a matter of time until I come home one day and start it up and get a blue screen of death and I just say to hell with it and go get another $800 dual core rig.

But let me see if I can help you with your quandries yet. Show some system specs.

Hey Dan, ya ever feel like you came in right in the middle of a movie?   

For my specs click on the pic, all the way at the top of this thread, that started this whole thing.

Nevermind, I'll post it again. WWW Link

80GB hard drive. 81% free and yes, it's vista ready.

Thanks

and yes, it's vista ready.

Your system specs are similar to my wife's....she has a Celeron 2.66Ghz, 1.5gb RAM and a 256mb RadeOn 9550 that runs Vista fairly well, so you should be right to go with Vista when it goes gold.

BTW, and I don't wanna scare ya, but my previous system had issues with the CPU fan abnormally kicking in and humming loudly under regular usage conditions....turned out to be a faulty mobo that eventually died and had to be replaced. Hopefully that's not your issue....with puter tech going out of date before the cash register closes these days, a mobo replacement can also result in having to upgrade other components (CPU, RAM, GPU) to be compatible with the newer tech.

Z71,

I'm coming in late in the game, but I've followed this thread for a bit now.
I'm going to be honest with you here, you need to clean out the heatsink and fan (HSF) assembly.

It's no big deal. Simply crack your case, and remove ONLY the fan from atop the heatsink. Clean all the crap out of both the fan itself as well as the heatsink with a can of compressed air and a soft bristle brush.

Put the fan back on, and your heating issues will be over.

As far as Vista goes:

You would be best off to run the Vista Advisor, AFTER you clean out the HSF, which you can download from this page Vista Advisor">Link

You can read a PC World article that talks about Vista requirements by clicking this link: [link="http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125776-page,1/article.html"]PC World

Good luck with it all!

"Hey Dan, ya ever feel like you came in right in the middle of a movie? "

That doesn't mean if the movie sucks I can't help you sneak into another one in the theatre.

Ok, so you got a nice speed 2.66 GHZ Celeron, with a gig of ram, and 80Gigs of HD. That's a pretty well balanced system.

For queiting the fan noise, yes it probably needs a good blow out, but unless you are going to take the case off I'd recommend against just spraying into it with a can of compressed air. I work in electronic assembly, so I speak with some expertise here, Dust and the things inside dust can cause sort circuiting of circuits because it conducts electricity better then air. So unless you open up the case and do a really good spraying, it's better to just leave dust be inside. Though it may be affecting your fan's noise level.

You can take the case off if you decide to do so on your own or take it out to bestbuy or where you bought it and get it professionally blown out for $10 if they even charge you. Dude recommended it to me once a year four years ago when I was thinking about buying ram. Needless to say I haven't been back. When you do have the case open be careful not to touch any of the electronic parts inside and also leave the machine plugged-IN not out, so it remains grounded in case there is and Electro-static discharge.

As for your system, the graphics card u have is intergrated which means it is not upgradable almost in every case. Also the CPU, though it's relatively fast it is a celeron, and celerons are weaker execution-wise then regular single core pentium 4's of the same speed. If the fan is spinning more often now its probably because the broadband is working the processor pretty good, nothing to be worried about.

Since it's the holidays you might consider starting a fund for a new system for when Vista comes out if you wish, or if you are so inclined to go with a dual core system the next time you buy.

Regarding upgrades, at this point it really isn't going to help you too much to upgrade your ram from 1GB to 2GB, unless you are using large data cruching programs. My guess is it's mosly email and word processing, few games but nothing super intense or cutting edge, or you never would have bought a celeron or intergrated graphics rig. Upgrading your ram is also probably going to mean replacing the ram rather then adding, which for larger sticks is going to be expensive as well when you divide the expense by the benefit for the extra ram. Certainly there would be a performance improvement in certain situations, but it would be pretty rare in my estimation, and the cost of upgrade outweight the benefit.

Dan, the movie comment was just my way of poking fun. I know some people (and I'm one of them) who come into the conversation, without reading the whole thread. No big deal. Again, just keeping the thread light with some (bad) humor.

I have to agree with you on everything you've said, except having Best Buy do anything. I buy there, nothing else. Heard to many war stories about the "Geeks".
Usually, I can figure out any problems I have, but most times it's the easy stuff that can give you the most problems. And no, you didn't scare me....
Why I bought the computer that I did? Money, is always, the #1 issue.

---

I'm going to do a promo just for a second.
When I started out, I owned a HP. Crash after crash. Don't recomend them.
Second was a Dell. Not to bad, but had to do a complete re-install every 3 months.
Now, I have an "E Machine". Never heard of them until a couple of years ago. How many problems have I had. "0" in the last 2 years. Nothing, nada, zero. "The fan?" I know now (with a lot of help) I'm pretty sure, is just a dust problem.
I know alot of people will disagree about the E-Machine. That's fine. Just keep it to yourself. No need to have a computer war going on here.
I will say, that if it keep going the way it is, the next time I buy one will be because this one is obsolete.

---

Xythe, thanks for that. Yes, I downloaded the advisor about 2 months ago. Told me what I already knew. Which is a good thing.

I have to agree with you on everything you've said, except having Best Buy do anything.

I think they can handel blowing out the dust without screwing it up. But competentcy is a random and general thing. Their special geek skills are not to be thought unobtainable by the general populations, no matter how lame/geeky they'd like to perpetuate the stereotype.

I think they can (handle) blowing out the dust without screwing it up.

You need to stop by my Best Buy.
Last year, I was looking to by a dish, from them, and I asked the tech guy (manager) "How good is the reception in the country?"
His reply?...."It doesn't work in the country."

Swear to God. Sad part is.....he said it with a straight face. Which made me laugh even harder.
Needless to say, No Sale!...

LOL. Well I've had em try to hawk older less capable PC2700 ram as the hottest thing, so when you say that they make statements that make u just wanna say, "how the hell did you get this job?", I agree with ya.

On a scale of 1-10 the competentcy level of an employee necessary for blowing out the inside of a computer case, is about a 1. LOL in the case of your Besy Buy that might be pushing it.

I actually know something about computers, people management, sales, and customer service, and when I was unemployed I applied, in fact I've applied three times to Best Buy, but they have never called me for an interview. I have to conclude that I am over-qualified, because all they seem to want is someone who will do anything for the company and smile at all times, and just eat sh*t from customers during the holidays.

One of the most annoying things at my best buy isn't the actual staff, but the phone ringing. There is a phone what seems like every 10 feet, and at any time of day, you can walk the store and hear two-three-four different phones ringing at the same time. Yet they'll refuse to staff their store with enought people so you have a chance of encountering someone who is competent. Oh well market forces right?