I got a computer in Dec of 2006. 3 months later a Vista upgrade disk came in the mail. I have had it ever since. I use this computer to store stuff and try new programs ect. I am wondering how much I will regret upgrading with this free disk. The system has a Pentuim 4 3.1 G CPU and only 512MB of RAM. I would really like to put vista on it but....512 MB of ram is not the 1GB they recommend. Is anyone running a system like this? What will happen? Will it just run slow and not have Aero because the graphics are not up to par either or will there be other problems? Thanks for any advice.

You would have a better time if you got in on the Windows7 Beta. I put it on a similar system except mine had 1 GB ram. But I've seen others with only 1/2 GB say it runs ok. The thing is, the Windows7 Beta is the Ultimate edition. The install is likely to be a lot smarter than Vista Home Premium. I have an AMD dual core 5200 with 2 GB ram and I wouldn't want to run Vista with anything less. Plus Vista tends to run your HD a lot more than XP does. If you want to use Vista I'd suggest getting a PC with at least 2 GB ram that has Vista SP1 already installed. I don't know what your budget is but I see lately at Best Buy you can get a quad core machine with 8 GB ram for $700 and change. (Might be a good excuse to get a new PC)

It all depends on whether you can get updates for your old adaptors. If there are no updates for these adaptors you may as well buy a new computer. They have to be Vista compatible. Then you can worry about RAM. You need at least 2Gb RAM to operate sufficiently. All those old programs you used may not work on Vista either...Give Windows 7 a try that may work much better and it's free for a short while...

Everything I'm reading says Windows 7 beta is no longer available. Is there somewhere else to obtain the download besides MS site? I would like to give Windows 7 a try. Where can I get it? I assume you're talking about torrent file?

Don't know where you could get the beta now but I think you'd be happier if it's possible. Vista esp before SP1 tends to run the HD something fierce. When I got my Vista64 SP1 machine I had a printout of all the services settings from my Vista 32 PC. Many of the services were set to Manual instead of Automatic like I had in my list. Before SP1 you can spend a lot of wasted time just trying to quiet the HD. It was even worse in my case because I had a Media Center PC so every kind of software imaginable had scheduled tasks to search all my drives for media files, index for searches etc... Even locate32 file search software I've used for years has much heavier overhead in Vista than in XP. Enabling "monitor file system changes" runs the HD if you copy a big chunk of files to another drive or whatever. Stuff you don't even notice in XP cripples your system for 20 minutes in Vista.

I like the exploding windows but it comes with a price.

I made an image backup of my drive with Paragon Drive Backup. You can get an Express edition free. It makes a snapshot. When you want to go back to XP or whatever you backup up, you lay the image back on by booting a CD and restoring from your backup set. I recommend external USB because the boot CD has built in USB support.

When I was bored with the beta I just restored the image.

If you keep your HD lean you can do a restore in a bit over an hour. If you have lots of expendable data files(or they are backed up another way like copied to external drive) for $40 you can get the Personal edition that has folder exclusion. You can exclude large data folders from the backup. Only thing is after a restore you will have "phantom file entries" since it preserves the directory structure and info. So it's best to keep the exclusion uncomplicated so you can remember what "fake" file entries to delete. For example if you have a folder full of huge video files you can exclude it. If you have to do a restore as soon as it's complete just go in that folder and delete all the file entries to avoid file system errors.