Vista Memory Mystery?

Vista is a memory hog, no doubt about it. Try Running msconfig and editing your start up services. Let me know what you find. Also how much space is dwm.exe taking up?

Remove the bloatware

Get a copy of Process Explorer.
Its one of Msoft power Tools.
It does a much better job of telling what is running than task amnager does.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us [...] 95535.aspx

SuperFetch results in the 66MB "Free" here from the "Cached" RAM being used.

I would think that the OS balances what it can keep in RAM and what it can keep in the disc. If you have more RAM, it will just use more of that instead of the disc.

But most of the "RAM Hog" arguments are kind of out-dated nowadays. RAM is really cheap and it's really the best bang for buck for performance in many cases.

You are limited with 32-bit (mostly depending on how big your video card is) true. But the 64-bit option, although a little more work and consideration to "upgrade", really renders RAM out of the equation other than for hard core professional stuff.

On installing on old machines... Personally, I never really recommend installing a new OS into a "mainstream computer" 2 or more years old myself (give or take for high-end / budget)...unless you really know what you are doing and what to expect. Not only do you suffer performance decrease, but you also lose out on modern hardware support features. Vista is just an OS. There's a whole other part that you can "touch" that really allows it to integrate fully.

I don't really understand what the complaint is all about. Because computers are relatively cheap these days and if you want to save or can't afford any better, it's a given that you have to make some sacrifices.

For example, I have a receipt from 1992 that says I paid $2,163 for a 486-50Mz / 4MB RAM / 212 MB HD. LOL Inflation adjusted that's prolly like $4-5K in today's dollars. It's like buying a car considering how much time it has to obsolescence. And I was by no means "rich" (more like poor actually) but I guess it depends on what it means to you and what you want to get out of it. If you pay a little more...it will likely save you some gripes down the future.

Winner! Repost of mine from another topic:

Microsoft introduced an accounting change in Vista to make memory reporting more clear and less confusing than Windows XP. Many users look at memory reported as "available" by XP and erroneously interpret this to mean "free" memory. So an XP user with 1GB RAM might see "available" memory around 400MB, which they take to mean "free", then are shocked when they see only 10MB reported as "free" on a comparable or identical system running Vista. The problem is that, XP's definition of "available" is very different from Vista's definition of "free".

Vista counts memory pages on the stand-by and zero list against the amount of physical memory reported as "free" by Task Manager. Windows XP includes memory pages on the stand-by and zero list in the amount of physical memory reported as "available" by Task Manager. If XP used the same terms and definitions as Vista, it would make Windows XP suddenly look much worse than most people thought while making Vista look not as bad in comparison.

Vista does report "available" memory using a definition that is highly similar to Windows XP, though not exactly the same, it is roughly comparable. Open System Information (msinfo32) and it will be included in System Summary, Available Physical Memory, as shown in the following screen grab:

http://s89934018.onlinehome.us/images/sysinfo.png