Speaking to Computerworld, Short said while 2GB was the sweet spot of his XP machine, he needed double that to get Vista to its Nirvana.

The main reason is because Windows SuperFetch, which takes data from the hard drive, stores it in the available RAM and makes it readily accessible to the processor.

If the software thinks that you are going to want a particular application at a particular time, it will have it loaded into the available RAM. The plus side is that with more RAM, there's more caching and better software response. Of course this means you need a lot of RAM.

He warned punters should beware of hardware vendors who flogged Vista Capable machines based around Vole's minimum spec.

While Vista might run on 512MB of system memory and a processor that is at least 800MHz “its heart will not really be in it”.

Apparently Vole agrees with Short. Its demo PCs have been loaded with 4GB to show off the operating system in its full glory.

More here. µ