I am planning to buy a dell computer.

256 MB ram
80 GB
2.80 Ghz etc..

And when I called him to buy it...he says "256 MB is too slow for window XP"..please share ur opinion weather if he is correct??

Thank You.

Personaly I would not buy a Dell. He is correct that 256 is not enough memory, but it may depend on what you use the machine for. If you do buy a Dell insist on a FULL XP disk, not the restore disk that will cause you grief down the road.

One gigabyte (1024) of ram is a good amount of ram to have for Windows XP. This is what I have in my setup. This will be doubled to 2 gigs in the very near future.

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depends what you use it for.

Please keep us updated so we know if we helped you or not.

256 Mbs of RAM for XP is adequate. Anything less and it will be sluggish. 512 Mbs will put you in the comfort zone.

The improvement from 510 Mbs to 1Gb will be minimal unless you do a lot of graphics work or gaming. If you do any video editing the more RAM the better.

Stuart

dell has pretty good deals, but i never bought from them before.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/odg_special49?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&redirect=1

Dude! you're gettin a dell! ha!
sorry had to throw that in!
I don't know who is rating dell's service number one but nobody I know would ever buy one again. I used to babysit a couple of them and if you ever have to use the support or warranty you will need a headset for your phone, a big cup of coffee (or beer) and an easychair.

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And be able to understand Indian English. The support has been moved to India. If you want some insight PM TOMMYO on this sight for his crap experience with tech support.

I somewhat agree with Stuart on this one. 256 will run xp more than fast enough...but it depends on how much and what all you have installed on the machine. The more programs and files the more ram that you will need.
**** It is not really so much the question of how much ram do you have as it is the question of how much AVAILABLE RAM that you have. My experience is that if the "available ram" drops below 150MB then the system will start to slow and bog down. XP runs great when the "available ram" is above 150mb and runs super above 256mb of "available ram" The difference in performance of more than 256mb of available ram is negligable as most users would not be able to see any remarkable improvement.
To determine the "available ram" or "free" ram as it is some times called...

start > all programs > accessories > system tools > system information and scroll down to the physical installed ram and available ram notations.
Sometimes this is disabled from tweaking the system and the info is not available for viewing though.

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Hi everyone.. Good gosh yes, sonny2. What a nightmare I had with their tech people last year! If you can understand the Indian dialect with difficulty, then you might be better off than I was.
I wont go into dteails, as it is bedtime here.. gotta get up early tomorrow a.m.

But overall I was very pleased with my old Dell 2350, and very pleased with this new Dell 4700.
Definitelt get at least the 512 RAM, munjal... the more, the merrier! I've got 1 gig on this new one, and the P-4, 3.2 GHz processor. It is much faster than my old Dell 2350. Also, if it is within your budget, the Dell UltraSharp digital flat panel monitor is fantastic too... also get the enhanced ATI Radeon and connect via the DVI for amazing clarity on the monitor.

Good night all.....

~Tommyo
Have a great evening all..

512 :)

I'd suggest upgrading to 512 if you can spare a little change, however make sure you leave yourself at least one DIMM to add more memory later. The system setup page should tell you how many DIMMS there are and how many are being used (512MB could use either 1 (1x512) or 2 (2x256)). You can always upgrade later, and 256MB is enough for at least 80% of the users out there running XP.

As to Dell's support, they are supposedly in the process of moving a good chunk of it back to the US and Canada. They got so many complaints (including several from yours truly) that they finally realized they were losing business because of their crappy support.

I still recommend Dell to most family and friends who ask. They have pretty good systems and often have great deals. For a desktop, the only other place I might go is a local shop, but they can be expensive and/or not very good. Some are, some aren't. Other than that who else? HP? Maybe, but rather not. Compaq? No way. Gateway? Never. Sony? Nope.

However, for a laptop, I would consider looking at Toshiba. My sister got one last year and when I first heard I was skeptical, but after she got it I was impressed. Solid construction and good performance. Probably about as good as my Dell Inspiron :)

Hey, who needs Dell's tech support when we have Computing.net.

I got a Dell about 2 months ago. An 8400 and I love it. 3GHz HT, 800MHz FSB. I got a good deal. I waited until they were throwing in the DVD burner and the 19" analog flat panel monitor in the offer.

I did not spend the extra money for the 19" Digital. I'm sure it's nice but a little to pricey for my budget. I bought the floopy drive later and installed it myself and saved $10 in doing so.

The 8400 comes with 512MB RAM at 2x256. It has 4 slots to add more. In the event that I wanted to add more I didn't want to waste the money on 256MB sticks making the greatest amount of 1GB so I went for the 1GB of RAM at 2x512 (533MHz FSB) sticks. My available total would be 2GB RAM. WinXP can have problems with a total of 4GB so I did not get 1GB sticks (they are pricey too). I don't see that I will ever need that much anyway or even 2GB.

I do some video editing and have never used more than 512MB at any one time.

I have another machine that is an old Dell with a PII 333MHz with 128MB RAM and it runs WinXP Pro just fine. I don't do any video editing on that one though.

I too suggest getting 512MB RAM unless you can afford to go to 1GB of RAM.

Bryan

I run 512 Mb on my XP Pro box. I thought it was handling things pretty well. I used the trick above to check out my 'available Ram' and found it has right now, about 78Mb. And I'm not doing much, just Computing.net. When I get into video editing soon, I may have a problem! At work, my workstation only has 256 Mb on an NT machine. It's rather slow, too. (Running Excel, Word and a bunch of other apps.)

So, I would say that 512 is OK, it's do-able. But for best response I'd go with a Gb. Prices are still up there, but if you can afford it, do it.

My daughter bought a Dell system, without consulting me, of course, and didn't get the full XP disk. She will regret that. It seems to be a decent box, but my AMD 2000+ is able to beat it on some things, and didn't cost that much to build.

Many companies shipped their support oveseas in the past few years, and are now wishing they hadn't. The support is lousy. I work for an insurance company. It takes years to learn all the ins and outs of this industry. They thought they could teach the people in the Philipines how to do it in 4 to 6 weeks. What a mess we are having! I expect the support to be returned here soon. They used old American TV movies to learn how to speak English! What a joke.

Have fun.

Bob

Trouble with Dells is down the road u cant upgrade things urself cos dell make all their own parts