You could try adding more memory. I believe MS recommend a 1GHz processor and 1GByte RAM as a minimium for Vista. Another 512MByte shouldn't be very expensive.

Processor is slow by todays standards.

RAM is low, but is as supplied by many desktops thesedays (the cheap ones) - Assume you mean 512.

Ram is upgradeable, but can be tricky in laptops, and more often than not, has to be manufacturer compatible to the laptop (desktops are far easier!).

Processors can be upgraded in desktops, but it would end up costing more than the machine usually.  I do not believe you can on laptops, and if you could, it would be cheaper to get a new one!

In saying all this, my old laptop here is only 1.79Ghz and 384Mb RAM.  It is 4 years old now, and was cheap at the time.  I use it for surfing, Microsoft Office, creating Web Sites, playing music, email (outlook) and also for connecting to other machines using Remote Desktop.  I also have several bits of software for programming PBX telephone systems and alarms.

I find it slower than my desktop, but not too bad to be honest.  The worst thing is the start up time - around 4 mins I suppose.  I usually leave it on during the day, and fairly often during the night - 4 mins is a long time!  

I am looking to replace at some point, but do not find it too bad TBH!

My computer is about 5.5 years old and it's got a 1.6GHz Athlon 1900+ and 512M RAM. Its running Win XP SP1 and takes 12-15 seconds to open MS Word the first time and about 5 seconds subsequently.

Laptops can sometimes be a bit difficult when re-installing the OS because the OS may not provide all the drivers (eg for things like battery management, mouse pads etc. With luck the laptop maker has provided all this on a seperate CD.

I'd try a memory upgrade first. Probably cost <£20 ($18 on the US version of ebay).

golden rule is to match the pair of ram cards in the machine

Which version of Outlook do you have? 2007?...

http://help.lockergnome.com/vista/Outlook-2007-save-passwords-Vista-save-passwor...

Says

Closed down Outlook 2007.
Went to C:\users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect.
Delete the "Protect" folder. (or temporarily rename it OLDProtect)
Restarted Windows Vista.
Restarted Outlook 2007.
Re-inputted all 10 passwords (this computer has 10 email accounts)
Hit Send/Receive button

Hi,

Can I give my opinion here too.

Firstly, the matched pairs for memory was in the days of EDO RAM.  With more modern systems SDRAM, DDR and DDR2 this is no longer necessary.

With regards XP Pro, whilst MS recommend a minimum of 128Mb, its sweet spot for normal use is 512Mb.  If you only have say 256Mb, by the time the OS and AV has loaded, you do not have enough memory to run applications, especially Outlook and IE7 without paging to disk - and you want to avoid that at at costs.  If you plan to use MS Office 2007, the sweet spot then increases to 1Gb.

With Vista, first of all it has not had a service pack release yet, so has a few undocumented features (bugs!), and is far more resource hungry than anything before it.  MS recommends 1Gb minimum, but in my experience its sweet spot is 2Gb, but also places far more stress on your graphics card, thus it becomes a key component in your systems "general" performance.

Cannot advise you whether to downgrade to XP or not, that is really your choice based on is the resultant performance and stability acceptable to you.

There is a useful tool on the crucial memory website that will scan your system, tell you what is in there and offer you upgrade options.  It will also tell you if it is Vista ready or not.

Hope this helps.

red-robbo