Evak: I wouldn't entertain the idea of running Vista on less than 512MB in an office environment. Games will actually fare better because Vista unloads a lot of itself when (compatible) games run. It was designed to get completely out of the way and let games have as many CPU cycles and as much RAM as possible.
I would guess that DX10 plays some part in this process, hence the major rewrite and lack of backwards compatability.
Win95 was quite usable with 64MB
Win98 was quite usable with 128MB
WinME (forget I even mentioned it)
Win2000 did well with 192MB
WinXP manages OK with 256MB
Multiply the above by 2, and those respective systems suddenly become a lot more responsive.
Multiply by 4 and the respective systems are a joy to use. Apart from Win95 I think, because it couldn't really do much with more than 128MB :)
I would guess that DX10 plays some part in this process, hence the major rewrite and lack of backwards compatability.
Win95 was quite usable with 64MB
Win98 was quite usable with 128MB
WinME (forget I even mentioned it)
Win2000 did well with 192MB
WinXP manages OK with 256MB
Multiply the above by 2, and those respective systems suddenly become a lot more responsive.
Multiply by 4 and the respective systems are a joy to use. Apart from Win95 I think, because it couldn't really do much with more than 128MB :)