Vista 32 or 64 bit?

You'll get 32bit. Dell don't currently offer 64bit. My advice would be to stick with 32bit for the sake of driver and application support. The only main advantage of the 64bit is the added memory recognition, but since the 64bit OS's kernel is larger and as a result occupies more RAM, the advantage is diminished somewhat.

• Very little hardware driver support for 64 bit, you will find many hardware will not work due to lack of drivers.
• 64 bit drivers needs to be signed by Microsoft. Microsoft needs to approve all drivers before they will work
• as mentioned above drivers that do not have the approved digital signature from Microsoft will not run in Vista 64, this is also a good security feature.
• 64 bit software will run very good on a 64 bit operating system but currently there aren’t very many of them
• 64 bit needs more ram than the 32 bit, 32 bit runs OK with 1 GB, but you will need at least 2 GB for the 64 version

I personally would go for the 32 bit version of Windows Vista, I think the majority of Windows users will be better off with 32 bit Windows. There aren’t really any big advantages to using 64 bit Windows although we do have 64 bit processors available. 64 bit Windows operates on more chunks of data, and probably the most important thing is more access to ram. Vista 32 bit can only see 4 gigs (actually more like 3.25 GB) of ram the 64 bit version can see over 8 GB.

The main disadvantages of 64 bit operating system is the incompatibility with programs and hardware due to lack of drivers currently for 64 bit Vista.

Advantages are users who needs lots of ram can get it through the Windows Vista 64 bit version, programs written for Vista 64 will have increased performance, and 64 bit Vista is more secure than the 32 bit version.

With a 4GB M1530, you will have almost 3.6GB of RAM available.

 

XPS M1530, Vista Home Premium SP1, T7250 Core 2 Duo (2.0 GHz 800 MHz FSB), 4 GB DDR2 667 MHz RAM, 200 GB SATA II 7200 RPM, Nvidia 8600M GT 256 MB, Wireless-AGN Mini-Card, BlueTooth, WSXGA+ High Def LCD (1680x1050) w/ 2 MP Camera

Dimension 9100, Dual-Boot Win XP SP2/ Vista Home Premium SP1, 3.0 GHz P4, 3 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM, 160 GB SATA II Samsung (XP), 300 GB SATA II Seagate (Vista), 250 GB SimpleTech USB (WD Drive), Nvidia Go 6800 (425/825 MHz - XP, 400/800 MHz - Vista, Vista Driver - 169.25), Dell 1901 UltraSharp FP

Inspiron E1705, Win Vista Premium, T7200 Core 2 Duo (4MB, 2.0 GHz 667MHz), 2 GB DDR2 677 MHz RAM, 120 GB Samsung HD, Nvidia Go 7900 GS - 156.69 Driver, 17” Sharp UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-Screen WUXGA