On 1gb ram, it runs fantastic on vista, mine is 3gb. It's not the ram that really matters tough, when it comes to Vista. I noticed that vista ran much faster when I upgraded my video card from a 128 mb to a 512mb video card.... Because it is a more graphics intensive OS...the more memory on the video card, the faster the graphics render and load. Therefore, making the OS appear faster. But, having more RAM doesn't hurt either...