2gb+ for laptop vista 64

[bigdaddylemon]

I was looking to buy a new laptop with vista 64 ultimate. The most ram the manufacture offers is 2GB. Do I need more than that to run vista easily on the laptop, and if so, why do they even sell laptops with vista 64 if you need more than 2GB of ram to run them.
Laptop has core 2 duo 7200, 2 7200rpm 100gb hdd, and nvidia 7600 video card with 512MB ram. Is an HP DV9000T.
The best game I will run on it is need for speed high stakes, and maybe NFS carbon. Not an avid gamer by any means.

 

[Ycon]

2 GB should be OK.
Even though you still can order 512MB only (or whatever is the least amount offered) and upgrade to 4 GB yourself with retail RAM which should cost bout $250 for 2x2GB.
While 2 GB is actually quite OK for midrange on Vista, you need 4 GB to get the snappiness seen on XP with 2 GB.

 

[bigdaddylemon]

where would I get 2 2gb ram stics for a laptop? I saw on one manufacturer's site that going from 2gb to 4gb on a laptop was a $1400 option. I know how to upgrade ram, so $250 for 4gb would be a great deal.

 

[bigdaddylemon]

I already have a 6 year old hp desktop. It has 1.3ghz amd athlon, 640mb pc100 sd ram, 16mb onboard video, onboard audio, 40gb hdd, and XP Home SP2. Would this laptop running vista ultimate 64 and 2gb and/or 4gb ram be faster than my desktop even after being halfway loaded with software, music, and movies?

 

[Mondoman]

Laptop technology often lags desktop technology a bit. Your laptop may actually be limited to a max of 2GB of RAM, or it may support 2x2GB modules for a total of 4GB (even if HP doesn't say so) -- it'll depend on the chipset and design of the motherboard.
However, even if 4GB physically works and is installed in your laptop, unless the laptop has a chipset and other hardware all able to address memory above the 4GB mark, in addition to a "memory relocation" feature in the BIOS, even 64-bit Windows will be limited to about 3GB of usable, addressable RAM.