Question : Problem: laptop workstation that will run with 4GB RAM, can Lenove T60P with ATI graphics on XP address 4GB?

I need to buy a new laptop workstation that will address 4GB of ram for high-end engineering graphics and finite element programs.  I just bought a Lenovo T60P and with XP I have been told that it will only address 2GB with the ATI  FireGL V5250 graphics card.

1)  What is the hottest laptop workstation with Nvidia graphics with 4GB ram that you would suggest?

2)  Can I make my Lenove T60P work with 4GB by installing Vista?

3)  I have heard that Vista is not very efficient relative to XP, that a lot of processor time is taken up with checking for unauthorized applications/etc.  How does Vista stack up to XP for numerically intensive calculations?  some of my finite element runs calculating eigenvalues can take many hours to run.

4)  The ATI graphics drivers have a bad reputation with some high-end graphics program support teams, they seem to recommend Nvidia instead, is this reputation justified?

Thanks for your help.

Answer : Problem: laptop workstation that will run with 4GB RAM, can Lenove T60P with ATI graphics on XP address 4GB?

Yes, you just bump the memory to 4GB and it will "work automatically" (remember, you won't "see" all 4GB of it).   And yes, the response from your vendor is correct ... here's why:

By default, XP allocates a 2GB virtual address space for each process, regardless of how much memory you have.   So even if you have more than 2GB of memory, an application is limited to 2GB of addressable space [this is true even if you don't have 2GB of memory -- it's the total virtual space available for the process].    If you have more than 2GB of memory, the additional memory is used by the system for other purposes (i.e. it may be assigned to other applications as part of their 2GB).

If you want an application to be assigned a larger virtual space, you can use the /3GB switch ... as suggested in the response you quoted above.  Note that only applications that are "large address aware" can take advantage of the additional address space ==> but clearly your application is (since the vendor suggested using the switch).

To set the /3GB switch, just add it to the BOOT.INI file.   The easiest way to do this is:
(a)  Right-click on My Computer and select Properties.
(b)  Click on the Advanced tab
(c)  Click on Settings in the Startup and Recovery section
(d)  Click the Edit button in the System Startup section
(e)  Add /3GB to the end of the line that loads the operation system ==> it will look something like this:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

So you simply change it to this:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /3GB