windows xp or vista???
 

I'm thinking on upgradeing to vista and to the people that have it what do you think of it

is it worth upgradeing or would you stick with XP ???

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I am running XP Pro on a system that I bought used from a friend who was forced to "upgrade" to Vista for her job. She hates Vista with a passion, and is of the opinion that XP is the best OS Microsoft ever released.

The only thing I can think of Vista's favor is that many new games require DirectX 10.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I strongly discourage upgrading to Vista, because it is too restrictive, and considers you as a "slave". It also has many options you can't change without "cheating".

Regarding DirectX10, most of the recent games recommend it, but are able to restrict themself to DirectX9.

The probably best advice is to wait and see for Windows 7, at least until XP runs out of support.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I'm using Vista because it came with the computer I bought to replace the XP one that broke. If I had been given the choice at time of purchase I would have gone with XP. In fact I am still considering ways to remove Vista and install XP. My concern is that I will screw up the currently installed programs or that the registry for Vista won't completely be removed and the XP install will be rejected.

So stay with XP!

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I got Vista for $10 from my school so I decided to give it a try for awhile. Ran it side by side my copy of XP Pro. Did this for a few months and never found a reason to use Vista over XP. There was one reason to use Vista and that was Crysis but numerous tricks makes it look the same under DX9 as its supposed to under DX10. Vista was slower, uglier, bad driver support, less app compatibility. You better off going to Ubuntu or another friendly linux distro than making the "upgrade" to Vista.

Note: I may be considered a rabid XP fanboi. I am of the opinion outside of its closed nature it is the greatest operating system in existance.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Vista is prettier. That's pretty much the sum total point of upgrading.

That being said, it also is more of a resource hog.

However, as far as I can tell from my laptop, it won't eat your files, possess your printer or try to consume your soul. :D

It's basically XP: The Shiny Version. *Shrug* Not much else to it.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

There's nothing really wrong with Vista. I upgraded when I built my current desktop over the summer because XP didn't want to play nice with my RAID array. XP wouldn't recognise there was any sort of RAID going on without drivers being loaded from a 3.5" drive I don't have, whereas Vista picked it up right away and installed quite happily, so I went with it.

Vista's plug & play capabilities are a marked improvement over XP's as well. It's recognised and installed drivers for every phone, PDA, MP3 player, thumb drive, etc that I've plugged into my machine with no need to deal with driver CDs or scrounging around on the internet for them. It's even installed driver support for some obscure stuff like the IR receiver that came with my laptop (receiver for what I don't know, I didn't even know that's what it was until I plugged it in and Vista told me).

In terms of more noticeable improvements, the new Start menu has pretty much ruined XP for me. If you've used the Linux KDE application launcher, it'll feel pretty familiar and it makes previous iterations of the Start menu seem painfully unwiedly by comparisson. I'm actually surprised MS didn't make a bigger deal out of it when they released Vista, but maybe they just couldn't think of a nice way of saying, "Hey guys, it took us 12 years, but the Start menu's actually useful now!"

That being said, it is a fair bit more resource-intensive than XP, but then XP is coming up on it's 7th birthday while Vista is a few months shy of it's 2nd. Obviously an OS designed with 2007 hardware in mind is going to ask more of one built for 2001 hardware, but that's little consolation if you're running a PC that's a few years old. The hardware requirements and the cringe-inducing pricetag are really the only criticisms that stand up to scrutiny. Most of the "Vista is more restrictive!" claims come from the inclusion of Protected Video Path support, but unless you're planning on using Vista to watch Blu-Ray movies on an HDTV, this won't really affect you. User Account Control is bloody irritating when you're setting up a new system, but it's easily turned off while you're installing all your applications and configuring everything the way you want it. I turned UAC back on a couple months ago, and it hasn't bothered me once yet. Other than that, it'll let you do anything XP would, and in a lot of cases makes it easier. The fact that they got rid of XP's inane Simple File Sharing fills me with gleeful joy. :D Frankly, I think a lot of the Vista criticism stems from the same mentality that led to people spamming Amazon with 1-star ratings for Spore because they didn't understand its DRM.

So after all that Vista fanboi-ism, is it worth upgrading to Vista? Not really. It's a good operating system, with lots of nice little improvements over XP, but there's no real compelling reason to upgrade, unless you really, really hate XP's Start menu. ;)

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

What? Misinformation about media DRM, which is present in XP and Mac OS X too? Other than that, I can't imagine what you could be talking about. Its version of activation is effectively identical to XP circa SP2/3 with WGA, no bid deal. But even such an easily cracked feature can't justify the hyperbole of considering the user a slave..

Do go on...

The only way to remove an OS is to format the partition on which it resides. You certainly cannot do an in-place downgrade install to XP, the inverse of an in-place upgrade from, say, XP to Vista. The registry cannot be reused, and installed programs that depend on it will not be salvageable. Well-engineered programs can be copied to a temp drive/partition during the process and copied back, but many apps will not survive. You'll also need to do some juggling of the user folders, since MS changed them to make a lot more sense in Vista (no more of the hideous "My Documents" malarky). Your only option here is a fresh install of XP, either on a new partition/drive (creating a multi-boot system), or after formatting the partition on which Vista is installed.

Really though, unless you've got a ton of old games you need to play, or irreplaceable old hardware the vendors refuse to support with Vista drivers, there really isn't much point in going through the hassle of a downgrade. You're still going to have all of the same old Microsoft problems whether you go with XP or Vista. A dual-boot setup is much easier and safer.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Hi, I've the lousy vista os. The one thing I really dislike is the sound card issues. Please look at my post about low volume from plug ins. Other than that I've gotten around the way vista hides files by using a flash drive. IMHO don't down grade to vista. Its not a user friendly os. :(

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

So another company's failure to come out with decent drivers is Microsoft's fault and moving Folder Options to the Control Panel necessitates the use of a flash drive? :confused:

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I'm sorry, your last bit I didn't get, could you type slower?... I don't speak computer and my eyes glaze over when people talk tec. Its a foreign language to me. For decades I resisted using computers, so my skills are non-existent. Its my fault and I freely admit my shortcomings. So please be gentle when explaining things. I was just sharing my experiences with you. I had hoped for a little help with my bot, and I figure that you guys and gals know way more about computers than I do. BTW I am a certified Industrial Coatings Consultant, so if you have a problem with a coating just let me know. Anyway have a nice day, I'm on to happier thoughts...:D

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Well, problems with drivers (sound or otherwise) are the responsibility of whoever made the hardware, yet for some reason people seem to prefer to lay the blame at Microsoft's feet. Comments like, "Vista has lousy support for Hardware X" or "Vista borked my Hardware Y" are a pet peeve of mine since most of the time it's the hardware manufacturer who didn't release the drivers on time, or just did a shoddy job with them.

I was a bit confused as to what you meant by "I've gotten around the way vista hides files by using a flash drive." If it's a matter of not being able to see hidden files this can be fixed by going to Start->Control Panel->Folder Options, then clicking on the View tab and clicking the box for "Show Hidden & System Files". In XP, it was under Tools->Folder options from an Explorer window, which made it a lot easier to find, though part of me thinks that might be the reason they moved it. :P If it's something else, then I'm back to being confused because I can't think of any issues with hidden files that could be solved with a flash drive...

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Its still there in the Tools menu; just hit alt to make the menu bar appear (also works in IE). ;)

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I have had quite a bit of experience with both XP and Vista, both on personal and professional levels, and have to honestly say that in my opinion Vista just hasn't lived up to it's much lauded expectations.

Even several notable computer-industry websites and magazines have indicated that many of Vista's users who find it an improvement have a bit of a "shiny new thing" mentality, and often justify it's use over XP without any measurable or "proven" marketable evidence. Even several large corporations have opted to retro-install XP over Vista, because for all it's faults XP have had the benefit of time and effort to improve it as much as it has.

Vista may yet turn out to be the Golden Goose that Microsoft hoped it would be, but at the moment it just comes packaged with more headaches than benefits.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

The anti-Vista hype juggernaut is large indeed. If you don't think Vista has measurable and proven advantages over XP, you need to do some more reading. It actually has more advantages vs. XP than XP had vs. win2k when it came out, many of them of actual significance (dwm instead of a single frame buffer, decoupled driver architecture, uac/security measures, ie7 protected mode, etc.). It still has some issues, like a finicky explorer forgetting display settings, but most of the problems have been patched out by now.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

ya i read that but this is FROM people that HAVE vista that they would like to go back to XP :re:

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I'm sure the same could have been said of those wanting to go back to Win98 from WinXP. :P

My only qualm with Vista so far is SE5 performance.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Yeah, but the pro-Vista hype juggernaut is better financed.Damning with faint praise...

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I was for a long time a 98 user :)

then a friend showed me xp home (thats why i went right for xp PRO)

lol

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

The Anti-Vista juggernaut is right in my opinion.

As Fyron says:
"It actually has more advantages vs. XP than XP had vs. win2k when it came out, many of them of actual significance (dwm instead of a single frame buffer, decoupled driver architecture, uac/security measures, ie7 protected mode, etc.)."

But I'm not going to run out and and buy it because of those items. I don't even know what most of them are. Vista has no big draw item to make it worthwhile. It's launch was horrible and it had a lot of problems but most have been fixed. It still has version overload and by some estimates I've seen, about 35% of new pc's are downgraded to XP either by the vendor or the user. That's 1 in 3 of every new pc. Vista has a bad reputation that cannot be fixed. It's a marketing failure.

Look at MS's OS history.....

3.1 good OS

95 bad OS

95 OS1 or w/e good OS

98 bad OS

98SE good OS

ME horrible OS

XP great OS

Vista....fill in the blank

Windows 7 SHOULD be good OS...but ya never know

As regards Windows 7 - Supposedly MS will reveal more about Windows 7 on or about 27 Oct. according to their own Windows Engineering blog. However it will not be available until 2010 (which is not that far off) but Microsoft is well and truly on-message: It still wants customers and partners to depart on the sinking ship Vista. Sure MS makes a lot of money off of Vista but they could have made much much more.

And if you bought a Vista PC or upgraded to Vista, Are you going to spend some more money to upgrade to Windows 7? I'm sure some will. Me? I'll wait til Windows 7 and see how that is. It's right around the corner and it'll be interesting to see how MS handles it.

If the last eight years of watching Steve Jobs smugly introduce “one more thing” have taught us anything, it’s that no matter how technically sound (or alternately, how fatally flawed) a product is, every major release desperately needs one or two supersexy features to incite lust in geeks everywhere. Every time Jobs rolls out a new product, he teases the audience with a feature or two that you simply cannot wait to use. These features not only leave customers clamoring for the new product but also give those pesky users sitting on the fence a rationale for upgrading.


Anyways Vista is a victim of its image and a terrible first impression as far I see it. But obviously people hold different view about Vista. To each one his own.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Yay for selective quotation that ignores stated benefits!

I did list several of them. ;) Here's another one: 1st class 64 bit support, including requiring hardware vendors to make both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of drivers to get WHQL certification.

Much like XP vs. win2k, there really isn't any reason to go and buy Vista to upgrade an existing machine (unless you are a crazy tech enthusiast). Obviously, upgrading a win98 machine to win2k or XP was an incredibly good idea, given that the whole win9x line was one of the worst set of OSes ever developed. Also like XP vs. win2k, there isn't really a whole lot of purpose to going and downgrading a new Vista machine to XP. I'm not sure there will be any point to upgrading an existing Vista or XP machine to Windows 7 when it comes out, either.

Certainly, MS has failed to market Vista properly, but its not like it's winME or something; the OS is pretty solid after its initial birthing pains. The same thing happened with winXP, win2k, etc. They all started out with major flaws and bugs and were improved via patches and service packs.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

So, you think the people who've already downgraded 35% of those machines did so for no good reason?

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I can't seem to find any real data to back up that 35% figure. It appears to all lead back to a blog post about a survey of a self-selected group from Infoworld's "exo.performance.network community." Self-selected surveys result in completely useless statistics.

There is some legitimate data from NPD showing that retail box copy sales of Vista were down compared to XP in the first 6 months of sales, but that's not very relevant data either. Retail box copies have always been a very small fraction of total OS sales. What we need is hard data from the big PC vendors showing exactly what they've been selling.

Given the negative utility of the Infoworld data for inferring general market trends, I'd think it's fairly safe to continue assuming that the vast majority of non-corporate computer sales continue using the default operating system, without any effort taking on the part of consumers to choose something else. Corporate sales are a different beast, naturally, since corporate IT has very long upgrade cycles during which they keep everything using the same set of disk images. A lot of them are still just barely now upgrading from win2k to winXP.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Vista had 4 main failures, as far as I can see.

1.) a really bad roll out marketing campaign
2.) It's primary competition was windows xp
3.) Needed to ship with SP1 on launch.
4.) A successful apple ad campaign that set an image for vista before vista could for itself.

#2 and #4 are really the deal breakers for vista. Vista didn't provide a reason to upgrade and I only have it because it was on the computer I bought in june. Otherwise I'd be happy with XP and possibly migrating to ubuntu right now. Apple ran a pretty sharp campaign (Mac vs PC) that define vista bad and apple as simple is now doing the same to define Windows 7 in a poor light.

I think what microsoft needs to do is declare peace on all of its corportate fronts and in the confusion, give steve job a swirly and stuff his *** into a trashcan again. Otherwise known as pointing out steve job's and apple's flaws.

Let's take apple update which updates your computer with new software. Sure, you have itunes for your ipod but it'll install safari and quicktime under the disguise of an update. That's like microsoft bundling Internet explorer with..... Windows!

Or how about the ipod/iphone/itouch comes out with a new feature or two that it should've had from day one. I couldn't understand why people keep buying new ipods every year until I realized it's to get trendy new colors and that feature that wasn't in it before. In comparison, microsoft made all the new software for the zune 2 freely availible fo zune 2 users. If they'd drop DRM lockdown, I'd buy one today.

apple is built of a linux core, so why not save money and buy a cheap intel-based laptop and install ubuntu on it for free (total cost roughly 500-700) and get the same results with PC support. Apple and macs are way, way over priced for what you get for something that in a few years will be throw-away technology because of apple's product lifecycle mentality. Like your printer or mouse or keyboard when it breaks.

Apple isn't cool. It's consumerism at the highest levels. I don't want a desktop with fancy smanchy animation built into the core, I want a meat and potatos desktop to get to the job done, one that'll take a beating and keep on running (until it crashes), and -best of all- run video games.

One could argue that the traditional "Apple tax" is much reduced these days; comparable non-Apple hardware (ie: not your $300 Fry's specials) costs about the same. The primary problem these days is that there is no mid/low end desktop machine. There is the laptop line, the Mac mini, the retarded all-in-one iMacs, and the high-end Mac pros. All of these are priced fairly competitively with machines from other OEMs (HP, Dell, etc.). Apple apparently refuses to sell a mid-range desktop machine though, in favor of the iMac, creating a gap. The problem is not that Apple machines are more expensive, it's that Apple doesn't compete in the budget market. That, and they don't let you roll your own.

One could also point out that $5-700 laptops are horrible pieces of hardware not suitable for anyone that wants to do anything mildly complicated with them. Fine for web browsing and other basic tasks, but **** for anything performance-driven. It's definitely worth it to spend a few hundred more to get into the faster processing range, saving all sorts of time and frustration down the line. Furthermore, the Linux software ecosystem is quite lacking for desktop use, whereas Apple has enough clout and history to get versions of important productivity software. Plus, you'll need Windows anyways for running those games you like..

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

Stick with XP, or Win2K, is what I have been doing.

Re: windows xp or vista???
 

I wouldn't be a proper weenie if I didn't point out that Apple's operating system is Unix-based, not Linux-based. OSX's kernel is based on the Mach microkernel which was developed to replace BSD. Interestingly enough, the lead programer on the Mach kernel has been working for Microsoft for close to 20 years. Zany!