Windows XP or VIsta For New System?

[Fyron]

I'd have to echo the warnings about 64 bit OSes. Drivers for them are far less mature, and you won't really see any gains from using them over the 32 bit versions.

Santiago said:
"Vista is nice and has some improvements but has hi system requirements..."

Which are easily covered by the system specs he posted. Note that such reqs go away when a game is launched, due to the kernel prioritizing them over noncritical parts of windows.

"If you're happy with trying to keep up with all the driver updates especially video drivers, then go for it."

You have to keep up with video card drivers on any (gaming-relevant) OS. Vista is no exception there.

"Note: Nvidia drivers are loaded with bugs and there are several class action lawuits being formed."

Hopefully these spurious lawsuits get dismissed and nVidia can continue working on their drivers in peace. If buggy drivers were worth lawsuits, Creative and ATI should have been sued out of existence by now.

"Don't expect windows vista drivers for hardware you already own until late 2007 at best."

He is getting a new system, so that's not much of an issue. Though, I haven't really heard of any non-video card driver issues. What have you heard?

[Leternel]

Linux, always use Linux for new system!
As DirectX his going to be opensource-remade and Vista sucks too much.

I recently bought a portable with Vista. Once started, I couldn't even launch notepad!!!!!!

[Santiago]

@ Fyron

Fyron said: You have to keep up with video card drivers on any (gaming-relevant) OS. Vista is no exception there.

Very true, however if the drivers aren't close to being DX-10 ready then updating drivers can cause serious problems.



"Don't expect windows vista drivers for hardware you already own until late 2007 at best."

Fyron said: He is getting a new system, so that's not much of an issue. Though, I haven't really heard of any non-video card driver issues. What have you heard?

It is if he's going to plug in peripherals. Printers and scanners are hit or miss with scanners being worse. The "final" update for Ipod compatability was only released 22 May. MS's own Zune player didn't work right until at least until March and still has glitches.

MS had to release
Windows Vista Application Compatibility Update. MS had to release this to get major software progams just to be able to run. Photoshop, AVG Various games etc.

The Windows Vista Application Compatibility Update is a package of software updates that address common application compatibility issues in Windows Vista. When you try to install and run certain legacy games or applications in Windows Vista, you may experience one or more of the following symptoms:• The game or application may not be installed correctly.
• The game or application may not be installed correctly.
• The game or application may cause system instability.
• The primary functions of the game or application may not work correctly.



From Dell " Some customers who purchased retail copies of Windows Vista may receive bluescreen errors when installing on systems configured with more than 3GB of RAM installed.
Microsoft has released a patch to correct the problem, as well as a procedure to complete installs on these systems"


All in all, it probably will be better in the future, but for Joe average who just wants to turn on the pc and work or play, it'sjust a big hassle.

[Atrocities]

I am going to go with XP Pro SP2. I can always move up to VISTA after a year or two.

[se5a]

What do you think about water cooled CPU's? Never really considered one before. Are they dependable?

with your sort of luck AT? yeah... I wouldn't bother.
water cooling is really the domain of the uber geek, and most the time is just the whole "my (whatever) is bigger/cooler/faster than your (whatever)."
that being said, it does have it's place, but for the likes of the avarage gamer it's not worth the effort.

[Fyron]

Santiago said:
It is if he's going to plug in peripherals. Printers and scanners are hit or miss with scanners being worse.

Isn't there a totally redone driver architecture in Vista, where hardware drivers can no longer run in kernel mode? I'd except some growing pains with poorly written device drivers under such a change.

[aegisx]

There is, UMDF. However this is not required and Drivers can still be be made the older ways, so I am not sure how many use it yet.

[Santiago]

Imperator Fyron said:

Isn't there a totally redone driver architecture in Vista, where hardware drivers can no longer run in kernel mode? I'd except some growing pains with poorly written device drivers under such a change.

I haven't really dug that far into it. I guess I've reached that saturation point where having the latest and greatest is not that important anymore. I can do what I want to do with what I already have. Depending on how old the peripheral is, there may not be new drivers so it may not work, it may work, or it may run in a limited mode.

My company recently gave me a laptop to use- I had been and still use my own 95%. The only reason I needed it was to talk to some very specific equipment. It's a Gateway 650Mhz running Windows 2K. It's slow and archaic but it has a serial port which a USB/PCMIA to serial adapter can't match. That is it's only importance to me.

Actually I am in the market for a new system to replace an older desktop and a 3 yr old 3.4 Ghz laptop suffering from a graphics card slow heat death. Looking to replace with one system. Laptop, desktop , maybe build my own laptop, haven't decided yet. But I want to be able to plug in my stuff and it works. NOW, not next driver release. Games, photos, movies, video editing and audio. So I'll be going with XP. Just my view on things.

[Desdinova]

I am currently using HP Pavillion DV9260US notebook. it is Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7200; 2.0GHz, Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit os, 2048MB DDR2 SDRAM, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 256MB (i wanted the 512MB version but it was not yet available except as a special order), 240GB (5400RPM) Hard Drive Dual HDD - 120GB x 2(SATA), HD DVD ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer. (I had hoped to avoid the whole blue-ray/HD dvd thing but the bastiches snuck this in on me. They also provided a HDdvd to go along with it, it was a verion of a movie i already had on regular dvd. so i got to see the difference, sneaky bastiches - LOL)

I wasnt really happy about getting Vista at the time but as my previous notebook was just about dead i didnt have much choice. At first it was more of a pain than it was worth (i couldnt even get SE:V to play) i lost internet connectivity on a regular basis and my options for video were very limited (i have a Dell 2405 24inch monitor and could not even get it to run any higher than 1024x768). Then there was the whole having to learn the new interface and where did (insert choice of insults here) MS put all the items i was used to.

MS has since released several patches and i no longer have the problems i did. I can play SE:V with hardly any lag, until later in the game, but whether that is due to the patches from MS or MM i do not know (I play on maps with 50-100 systems and btwn 12-19 races. once lag gets to be a problem i just shut down SE:V and restart and i am good to go again. I have not tried re-enabling multithread yet so not sure if it will help or not, but at first SE:V ran horribly with it activated in settings.txt). I can now run my monitor in 1900x1200 resolution.

as for other apps nearly everything i have is still 32-bit versions from before i upgraded so i dont know how well support is for the 64-bit ones. i am currently using a trial version of 3DS Max 9 with the Vista 64 bit patch and it is smooth. (i plan on buying the full version once i get enrolled in school, there is a rather nice discount for students $750 vs $4000+)

edit: my old laptop was also dying of a video card overheating problem. it was a step back in speed for me as i was also at 3.4 GHz and am now down to 2.0 GHz but i havent really noticed the difference very much.

[dogscoff]

I downloaded Ubuntu yesterday just to see how it is. I expected it to be a real hassle but it wasn't, you just download the image, download a little freeware app to burn the image to a CD and off you go.

Once you've burned the CD, you can boot into Ubuntu from it, so that you can try it out without having to actually install anything. It has open office installed, a media player and photo editor and stuff, so you can see if you can open all your existing files. Then when/if you do want to install, you can use the same CD. It even has a "install to a different partition and leave windows intact, with dual-boot menu when you switch the PC on" option.

Anyway, it looked prety neat. Tried it on 3 machines: On my work machine it didn't appear to work at all, but I think that's because the CD drive on here is dodgy and insanely slow. It probably would have got there eventually.

On my colleague's machine (another Dell) it worked really nicely. A tiny bit clunky, but that was only because it had to spin up the CD every time it wanted to do anything. It would be beautiful running from the HD. It picked up all the hardware automatically and completely transparently. That was pretty impressive.

On my home PC (Sony laptop) it worked, but very slowly. However that machine is 5 years old now and only has the bare minimum 256meg ram required by Ubuntu, and there is absolutely zero free space on the HD to use as swap at the moment. Again though, picked up all the hardware straight away. I think it even found my pcmcia wireless network card, although I didn't have much time so I gave up trying to get it talking to my router.

It looks like a really nice OS; very clean, very user-oriented. It would take a little adjusting to I'm sure but that's to be expected.

Anyway, point is, if you are thinking about OSes, you should definitely give Ubuntu a try, even if it's just so you can say "I tried it". You don't have to install anything, there's no commitment at all. All it costs you is the time and the blank CD required to download it.