windows xp or vista???

[Ironmanbc]

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 ???

[capnq]

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.

[Leternel]

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.

[President_Elect_Shang]

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!

[Combat Wombat]

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.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

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.

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

[AgentZero]

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. 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.

[Fyron]

Originally Posted by Leternel

I strongly discourage upgrading to Vista, because it is too restrictive, and considers you as a "slave".

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..

It also has many options you can't change without "cheating".

Do go on...

Originally Posted by President_Elect_Shang

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.

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.

[Bwaha]

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.

[AgentZero]

Originally Posted by Bwaha

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.

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?