XP v's VISTA

i was thinking of upgrading to vista , at mo i run xp home. i use comp for net playing music and watch films while on the net and a few games . confused

 

Here are the different operating system options. You will probably find for home use the Home Edition Premium very good. But look through all the specs and see for yourself

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/default.mspx

 

cheers lev , just seen burning monkey's post on vista . and dont like the sound of it , if that sort of thing happened id be back on here with some more troubles of wow.

 

His story of Vista could be a story of XP.

Quite easily. Business as usual, as far as Im concerned.

 

I agree with Adryn. Don't let a few problems posted on here put you off. Remember there are thousands of others who have installed Vista with no problems - they just don't post that on here as they are busy using Vista

 

iv just found vista home for 50 quid so i think ill take the plunge, iv got an asus mobo asus nvid 7600 gt 1 gig mem and p D 820 2.66 o/c to 3.1. will this bundle run it ok.

 

Yeah, I myself would spring for another gig of ram though.

 

Vista Home is very basic, check this chart to make sure this is what you want. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx

 

For what its worth:

FinancialMail
13 July 2007

Vista under fire

By DUNCAN McLEOD

In 2000, Microsoft foisted a dog of an operating system onto the world. Windows Millennium Edition (Me) was unstable to the point of being unusable. Now some commentators are drawing parallels between it and Windows Vista, Microsoft's new baby.

Windows Me was such a bad operating system that even Microsoft officials admitted to me in private at the time that the company had made a mistake in releasing what was at best "beta" code. Why did the company do it? Windows XP was still a year away and the company was clearly itching to squeeze the last drops of blood it could out of its dying, DOS-based Windows 95 and 98 franchise.

The technology press lambasted Microsoft for releasing the software, which constantly plagued users with the infamous "blue screen of death" - the screen that inevitably meant it was time to reboot. Many consumers who made the mistake of installing it - I was one of them - quickly backtracked to Windows 98. Last May, PC World, an influential US IT magazine, listed Windows Me as the fourth-worst technology product of all time. "Forget Y2K, this was the real millennium bug," wrote PC World journalist Dan Tynan.

Is Microsoft repeating history with Vista, its shiny new operating system released in January? If one believes the news reports, it seems consumers are far from happy with Microsoft's latest offering. Some people are even drawing parallels between Windows Me and Vista. In my experience, Vista is not nearly as awful as Me. But Microsoft is having problems convincing consumers why they should not simply continue using XP.

Computer maker Dell recently conceded that a considerable number of its customers are demanding XP instead of Vista preinstalled on new PCs. A Dell official said recently that the company was "stepping back" from telling people they must upgrade to Vista.

According to computer industry magazine CRN, system builders and value-added resellers have taken to "ripping the much-ballyhooed operating system off desktops and notebooks at a breakneck pace because of the problems that come with moving clients to Vista". Worse still, CRN discovered in comprehensive laboratory testing that Vista and XP are equally at risk to viruses and exploits and that, overall, Vista brings only marginal security advantages over XP.

But perhaps the biggest criticism of Vista has been its insatiable hunger for system resources. It will run on a PC with 1 GB of RAM, but 2 GB is strongly preferred. By contrast, XP ran happily on 512 MB. Vista's nifty Aero interface - the eye candy that makes it look so good - is also a resource hog, consuming memory and processor cycles.

Personally, I've had mixed success with Vista. I installed it on my desktop PC at home, a machine I cobbled together myself with components from various sources. This machine, which runs XP and Ubuntu Linux perfectly, suddenly developed a habit of rebooting randomly several times a day. So, instead, I installed Vista on my notebook, a ThinkPad, which proved a more rewarding experience. Still, after a couple of months, I couldn't really see any benefit in running Vista over XP, other than for staring at the cute graphics. So, I formatted the machine's hard drive and replaced Vista with Ubuntu, which has better eye candy tha n Vista anyway.

Other users have also had mixed success with Vista. Of a small sample of SA technology journalists I spoke to for this column, some thought Vista worked just fine; others strongly disliked it - for various reasons. I found a similar reaction when I polled nontechnical colleagues, with most Vista users who disliked it complaining about its hefty hardware requirements.

Vista is, however, no Windows Me. And for that we ought to be thankful.

http://free.financialmail.co.za/07/0713/technology/atech.htm

 

Its worth nothing. Stop trying to troll. Either you have experience with it, or you link garbage for the sake of trolling.

The latter will not be tolerated here.

 

The worst use for ram is for it to sit unused. What benefit is ram if it isn't being used? Vista pre-emptively loads stuff into ram for quicker access when it is used. Im not using much more ram than when I had XP, and have not had noticeable swapping, even in games. Xp running on 512mb of ram happily? Maybe on a clean install, with NOTHING else installed like, antivirus, etc.

Of course your article fails to note that, making it a pile of :crap.

 

"Its worth nothing. Stop trying to troll. Either you have experience with it, or you link garbage for the sake of trolling.

The latter will not be tolerated here."

Ok, if I'm your idea of a troll then ban me piss-ant. All I was trying to do is make a contribution to the discussion by quoting an article from a respectable financial publication. Nobody in the information age relies only on personal experience to form an opinion.

If you had bothered to do a search on me you would have found that I am not a troll, indeed I try to be helpful ( in my admittedly limited way) when I can.

 

Ive read your vista rants. I know your history. The user wants information about Vista, not an opinated article regurgitated from the net that bears NO useful information.

I've no intention of banning you.

Call me another name, and you might get your wish, however..

 

Good point posted by Halo.... the only major problem I've run into with upgrading to Vista from XP is drivers. It seems that too many of the hardware companies are lagging on releasing Vista drivers. So be sure that drivers are available for your hardware BEFORE performing the upgrade. On the other side of the coin: I have some devices where the XP driver worked perfectly in Vista; a USB WLAN adapter for example.....

hd2k

 

BTW, I forgot to mention to make sure that you have the proper peripheral drivers which wasn't exactly mentioned above as those are the ones that have the most issues.

 

helpdan--
I waited, and checked out with other majorgeek members, before installing Vista.
XP took some time to get used to, at its' outset, and apart from the constant attacking from hackers/virus writers XP is now a very stable operating system.So much so, that now many people are frightened that Vista will cause them havoc, in updating from XP, especially for a business, in case their software is not compatable,
Home users, generally, if buying a new computer from a good supplier/manufacturer will have all the necessary drivers, and software pre-installed, and the problem only, really , becomes evident if the purchaser then decides that they want to use their older software/hardware.
If you do your homework, and search through the posts, on majorgeeks, and elsewhere, especially Microsoft's own pages, help, then you should have a good experience.
Those of us who like to build our own, or, update to the newer operating systems, and have older, favourite programs, and cannot afford to , or just refuse to keep spending more money on replacing them, too, have to check out forums (majorgeeks, and microsoft, especially) to find out if our software/hardware is compatable with Vista.
I have Vista Premium, and x64, but plenty of ram (4gb- ram's cheap, right now)
Graphics are great- runs smooth as silk. If I want even better, I need a better graphics card.
As I checked everything- read posts , especially from people like Adrenalyne, and Halo, majorgeeks, and went through all lists of compatable programs/driver availability, my system is stable, and although I have several copies, of Vista, and of Xp, in my setup, I am gradually leaving XP just for programs that do not work with Vista.
If you already have XP, I would leave XP on, and set up a seperate partition for Vista installation,(easy to do from Vista CD--but you really need around 40gb partition for Vista, as a minimum) and then you can get used to it, and ensure you have the hang of it , before forgetting XP.

 

Well, I've got a little experience with Vista. Actually, I tried running it on my Mac via Parallels Desktop - it is a virtual machine, that lets run Windows and Linux on Macs.
I can say that I didn't like it very much. I prefer using XP to play games or to run unsupported apps on my Mac. Vista doesn't have any indispensable features that wouldn't be present in XP. The only thing that will definitely promote Vista is DX10 support, that will be absent in XP

 

My advice is to read some of the literature, both from Microsoft and third-party sources to help evaluate Vista.

The biggest obstacle a Vista noobie faces is User Account Control, imho. If you can get around the fact you'll be prompted to open almost everything, it actually becomes quite useful. Especially if you say 'Cancel' a lot. Believe it or not, that's a good habit to develop with UAC and your firewall. You learn over time what programs you need running and what you don't to get things done. Strategically, it will also stop many types of malware before they can infect, although that doesn't mean you will always be prompted when an attacker does try to install, though. Nevertheless, when UAC prompts, it's important to pay attention and read it.

 

I played with Vista through the beta stages, and recently, I have been playing with a full release in a VM. I don't have any complaints. Not a single driver issue on the 3-4 machines I've had it running on. Came with everything out of the box.

Even performance, which I hear quite a few people grumbling about, wasn't bad. Even in the VM, where I thought it would be unbearable, it wasn't too bad. Especially after I trimmed a few services. (on mid-grade hardware)

The complaints are indeed just a bit of history repeating.

 

Halo directed a question to you in his post above; any response?

Between work and home, I have 4 computers all running Vista; no problems whatsoever. Any minor glitches I've encountered have been the fault of software that claims to be Vista compatable, but isn't completely there yet.

 

On the question of how much memory is required to run Vista in comparison to XP: With each progressive release of Windows since Windows 3.1, a substantial increase in memory has been pretty much mandatory if the OS is to run at its maximum potential. XP will run with 512mb ram, but it runs much better with 1gb. Likewise Vista, apparently it will run okay with 1gb ram, but ideally it probably needs 2gb or more. The price of ram today permits for an upgrade at a reasonable cost, so the question becomes a bit of a no-brainer. If we want our new operating sytems to run well, then we are going to have to provide the necessary hardware resources.

For a lot of us, XP will continue to be the preferred OS simply because it has been refined over the years to the point of near optimal reliability. Any new operating system is bound to suffer from software and hardware driver lag for a while. Trouble is, some of us want it to work well straight off the bat and that’s never going to happen.

I’ve always felt that the best time to install a new version of Windows is just after the first service pack has been released. By that time most hardware driver issues have been resolved, and software providers have released compatible versions of their products.

 

Zbd21, have you tried Vista/ because it sounds like you are frightened to, and keep looking up negative reviews.
I have dual boot (in fact quintuple booting), and Vista, and XP.
I now enjoy Vista, as it gives a very pleasant pc experience- in fact, when I boot to XP, I actually feel a little pang for Vista, and often think, -Oh! :crap -I was going to use Vista this boot-up.
You get used to its' ways,and I find no problems with it - You can turn features off, if it annoys you, but you lose that extra security.
I only keep XP on, now for crossover of systems, as I play about with all of them, a lot + it is handy if I cannot remember a fix, and have to physically go through the motions to remind me, otherwise, if I was the general PC user, I would stick with Vista , all the time-
It finds your drivers- IF THERE ARE ANY - for anything you plug in, much more efficiently than XP.
If you have older software, remember, the operating system has moved fast, since Windows 95, and how many settee's have you changed, if you are the home provider, since Windows 95 ?-
We need to be realistic, computing is jumping ahead so fast, that to get the benifit of the software, and Games, direct X, is up to version 10- Windows 95 computers would not be able to run with that, as the cpu, and motherboards are now a little frayed at the edges.Sometimes, some software will not be up to the new technology, and possibly drivers will be very difficult to find, but computers are here, and racing on -quod core cpu's, sata 11 writability to external hard drives giving measures of backup, and copy of data much faster than usb, or , firewire.
You cannot stop the train, jump on its a great trip.:major:grouphug

 

Note that for a 32-bit OS the upper limit is 4gb of memory since memory addresses larger than 2^32 cannot be specified. For a 64-bit OS you can go much higher and expect that sometime in the near future that this becomes the norm.

I agree with these points.

Currently, Helpdan, I'm not sure why a Vista upgrade is necessary now for you if your Windows XP machine performs adequately "for net playing music and watch films while on the net and a few games." However, a first step would be to run the Windows Vista upgrade advisor from Microsoft at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx and note that it is not only hardware that may need upgrading but other software as well.

 

You wouldn't want to know, I've just done a Vista driver check for my hardware and found that there isn't a driver available for my modem and (quote) "because of insurmountable problems, there never will be".
C'est la vie.

 

Vista still has a compatability mode.
It is worth uninstalling in Devices, and let Vista find it again, but wait a while when it says it has not installed it, and it often comes back with 'do you want to run in compatability mode', this sometimes takes a while.- if it does you could be lucky.

 

Sorry fella's, I didn't make myself very clear.

What I did was to check around the various websites to check on vista drivers for my hardware. My modem is a D-Link DSL-200 (I know they're pretty crappy but it was a gift) and D-Link don't provide a driver for my particular model. I won't really know if Vista will install it under compatibility mode or not until I actually try it. I suppose it doesn't really matter all that much because it's time I upgraded the modem anyway.

 

I'd hardly call myself a "Vista Lover", as I still prefer XP (its just a familiarity thing), but I fail to see how this is unbiased. Guy had a bad experience, and now wants to trash the OS, as opposed to actually doing anything about his problems.

We're still waiting to hear about your personal Vista experience, zbd21. 'Til then, this is only hearsay.

 

Did a mule kick you in the head? HOW MANY TIMES must it be said that the information sought here is experiences, not drivel thats been googled? READ THE FIRST THREAD. Does it say, hey, give me google links about how bad Vista sucks? The fact that you cannot listen invalidates most of what you post these days.

Read the first post. How does posting negative LINKS, which I might add are plenty for XP too, help the original topic? WHY ARE YOU NOT POSTING THOSE FOR XP?!

STOP DERAILING THREADS.

Yes it is, for those whop stay on topic, and post accurate information. If you want to blast Vista, feel free, but do it in the Lounge, where can go Off Topic to your heart's desire. This whole problem is exacerbated by the fact that its not even your opinions, you had to go out, and google someone else's bad experience. This isn't the only time you do this either. How often do you not read the software threads you post to, only to post a link you goggled thats completely irrelevant, or WORSE, INCORRECT?

I'm not sure if you are a real poster, or a bot!

Start sticking to accurate information, and start staying on topic. I'm not one to repeat myself past the 10th time.

rolleyes