Thread: XP or Vista?

If you buy a powerful computer vista has some new features. It tries to figure out what your doing and help you do it. Personally I'd find that annoying. It also ahve some look and feel upgrades.

I have friends who play games. I don't know anything about games but they are very big on performance. Apparently on a given computer vista runs about 40% slower than XP for the games.

I bought a laptop with vista and then gave a friend 3 bottles of jack to install XP (it wasn't an easy job). I absolutely hated it. YMMV.

Bob,

my experience with Vista has been quite good. I run about 6 laptops and a PC at home. All the laptops, bar one, are Vista. Vista was very easy to set up and configure (once I found where they moved things ).

I had to turn off the user prompts as they drove me batty, once that was done it has been very stable with no crashes on any of the systems.

XP is a stable platform and is intuitive for those who have grown with the Windows OS, Vista takes a little to learn but is not too bad.

Overall, for what you are doing, I would suggest stick with XP unless you really don't mind a short learning curve (about a week of intensive use will fix it). Vista may have issues with some software, you may want to check all your software compatibility first.

My only complaint with Vista is that it seems to vary the view of folders and I can't sort it out. Mind you, I haven't researched it either.

XP

unless you buy serious hardware (4gig of memory & dual core 3Ghz) and confirm with retailer that you can get the upgrade to windows7 with vista, you might have to wait a few months until retailers start playing the game.


Windows7 is really nice and a lot more sprightly than Vista .

Originally Posted by Groggy

My only complaint with Vista is that it seems to vary the view of folders and I can't sort it out. Mind you, I haven't researched it either.

Groggy
In the currently open folder, click Organize in the toolbar, and then click Folder and Search Options.

In Folder Options, click the View tab, and then click Apply to Folders. (To switch these folders back to their default settings, click Reset Folders.)

Vista is great.

An IT bloke who I use to do backend programming for websites, who in the main runs his business servicing PCs, recommends to all his customers not to run Vista and stay with XP until something else comes back.

90% of his business is fixing PCs with Vista.

But I don't care, cause I'm on a Mac.

The next windows is out there in beta form so it won't be long till its released , i'de stick with xp till then , aparently a lot of the bugs are gone

Originally Posted by Sprog

Groggy
In the currently open folder, click Organize in the toolbar, and then click Folder and Search Options.

In Folder Options, click the View tab, and then click Apply to Folders. (To switch these folders back to their default settings, click Reset Folders.)

Vista is great.

Thanks Sprog, I have done that on numerous occasions but it continues to vary the view for me. I can put up with it. Sometimes I go up one directory and instead of detail view it jumps to Large Icon view, just a nuisance really. Thanks for the help.

If you have to ask the question, and your hardware will run it, then Vista is probably best for you.

Check the compatibility of all your fave software first though, including any games.

I was an early adopter of Vista, having worked in computing for the last 15 years and always interested in the new stuff. Personally I love it, and hate going back to XP machines. But the experience of many of my customers has been the opposite, and I've spent considerable time rebuilding new systems with XP as a result.

If you're really not bothered about checking out Vista for the sake of curiosity, it probably doesn't hold a huge number of advantages for you. Instead, wait for Windows 7, which I'm happy to say is a nice improvement over Vista in many respects.

Perhaps hold off on the new PC until Windows 7 is available as an OEM pre-install? I won't be long now.

I'm now thinking of linux for general stuff and if needs be use swmbo's xp if I get stuck.

I might even try running my old cad program on my old laptop if I can remember where I put the cad cd

For what it's worth there are several free cad programs available these days for various platforms.

solid edge make their 2D available free.

If you've not run linux before you'll need to do a little learning. Personally I've never found unix intimidating but then I started with computers when every one had a different os..)

Stick with XP for now. Vista is about to be superseded by Windows 7, most likely in 3 months or less. The beta of Windows 7 is already very stable, so the final release looks like being a winner.

While a lot of people with new(ish) hardware had no problems at all with Vista (myself included), there were many problems due to hardware manufacturers not producing Vista drivers for their older products. I had a few issues getting an old HP printer and scanner to work under Vista, but got everything working eventually (no thanks to HP, whose products I will never buy again......).

By all accounts, Windows 7 doesn't require as much computing 'grunt' as Vista, so any new machine should run Windows 7 no probs. Vista has lots of really neat features that I couldn't do without now; Windows 7 just fixes them so that they work reliably...

Incidentally, the rumour mill says that over the next few months Microsnot will be giving away a voucher with any PC running Vista to provide a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it appears.

Mind you, I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 7 does better with a complete fresh install, rather than upgrading from an existing Vista installation.

The same thing happened with the XP to Vista transition - people who ran a Vista 'upgrade' CD on an XP machine often had problems, while fresh Vista installs on new machines were usually fine.

Originally Posted by echnidna

I'm now thinking of linux for general stuff and if needs be use swmbo's xp if I get stuck.

This is a great option, but you'll find it considerably less user friendly for anything more than the basics. There are still quite a few things that must be done from a command shell, but getting help online is pretty easy. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time learning in the initial stages. I'd even go so far as to recommend a test/learning installation first so you can learn all the pitfalls before you build a usable system.