Vista or XP?

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 9:21 am

On what kind of hardware did you run those Mats?

Windows xp ends up very responsive if you streamline it a little, even on pentium 3 class hardware. Nlite is a fantastic program for this job.

I wonder if the same is true for vista, certainly there must be some room for improvement.

I agree that changing the appearance is easy. I`m running the vista theme right now, nicely refreshing

that Linux guy · Post by **that Linux guy** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 9:44 am

Ive heard of way too many problems with Vista, particularly with system drivers. If you ask me, it's bloated (but windows has been since Windows 95), and vista's hardware needs are absurd. I currently run a Athlon64 3500+, 1.25Gb RAM, 7900GS PCIe, and a couple of harddrives and my system isn't up to vista snuff. It runs XP and games just fine, as well as other OS's. I won't bug you getting you to try Linux, but Linux make computing interesting again for me. Just a thought. I'm not a regular Windows user, but as far as MS is concerned, I'll stick with XP until I'm forced to upgrade, one way or another.

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:13 am

ntavlas wrote:On what kind of hardware did you run those Mats?

A Vista Ready laptop with a Core Duo, 1.5 GB RAM and a X1600 GPU.
Vista was always a little bit slower, but I never had any problems with it, well until I tried to play an OpenGL game, LOL.
It's quite easy to make a computer work with Vista if you got good drivers like in my case.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:23 am

There are some things I like about Vista and some things I didn't like (but to be fair most of the things I didn't like probably aren't "bad," just different than how it's done in XP, which I'm used to). It's an alright OS, probably better suited for newer systems, as I've read you really need 2GB+ of RAM for SuperFetch to shine. At the time I only had 1GB and it wasn't bad, but felt a tad slower than XP. Then again this might have been due to the indexing, I've read for the first few days after the install when Vista builds the search database things can be a little slow.

But in the end I stuck with XP, mainly because I'm very familiar with it and I have some random hardware and software that I couldn't get working in Vista and would rather not replace. I know I'll eventually have to get with times and update (maybe when Windows 7 comes out), but until then XP does everything I need it to do well and Vista doesn't, so there's no reason to upgrade. Can't really blame MS, though, it's not their fault people are slow to release Vista compatible software and drivers.

seraphyn · Post by **seraphyn** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:48 pm

Cerb wrote:Win2k and XP have been rock solid for years. I can count my BSODs on one hand.

I can count my XP BSOD's without hands :O

XP has been rock solid ever since i started using it (after SP1) only problems i ran into were when i was messing around tweaking (and destroying) things.

Vista so far has been ok, i've had some driver and codec issues which were annoying since i wanted to use it for a HTPC. No silly crashes though, nothing really faulting Vista itself, most, if not all, faults were from bad programs / code from third party developers. Games had a bit less performance too.

You could also go for a Linux distro, but to me, Linux is like that build in progress which never really got finished. As someone who likes to play the occasional game, Linux can be a pain in the ass. And of course trying to find a distro suited for you in that giant distropool requires a lot of effort and more importantly, time.

Hackintosh is also fun to mess about with, but if you don't have perfectly suited hardware for it, you're going to run into annoyance.

I'm staying with XP on my main rig, probably will continue to do so untill Windows 7 SP1.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:06 am

Mats wrote:I've used both XP and Vista. I like them both, and there are some features that I really like in Vista. The start menu search function is one of my favorite. Instead of looking a file, program or folder in Explorer I just press -Windows- and start typing. For instance, if/when you want to disable UAC (there are many ways to do that) you just start typing acc and then User Accounts shows up in the start menu, then you press enter. Sure it's good to know where you have every single file, but you dont have to, you can find then just as fast anyway if you know the name.

It's not that I don't know where to find it, it's just so much easier. Some prefer the keyboard, and some prefer the mouse. But yeah, I don't use it on programs for every day use.
But in the end I choose XP, just because it's faster. I dunno if it's more stable, but I prefer it for now. It's so much easier to change features or looks than to get better performance.
Install both and see for your self what you prefer on a new machine.

If anyone would like the start search in XP, download Vistart.

Launchy is also probably very similar.

Erssa wrote:Pick the faster one, XP. SP3 will be released this week at the same time as Vistas SP1.
Link?

It was some Finnish news site, I can't remember anymore. Well SP1 was released. No news from SP3 yet, but it should be released soonish. Since it's supposed to be released to manufacturing today.

Wikipedia: "Microsoft has announced that it plans to release Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to manufacturing on March 24, 2008"

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 11:35 am

uh, here it goes:

anyone that is running vista and purchased it isnt going to admit that it is slower for most things.

it is.

anyone that is going to ever play a game on vista will want to run it in XP if they are trying to max out settings. that's just the way it is. since all the modern service packs for xp, xp runs games faster. xp runs dx9 games faster. it cannot at all run dx10 games but then again there arent any dx10 only games, and, dx10 games require hardware that simply has not been made or you must spend 1200 dollars in video cards to run it on full, modern resolutions.

you will also then enter the era of non silent computing and therefore be void from posting here and wasting time.

also, vista uses more power for some stupid reason. not a lot, but if you are severely "green", consider xp.

if you dont play games there is no reason to run any windows OS program. unless you arent into computers, then why would you be on this forum....

tehfire · Post by **tehfire** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:12 pm

I'm sure most of you were around when XP first came out...

512MB memory in order to run smoothly?
Games run faster in Windows 98
x application no longer runs
My computer was faster in 98
The fact that hardware requirements keep on going up is a conspiracy from Microsoft and the hardware companies...

...IIRC XP was a great step forward from the Windows 9x experience

Michael Sandstrom · Post by **Michael Sandstrom** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:56 pm

Windows XP solved a lot of problems that windows 98 suffered from like instability and compatibility (plug and play). I am using Windows XP and I have no problem that moving to Vista will cure. Why incur added expense and bother for a less than zero net benefit?

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 2:17 am

tehfire wrote:I'm sure most of you were around when XP first came out...

512MB memory in order to run smoothly?
Games run faster in Windows 98
x application no longer runs
My computer was faster in 98
The fact that hardware requirements keep on going up is a conspiracy from Microsoft and the hardware companies...

...IIRC XP was a great step forward from the Windows 9x experience

XP was a step forward (but not much forward when compared to 2k or even NT4), but it needed time to mature and for fast enough hardware. I installed XP over 2 years after it was released and I think it was a good time for this switch.

seraphyn · Post by **seraphyn** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:04 am

Michael Sandstrom wrote:Windows XP solved a lot of problems

Eventually. Before SP1, XP was not really a step forward if you had a stable Win98SE going. I hope the same will be with Vista, SP1 fixing most of it's major issues.

roach · Post by **roach** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:32 pm

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:52 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:uh, here it goes:

anyone that is running vista and purchased it isnt going to admit that it is slower for most things.

it is.

anyone that is going to ever play a game on vista will want to run it in XP if they are trying to max out settings. that's just the way it is. since all the modern service packs for xp, xp runs games faster. xp runs dx9 games faster. it cannot at all run dx10 games but then again there arent any dx10 only games, and, dx10 games require hardware that simply has not been made or you must spend 1200 dollars in video cards to run it on full, modern resolutions.

you will also then enter the era of non silent computing and therefore be void from posting here and wasting time.

also, vista uses more power for some stupid reason. not a lot, but if you are severely "green", consider xp.

if you dont play games there is no reason to run any windows OS program. unless you arent into computers, then why would you be on this forum....

OK. I'll bite.

I'm running Vista Ultimate on a T7200 (see .sig) with 2GB of RAM and an 8800GT. Strangely, my system is pretty close to silent (the HDD is the loudest component), but I'm still able to play modern games without any problems. Granted, I didn't try BioShock or Gears of War on XP, but that's because I had already moved to Vista prior to their release. However, I'm unable to notice any difference between Day of Defeat, Half-Life 2 or Dungeon Siege 2 on XP and on Vista. I'm sure there may be a slightly higher FPS running under XP, but it's not visible to me.

The reason to go to Vista is not because of the pretty Aero Glass graphics or the fancy animated desktops or any of the 'eye candy'. The reason to go to Vista is because it is the most secure version of Windows that has ever been released (Windows Server 2008 excepting). On the other hand, if you don't want to use Vista, feel free to run XP or Ubuntu or <insert other popular Linux distro here>. Or, if you are truly adventurous, you can try OSx86 (Hackintosh). It's your system.

Did I like XP? Yes.
Do I like Ubuntu? Yes.
Would I ditch Vista for either? No.

-D

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:50 pm

tehfire wrote:I'm sure most of you were around when XP first came out...

512MB memory in order to run smoothly?
Games run faster in Windows 98

I tend to disagree, it run pretty smooth on machines with 256MB.

I tested it first hand on a Pentium2 @ 500mhz with 256MB of ram and it performed better than win 98.
Application startup times were reduced (thanks to prefetching) while stability and performance during multitasking improved.

Erssa · Post by **Erssa** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:17 pm

derekva wrote:The reason to go to Vista is because it is the most secure version of Windows that has ever been released (Windows Server 2008 excepting).

XP is plenty safe for all users with normal intelligence. No operating system can protect from stupidity.

Fayd · Post by **Fayd** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:04 pm

~El~Jefe~ wrote:uh, here it goes:

anyone that is running vista and purchased it isnt going to admit that it is slower for most things.

it is.

anyone that is going to ever play a game on vista will want to run it in XP if they are trying to max out settings. that's just the way it is. since all the modern service packs for xp, xp runs games faster. xp runs dx9 games faster. it cannot at all run dx10 games but then again there arent any dx10 only games, and, dx10 games require hardware that simply has not been made or you must spend 1200 dollars in video cards to run it on full, modern resolutions.

you will also then enter the era of non silent computing and therefore be void from posting here and wasting time.

also, vista uses more power for some stupid reason. not a lot, but if you are severely "green", consider xp.

if you dont play games there is no reason to run any windows OS program. unless you arent into computers, then why would you be on this forum....

of course it's slower for certain things. it's doing more things at any given time.

I believe that XP is an awesome OS, but there's some problems that vista fixed to my satisfaction.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:09 pm

I just went from Win2k to WinXP a month ago or so. Since the two basically are the same I stuck with Win2k longer than most.

Before Win2k I stuck with Win98SE for a long time. I first tried Win2k with my Celeron 300A@450 and 128MB RAM but went back to Win98SE since it was faster for the stuff I did with it. I don't remember when I finally went over to Win2k but I think I had a system with 768MB RAM at the time.

Speed is important to me, not as in 3DMark scores but as in a smooth experience. I don't like Windows' way of handling the page file and for a long time I used a small RAM disk in Win2k mainly for swap. I use "alternative" programs such as Opera, Miranda, MPC, XnView. Anything that's faster and leaner than the "mainstream" alternative.

Needless to say, Vista is not for me. I had a hard time with the bling-bling in WinXP and Vista is just so much worse. More importantly I absolutely hate the way MS behaves towards its customers. The lock-in and anti-competitive practices annoys the hell out of me.

I hope Linux will be my salvation. I have tried a few distros over the years but no more than that. Now with better support from a lot of hardware manufacturers and with a bit more mainstream distros like Ubuntu, I hope to finally leave MS behind. I'm waiting for Ubuntu 8.04 then I will dual boot for a while until I feel I can go 100% Linux.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

Scoop · Post by **Scoop** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:01 am

I don't see these crashings and problems that people seem to have with Vista. Maybe because I installed it a few weeks back and installed all the patches. Haven't had a single crash yet, and have been satisfied with it. No point in going back to XP and it's DX9 applications.

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:32 am

derekva wrote:The reason to go to Vista is not because of the pretty Aero Glass graphics or the fancy animated desktops or any of the 'eye candy'. The reason to go to Vista is because it is the most secure version of Windows that has ever been released (Windows Server 2008 excepting). On the other hand, if you don't want to use Vista, feel free to run XP or Ubuntu or <insert other popular Linux distro here>. Or, if you are truly adventurous, you can try OSx86 (Hackintosh). It's your system.

There is no secure OS. It's ALL about how you use it.

Cerb · Post by **Cerb** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:48 am

tehfire wrote:I'm sure most of you were around when XP first came out...

512MB memory in order to run smoothly?

256. 512MB by SP2, certainly.

Games run faster in Windows 98

Even at the time, I never saw proof, and read the same things against NT4, and was able to show that there were no meaningful differences--at least with nVidia's drivers.

x application no longer runs

Yeah, always happens.

My computer was faster in 98

What was it? I don't think I've seen any PIII or K7 or better with 256MB+ RAM that didn't get along with Win2k and XP noticeably better than Win98. All you had to do was swap between any two application windows to feel the difference.

The fact that hardware requirements keep on going up is a conspiracy from Microsoft and the hardware companies...

Don't forget lazy developers!
<- conveniently avoids looking in the mirror

...IIRC XP was a great step forward from the Windows 9x experience

Vicotnik: PCLinuxOS. It's the best 'just works' desktop distro out there.

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 11:27 am

m^2 wrote:
derekva wrote:The reason to go to Vista is not because of the pretty Aero Glass graphics or the fancy animated desktops or any of the 'eye candy'. The reason to go to Vista is because it is the most secure version of Windows that has ever been released (Windows Server 2008 excepting). On the other hand, if you don't want to use Vista, feel free to run XP or Ubuntu or <insert other popular Linux distro here>. Or, if you are truly adventurous, you can try OSx86 (Hackintosh). It's your system.
There is no secure OS. It's ALL about how you use it.

Good point. However, there is a lot you can do in an OS to prevent people who don't know any better from doing insecure things: default accounts set to least privileged, being forced to run in administrator mode when wanting to make fundamental permissions changes in the console, forcing you to manually verify when programs are making changes to the kernel on install, etc. Unix has been doing things like this for years. It's nice that Microsoft has decided to go this route as well.

-D

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:20 pm

You know when new games that come out (like crysis) have higher hardware requirements to run its game on vista that your OS has some serious issue's. Or when retailers like Dell go back to shipping units with XP over Vista.

People have been complaining about XP being a resource hog for years, and vista is one huge step ahead in this department.

XP has been out for years. Its stable, its secure, its mature code, and since its on the tail end of being supported by microsoft you can typically get a copy for free without any worry about pirating issue's.

Vista is just a filler OS, like ME was until they write a real operating system from the ground up.

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 2:05 am

derekva wrote:
m^2 wrote:
derekva wrote:The reason to go to Vista is not because of the pretty Aero Glass graphics or the fancy animated desktops or any of the 'eye candy'. The reason to go to Vista is because it is the most secure version of Windows that has ever been released (Windows Server 2008 excepting). On the other hand, if you don't want to use Vista, feel free to run XP or Ubuntu or <insert other popular Linux distro here>. Or, if you are truly adventurous, you can try OSx86 (Hackintosh). It's your system.
There is no secure OS. It's ALL about how you use it.
Good point. However, there is a lot you can do in an OS to prevent people who don't know any better from doing insecure things: default accounts set to least privileged, being forced to run in administrator mode when wanting to make fundamental permissions changes in the console, forcing you to manually verify when programs are making changes to the kernel on install, etc. Unix has been doing things like this for years. It's nice that Microsoft has decided to go this route as well.

-D

I agree that this is the way to go. But MS went too far. With XP user account was too severely limited, so hardly anybody used it. So in Vista they limited admin account, which is a problem onl;y for users, not for crapware

I think that the best option would be something like Vista's "Run As User"...but with "Always run this program as user", so you can lift some programs' access rights w/out additional effort like typing password.

Longbow · Post by **Longbow** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:40 pm

it took me quite a while to upgrade from windows 2000 to windows xp (sp1). and i think i liked it.

i have a vista ultimate sp1 disc on my desk for over a week now and i don't really want to try it. there is nothing i want from it. my xp has been secure and stable since sp1.

vista is slower. in almost every game benchmark the vista is slower than the xp. why am i gonna use something that is slower and brings nothing else (that i want)?

walle · Post by **walle** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:08 pm

XP Pro and Linuxâ€¦

Vista is a poser, pure window dressing as far as Iâ€™m concerned.

Cheers.

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 6:41 pm

Longbow wrote:it took me quite a while to upgrade from windows 2000 to windows xp (sp1). and i think i liked it.

i have a vista ultimate sp1 disc on my desk for over a week now and i don't really want to try it. there is nothing i want from it. my xp has been secure and stable since sp1.

vista is slower. in almost every game benchmark the vista is slower than the xp. why am i gonna use something that is slower and brings nothing else (that i want)?

Pretty much every version of Windows has been slower than the prior version when used on the same hardware. If you recall your history, people complained that Windows 98 was slower than 95, Windows 2000 was slower than 98, XP was slower than 2000 and 98, etc. That's the nature of the beast, unfortunately. While I'd be ecstatic if Win7 turned out to be slimmer and faster than Vista, I'm not expecting it. Same goes for various flavors of Unix, same goes for Mac OSes through the years.

Given that MS is about to ship SP3 for WinXP, I don't think you have any worries about being obsolete anytime soon. However, my personal opinion is that Vista is, at the kernel level, a much better operating system.

Plus it is so pretty (had to throw that in there for the eye candy folks...or Mac users).

However, at the end of the day, it is your system and your call on what you decide to install.

-D

mbetea · Post by **mbetea** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 7:52 pm

I don't know about that. I distinctly remember Win2000 when it was released running a heck of a lot better than NT4 on the same machine. Which at the time was dual p3 450's with 512mb of ram. Win2000 served me quite well up until a few years ago I started using an LCD display. For me, I would get massive headaches trying to read a lot of text under Win2000 on an LCD. Cleartype was the only thing that got me to switch to XP.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:01 pm

Vista does have some nice search qualities and seem graphically more like Mac OS'. But one quality that I don't like Vista is that you can copy any files, no matter how password protected folder's or no matter how difficult password your account has in few minutes if you have Vista installation disc and by pass any and all passwords.

So if you really do not want someone to get your Vista files: You should encycrypt them.

beady · Post by **beady** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:09 am

I mainly still use xp cause my computer is slow and can't handle vista, and xp runs more apps and better too, (atleast the ones I want to run) but both are getting better.
I have to say I hate vista HDCP, i've tried a few vista media related things and the HDCP or media orientation just gets in the way (putting mp3's on my zen coming out garbled and trying the get the proper sound outputs to work or different programs using the same/dif audio ports at the same time or some stuff like that anyway), I don't have vista a a main pc yet, I'll "try" a vista sp1 slip when I get a better PC but as I said it won't run all the apps as well as I'd like, xp is still supported and being sold (till june anyway).
chow chow

KnightRT · Post by **KnightRT** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:26 am

A lot of things impact Vista's subjective speed. On my system, a dual-core AMD X2 with 3 GB of RAM and a 7800GT, it's as fast or faster than Windows XP.

The video card makes quite a lot of difference, which is a change from XP and every prior OS. The window manager is separate from the underlying OS and, unless you're in basic mode, it relies on the video card to draw your windows. If you've got an older chip, it'll become sluggish as you add more windows, particularly if the screen resolution is high and the video system shares RAM in a system without much of it.

Another factor is the install package. A clean install of Vista is snappy on almost every 2006+ computer, but I've seen some installations so cluttered with trialware (virus scanners in particular) that they're almost unusable.

As to Vista vs. XP:

If you're a light user, there's no particular reason to upgrade from XP. It's fast, capable enough, compatible with everything, and secure enough.

But there's no question that Vista's more secure and more capable. It is a better OS, and I wouldn't hesitate to install it now that SP1 is out. Even the original RTM build that I ran in November 2006 was better than XP in subtle ways, like how program screwups wouldn't bring down the rest of the OS or require the restart of Explorer.

The more interesting question is x86 vs. x64. The answer here is obvious: if you're a power user, move to x64. If you're not, don't. I don't own a system with less than 4 GB of RAM, and the 32-bit operating systems can only see 3 GB of it. If nothing you do requires more than 3 GB of RAM, then it doesn't matter. Run XP or Vista x86 if you want.

If I built a system for personal use right now, I'd use Vista x64. The server I just built has XP x64 installed. No driver issues whatsoever, even with my circa-2004 RAID card and circa-2008 motherboard. Particularly with more recent hardware, I think the driver woes may be overstated.