Thread: xp vs vista

vista seems faster but is my processor just bigger?

i sometimes think xp is ok but then microsoft botched it by"updates"to slow it so we will buy vista

Big arguments here, I think it is more on what you want your computer to do. For businesses, larger more profitable organizations who do not use prorietary third party software will have no problems running vista, but smaller less-profitable business who run third-party software may run into some problems. Same with home users, If all you do is surf the net, check e-mail, watch videos, etc... Vista and XP will both work just fine, as long as you can learn the differences in vista.

If you have trouble learning new things your gonna try to stay on XP longer than the rest of us.

They both have security problems, they both have bugs, they both can sometimes be slow. Vista usually requires more processor power and RAM than some non-computer enthusiasts or non-gamers are used to, so that has been a huge hurdle for some.

Personally, I am done with Microsoft, My current PC has XP and Ubuntu dual booting. I only use XP to lan party, but that doesn't happen often.

Everything else I do is done in ubuntu, and most of my gaming is done on the wii. This setup works fine for me, is less of a headache, and saves me money, but other people have other needs and this might not be good enough for them. If I were to pay money for a new computer I would either build my own and put Linux on it, Or I'd buy a Mac.

Originally Posted by Holmes

vista seems faster but is my processor just bigger?

Short answer: yes.

Vista is getting faster with each set of updates. Service pack 1 helped out a great deal. XP is faster than Vista (which I still use on some machines), but corporations which still use XP will be in trouble when MS stops supporting it in a couple months.

Originally Posted by lep

Vista is getting faster with each set of updates. Service pack 1 helped out a great deal. XP is faster than Vista (which I still use on some machines), but corporations which still use XP will be in trouble when MS stops supporting it in a couple months.

I heard that they will extend support for a while? Anyway, XP with the new SP3 is supposed to blow Vista out of the water. 8)

after the release of xp service pack three, Microsoft will be supporting XP for two years past the release of the service pack. They will also give extended support for corporations who pay for it.

i wonder in ten years will we be able to activate it the same way so it lasts past the 30 days

Originally Posted by Holmes

i wonder in ten years will we be able to activate it the same way so it lasts past the 30 days

Yes, you will

Originally Posted by SuperNatendo

Big arguments here, I think it is more on what you want your computer to do. For businesses, larger more profitable organizations who do not use prorietary third party software will have no problems running vista, but smaller less-profitable business who run third-party software may run into some problems.
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I didn't know it was possible to run any flavour of Windows without third-party help!

My 2 cents worth: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. XP has been around long enough for most of the troubles to be ironed out. I will personally avoid any new OS for at least a few years/service packs. Even with my dual core system, I don't need Vista to make my system prettier.

I mainly meant by that statement computers running windows with Microsoft office and a few other programs that are known to be compatible with vista. Companies running this or home users will not run into many problems with vista, at least not as frequently as someone with a lot of software or hardware that might not be compatible.

I’ve had Vista for almost a year now (having previously used XP). I did have some software-compatibility problems at first as a number of programs did not run on Vista then. I believe the problem has since then largely been solved. More and more programs have become Vista-compatible now.

When XP came out, I was forced to re-code a program I was selling over the net, even though I was using a Microsoft tool (VC++) to write the source! I can imagine having to redo that for Vista, something I have been putting off until enough customers yell at me!

Apparently, when Vista first came out, an internal memo went around complaining about upgrade problems. Guess what company this was ?!!

At least the “leap” from XP to Vista isn’t as sharp as the one between Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 all those years ago.

Originally Posted by JaneBennet

At least the “leap” from XP to Vista isn’t as sharp as the one between Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 all those years ago.

Jane, what about Vista would you say is superior to XP ? I was very impressed with the uograde from 98 to XP....would I feel the same going to Vista ?

A point: I have had one complaint that my software will not run on VIsta. One. Now, the program is a simple game (www.cryptagram.com) so my customers are 99% home users. This hints that most of my customers still run XP. I am not judging vista, as I have not had a close look at it; just saying that it 'seems' most people are not upgrading. Would you agree?

XP's native facilities to boot under different hardware profiles, and also enable/disable services per user (OS profile) made it perfectable by gamers. One could have "the works", or, a snappy bare-bones OS temporarily optimized for a particular application or game. Vista lacks those options.

Originally Posted by CShark

Jane, what about Vista would you say is superior to XP ? I was very impressed with the uograde from 98 to XP....would I feel the same going to Vista ?

A point: I have had one complaint that my software will not run on VIsta. One. Now, the program is a simple game (www.cryptagram.com) so my customers are 99% home users. This hints that most of my customers still run XP. I am not judging vista, as I have not had a close look at it; just saying that it 'seems' most people are not upgrading. Would you agree?

Vista is better than XP in some respects, but the improvements are not that “major”. For example, in XP your main files are stored in the “Documents and Settings” folder, surrounded by other folders, whereas in Vista they’re located in much more accessible paths. Maybe there are more significant improvements below the user-interface level that I’m not aware of yet.

Vista has some minus points compared with XP too. Apart from program-compatibility problems, I miss XP’s nice look. Vista is just so ugly compared with XP.

Especcially if you like to run the xp or vista windows ui in the less graphics intensive mode to squeeze out more resources. XP looked pretty much like windows 2000 in this mode and was pretty descent looking and the UI was clean and usable. In this reduced graphics mode, Vista just looks like crap if you use this feature, looks kind of thrown together at the last minute to me, nearly unusable.

You can get some pretty authentic looking Vista themes. That coupled with a 64 bit XP Media Centre Edition, what real differences are there (except for DX10)?

Originally Posted by KALSTER

You can get some pretty authentic looking Vista themes. That coupled with a 64 bit XP Media Centre Edition, what real differences are there (except for DX10)?

The compatibility thing isn't always Microsoft's fault though. Just look at creative, They used the compatibility issues people knew about Vista to their advantage. They intentionally made it look like Vista was not compatible with their old cards to make people buy new ones. When the driver detected it was being installed on vista, it intentionally disabled a few advanced features and the company blamed it on vista to make their customers buy "upgraded" hardware.

Anyway, here are some things Vista has that XP doesn't (but can get from third parties!)

Bitlocker, allows encryption of data on the drive at a higher level than XP, but there are third party solutions to let XP do similar things.

The Firewall that comes with vista is both incoming and outgoing, XP is only incoming. Again, third party solutions can add this functionallity to XP.

Parental Controls, Vista has more parental controls. Again with the Thrid Party stuff.

DRM Vista tells you what you can or can't play, XP doesn't do that and I don't think you want it to!

Automatic Defragmenting XP has third party software for that.

Umm, A few networking things like IPv6 come enabled by default, but XP can do it too.

Aero, which is buggy and uses lots of resources anyways, again, windowblinds is a third party software that can do similar effects.

A few ActiveX control Viruses seem to run better on Vista than XP...

That about sums it up here! Anyone know of anything that is on Vista that a third party software solution doesn't add to XP anyway it would be nice to know. (BTW I am sure DirectX 10 would run fine in XP if Microsoft had wanted it to!)

Hmm, I can't even find things Vista does that OS X or Linux can't do either...But Plenty things they can do that Vista can't!

Vista stability wise.. well its not as good as XP.

1 GB of ram just to have a nice flashy taskbar.. overkill.

yeah. XP better than Vista, vista need best hardware specification if you wanna see their best performance. otherwise, your rig working slowly, even at startup.

I think that vista is nowthing special. Vista i visual stronger than xp but it takes 80 GB of memory if you take ultimate. I dont see why is vista better than xp!

vista takes too long for updates

I generally use Ubuntu Linux for this very reason. Updates are never forced on the user; they're generally quick; and there's never a need to reboot. If I have a kernel update, I can choose to reboot into the new kernel or not. Windows will never give that option.

You can turn off automatic updates in Windows 7. To me, this is the Windows everyone has been waiting for. It has unsurpassed compatibility (it plays old games XP would never do), it is fast and good looking. I dual booted into Windows 7 like 4 months ago and have only been back in XP three times or so. Everything just works brilliantly.

Edit: Sheesh, what an old thread.

I've been thinking of getting Windows 7 and replacing my Vista partition. I hardly ever use Windows, just those rare occasions when I need to sync my Blackberry or use Adobe Acrobat Pro or ArcGIS.

Everything else I can either run in Linux or have a Linux app for.

I guess Windows is all about convenience (as long as you don't get BSOD's the whole time, which 7 hasn't yet). There is a lot of software written for it and of course it is the only option if you want to play any new games. But I guess for some people it is just too full of clutter. Is that the main reason you are not a Windows fan?

There are really only a couple of Windows games that I play, and one of them plays well under Linux via Wine.

The main reason I stick with Ubuntu is the lack of crashing (which everything from Vista on down is very prone to), the manner in which software updates (all my apps update through the Update Manager and on my terms), the manner in which I can add/delete applications, the speed and the reliability of the OS.

I still like Windows. I just like Ubuntu more. Hell, I started using Windows at least by 3.11 if not the earlier versions.

The only thing I miss about windows is WinAmp -I've yet to get that working well in Wine (I don't think it can) and there's yet to be a good alternative to it. There are, however, a lot of really good media players built natively for Linux that I use (Amarok, Rhythmbox, Banshee...) and VLC is awsome (which you can use in Windows, BTW).

I'm actually using the Google Chrome browser in Linux lately and it runs like a champ. Very fast.

The other big advantage is the near total lack of risk for malicious software and adware. I was constantly battling adware and malware in windows. Not a peep from my security software in Linux. In fact, someone on Facebook tried to accuse my wife of passing a windows worm to them... I told her it was flat out impossible since the worm wouldn't be able to propagate from the Linux OS (it apparently looks for outlook contacts, etc. and runs as a Windows API call).

VLC is awsome (which you can use in Windows, BTW).

I use it often and I agree wholeheartedly. :wink:

I think you will be pleasantly surprised by Windows 7. Maybe see if you can get a copy from a friend and test it out during the grace period before you have to activate it and see what you think.

Security would be one of the major issues with Windows systems, I agree. I have Norton Internet Security 2009 installed though and I don't have any problems (I am constantly online). I guess you learn what to do to avoid getting infected with something.

I use Opera browser over anything else. Opera has finally added a spell checker as well. Haven't tried Chrome yet though.