OS Debate: Vista vs XP

[Clenna Lumina]

Today, Dave B. made these interesting comments ...

Exactly. Many people, certainly me, have legacy HW and SW that will
never be undated, in some cases, the companies no longer even
exist. So, in my view, if you have a choice in the matter, don't
try to fix something that isn't broken, meaning if your current
system is stable, supports your SW and HW and performs useful work
for you, why change?

Careful, keep talking like that and MS will be sending their goons after
you!

Relly though ,you are 100% correct. Vista is a needless over weight
excuse for an assembled collection of bits... it's like a 4x4 Escalade
or Hummer with 20+ inch rims and 2 inch thin tires that can't perform
worth beans off road.

Do you selves a favor and stick with XP or upgrade TO XP rather than
DOWN-grading to Vista, unless you really want a slwoer OS, rather than a
faster one (my brother has a Quad Core from Intel with XP Pro SP2 and it
is doing warp factor 9 with out breaking a sweat!!!)

 

[HEMI-Powered]

Today, Clenna Lumina made these interesting comments ...

Careful, keep talking like that and MS will be sending their
goons after you!

Yes, it is getting increasingly difficult to defend one's First

Relly though ,you are 100% correct. Vista is a needless over
weight excuse for an assembled collection of bits... it's like
a 4x4 Escalade or Hummer with 20+ inch rims and 2 inch thin
tires that can't perform worth beans off road.

Clenna, I don't know that Vista is or is not ANY of the things I
have read, which is why I challenge assumptions but do not make
judgements because I simply no no facts, which is the real
problem isn't it? Nobody can get any real facts except by
personal experience, which is a circular proof/counter productive
activity.

Do you selves a favor and stick with XP or upgrade TO XP
rather than DOWN-grading to Vista, unless you really want a
slwoer OS, rather than a faster one (my brother has a Quad
Core from Intel with XP Pro SP2 and it is doing warp factor 9
with out breaking a sweat!!!)

If someone has XP Home or Pro SP2 and it does what they perceive
they want it to, I see no reason to upgrade right now. However,
if one is in the market for a new PC, whether a commercial OEM or
somebody's home built, as my nephew-built PCs I own are, then
they are probably in the market for much more CPU and memory, and
the only way to utilize that stuff is Vista, but again, it is a
circular proof/counter productive exercise if you aren't
suffering really bad right now.

As I've commented in the XP NGs, my main activities are Usenet
and raster computer graphics coming from a scanner and my Canon
Rebel XT. The former is no biggie but the latter is CPU and
memory intensive so I took a quick look around to see what I
could do and I do not see a cost-effective way to get a 2X speed
increase, not to mention the PITA that a new PC and a brand new
O/S involve.

So, I am watching and waiting.

 

[Saran]

Today, Clenna Lumina made these interesting comments ... [...]

Do you selves a favor and stick with XP or upgrade TO XP
rather than DOWN-grading to Vista, unless you really want a
slwoer OS, rather than a faster one (my brother has a Quad
Core from Intel with XP Pro SP2 and it is doing warp factor 9
with out breaking a sweat!!!)

If someone has XP Home or Pro SP2 and it does what they perceive
they want it to, I see no reason to upgrade right now. However,
if one is in the market for a new PC, whether a commercial OEM or
somebody's home built, as my nephew-built PCs I own are, then
they are probably in the market for much more CPU and memory, and
the only way to utilize that stuff is Vista, but again, it is a
circular proof/counter productive exercise if you aren't
suffering really bad right now.

No, XP can take FULL advantage of dual or more core sytems, much better
so than Vista, and this is more due to the fact Vista is so
heavy/bloated. This is what various magazines such as Max PC have found
thus far as well as my own experience.

 

[Travis King]

If at the time you're getting a new computer Vista Service Pack 1 is out, go
for Vista. If when you get a new computer and there's no Service Pack 1 for
Vista yet, then go with XP. Yes, XP will be faster than Vista, but the same
thing was going on when XP came out and people were considering updating
from Windows 98/ME to XP. Windows 98 or ME is faster than XP, but do a lot
of people use those OS's anymore?

 

[Leythos]

That is one of my points favoring XP, that it just works more reliably than
Vista right now. I expect within the next year or two, everything that
works on XP should work on Vista...

Don't take what I said to mean that Vista is "unreliable", from my
experience it's rock stable, but it just requires MORE of everything and
does not run everything that you would run in XP (and in your case ME).

 

[Steve K.]

If at the time you're getting a new computer Vista Service Pack 1 is
out, go for Vista. If when you get a new computer and there's no
Service Pack 1 for Vista yet, then go with XP. Yes, XP will be
faster than Vista, but the same thing was going on when XP came out
and people were considering updating from Windows 98/ME to XP. Windows
98 or ME is faster than XP, but do a lot of people use those
OS's anymore?

No it was not the same. Win XP was actually worth the upgrade. Many
programs just worked. XP didn't have so much of na increased bloat
faactor coming up from Win 98 as you do have with Vista coming up from
XP. XP ran well on P4s, as well as decent perfornace on a P3. With
Vista, you really need brand new almsot top of the line hardware to run
it with minimum lag... XP didn't fele like a well decorated boat anchor.
And XP didn't have the DRM issues that plague Vista.

IMHO, Vista is more comparable to ME from 98 than 9x to XP... just add
fancy GUI and lot of fair-use-trampling DRM...

 

[Eric]

Only 1 gig of memory? That was insufficient two years ago. I
would think that anything other than E-mail and web surfing that
places at all a heavy demand on Windows memory management to
quickly swap to RAM and not need virtual memory in the swapfile
on your HD is bound to need at least 2 gig, preferably 4. But, it
depends highly on what you do.

I didn't say only 1 GB. I did say at least 1 GB. I might get 2 or even 4,
depending on pricing, but will at least allow as much room as possible for
expansion.
My current system has 512 MB RAM which is fine for WinME. WinXP should be
fine with 1 GB, which may be 1 more reason to get XP on the new system if 2+
GB costs much more than 1 GB and Vista really needs at least 2.

 

[Saran]

Don't take what I said to mean that Vista is "unreliable", from my
experience it's rock stable, but it just requires MORE of everything

In my experience with several customer's systems I've serviced in the
past few weeks, it's anything but stable. Explorer/IE7 randomly goes
into a crash cycle (this happend on 4 out of 6 machines I've offically
serviced for out customers, and even happened twice on computers I've
tested in stores - two distinct locations and brands of computers.) With
the mariad of other issues I jsut canot agree with you that it is "rock
stable"... if it's working well for you consider yourself one of the
lucky ones, and don't be suprised if it turns out to be a ticking time
bomb...

and does not run everything that you would run in XP (and in your
case ME).

Actually what is funny ME might actually be able to run more
applications at this point than Vista... XP most definately can... and
the overall cost with being forced to upgrade to new versions of
software you own [1] is reason enough for many to stay away (along wit
hthe DRM)


[1]
And the reasons most installers or prgrams wont work correctly or at all
under Vista I promise you are the most artificial reasons... simply that
they "fixed" something that really didn't need to be fixed in that sort
of way.

 

[Eric]

How are you protected today? Router? HW or SW firewall? Frequent
malware scans and adequate AV in place? Regular full C:\ image
backup and data backup? if "no" to any of these, NO O/S is going
to help you. And, establishing rigorous self-control rules for
yourself under the name "safe computing" is also necessary.
People in today's post-9/11, malware, and spyware world cannot
blindly depend on any one system to protect them 100%

Yes I have a router with a NAT and I run AOL McAfee Virus Scanner and
Firewall and Spybot.
I have 2 HDs but I haven't backed up data lately. I need to.
XP would add additional security as I would want to set it up with regular
user accounts that need to "run as administrator" to install programs.
I believe one of the selling points of Vista is better security, but I don't
know what it has over XP besides annoying pop up messages.

You don't mention stability or early bugs or failure of your
legacy SW and HW to run or, or, or ... If people have no clear
picture of what the advantages and disadvantages of Vista are,
and I certainly do not, shouldn't be in such a rush to help MS
beta test it on your dime.

I assume if programs will run on XP, they will run on Vista either right
away or as soon as the updates come out. I will still be running the old
system too, so I don't care if some games have to wait a bit to run on
Vista...

 

[gls858]

snip<
Vista, you really need brand new almsot top of the line hardware to run
it with minimum lag... XP didn't fele like a well decorated boat anchor.
And XP didn't have the DRM issues that plague Vista.

I loaded Vista on a two year old computer, AMD Athalon 64 3400 with
a gig of RAM and an ATI 9800 PRO. Not exactly top of the line and
certainly not new. Vista runs just fine. I don't notice much difference
in speed between it and XP. I don't do much DVD burning or photo editing
though so I can't comment on that.

gls858

 

[Leythos]

In my experience with several customer's systems I've serviced in the
past few weeks, it's anything but stable. Explorer/IE7 randomly goes
into a crash cycle (this happend on 4 out of 6 machines I've offically
serviced for out customers, and even happened twice on computers I've
tested in stores - two distinct locations and brands of computers.) With
the mariad of other issues I jsut canot agree with you that it is "rock
stable"... if it's working well for you consider yourself one of the
lucky ones, and don't be suprised if it turns out to be a ticking time
bomb...

Sorry, you are right. The first thing I did was load FireFox on the
system and I only use it for browsing and internet related items, unless
the side is one of those broken ones that only works in IE.

Most of our clients can't install IE7, in fact we've used the block tool
that MS provided as most of their large document imaging systems vendors
expressly forbid IE 7 from being installed.

Other than the bloat and resource hogging, it's stable so far, since we
don't use IE.

 

[HEMI-Powered]

Today, Saran made these interesting comments ...

Today, Clenna Lumina made these interesting comments ... [...]

Do you selves a favor and stick with XP or upgrade TO XP
rather than DOWN-grading to Vista, unless you really want a
slwoer OS, rather than a faster one (my brother has a Quad
Core from Intel with XP Pro SP2 and it is doing warp factor
9 with out breaking a sweat!!!)

If someone has XP Home or Pro SP2 and it does what they
perceive they want it to, I see no reason to upgrade right
now. However, if one is in the market for a new PC, whether a
commercial OEM or somebody's home built, as my nephew-built
PCs I own are, then they are probably in the market for much
more CPU and memory, and the only way to utilize that stuff
is Vista, but again, it is a circular proof/counter
productive exercise if you aren't suffering really bad right
now.

No, XP can take FULL advantage of dual or more core sytems,
much better so than Vista, and this is more due to the fact
Vista is so heavy/bloated. This is what various magazines such
as Max PC have found thus far as well as my own experience.

Not according to the application developers I have contacted who
say that they cannot take advantage of multi-core nor extended
memory spaces with XP. It doesn't matter anyway, as the current
speeds don't justify the expense and PITA on the if-come that
your advice is valid. I deal in reality, not theory, so I view a
PC as a tool to do useful work. Where there is controversy as to
what an O/S can or cannot do, I can be sure that it don't work,
and I'm not going to spend my money and time trying to make it
work.

 

[HEMI-Powered]

Today, Eric made these interesting comments ...

I didn't say only 1 GB. I did say at least 1 GB. I might get
2 or even 4, depending on pricing, but will at least allow as
much room as possible for expansion.
My current system has 512 MB RAM which is fine for WinME.
WinXP should be fine with 1 GB, which may be 1 more reason to
get XP on the new system if 2+ GB costs much more than 1 GB
and Vista really needs at least 2.

Eric, in order to discuss this factually, all of the debates
would have to first define the types of tasks to be performed as
well as agree on some quantitative measurements for terms like
"fine", "good", "OK", etc. E-mail, web surfing, and simple word
processing are far different than large bit size graphics
manipulation, for example, gaming, 3-D graphics or any number of
CPU/memory intensive tasks that require much higher performance,
and people have very strong notions as to what "good" means.

I have 4 gig now, but XP steals one of them and uses it for no-
thing. I can't add any more that I am aware of. And, my AMD
Athlon 2.6 ghz is still a reasonably fast processor, yet my most
CPU intensive tasks like raster graphics noise removal and
sharpening using specialized algorithms is pretty slow even on a
2 mega pixel image.

 

[HEMI-Powered]

Today, Eric made these interesting comments ...

Yes I have a router with a NAT and I run AOL McAfee Virus
Scanner and Firewall and Spybot.

A NAT router is an excellent start. I wouldn't trust any ISP's
malware solution. They are in the business of selling you access
to the Internet, not security. I don't allow Comcast to load
McAfee or any of its alleged safeguards. I researched this stuff,
determined my needs, and bought the stuff, it isn't free ware and
I didn't pirate it. And, friends reading this, XP SP2's security
is a classic oxymoron like military intelligence.

I have 2 HDs but I haven't backed up data lately. I need to.
XP would add additional security as I would want to set it up
with regular user accounts that need to "run as administrator"
to install programs. I believe one of the selling points of
Vista is better security, but I don't know what it has over XP
besides annoying pop up messages.

Forget about XP, it ain't got anything near what you need
natively. And, please create a backup regimen that fits your
needs, which is usually based on how much data per unit of time
you create, your tolerance to data loss, and the value of your
time to recover from a disaster, whether it be a tornado, fire,
theft, a software bug, or the increasingly sophisticated malware
threat.

I assume if programs will run on XP, they will run on Vista
either right away or as soon as the updates come out. I will
still be running the old system too, so I don't care if some
games have to wait a bit to run on Vista...

It has been said that assume should be written as ass/u/me and
pronounced when you assume it makes an ass of you and me. I would
NOT assume that anything runs that has not been verified to do
so, and that especially applies to HW drivers for older legacy
devices for which a driver may no longer exist or would need to
be procured from the manufacturer.

I have been engaging in some debates on Vista principly because
people are talking about a supposed LACK of what it can or cannot
do, a supposed disagreement on performance per a given HW config,
compatibility issues, security issues, and other important
things, much less debate on whether any new GUI is or is not an
improvement. It seems to me, Eric, that there is more than enough
time for them who like to lead with their chin to sort this out
for you and me, and that we both should stand down until the
feeding frenzy ends, early election returns come in, and at least
one SP is issued to tie up the inevitible loose ends.

 

[Saran]

Today, Saran made these interesting comments ...

Today, Clenna Lumina made these interesting comments ... [...]

Do you selves a favor and stick with XP or upgrade TO XP
rather than DOWN-grading to Vista, unless you really want a
slwoer OS, rather than a faster one (my brother has a Quad
Core from Intel with XP Pro SP2 and it is doing warp factor
9 with out breaking a sweat!!!)

If someone has XP Home or Pro SP2 and it does what they
perceive they want it to, I see no reason to upgrade right
now. However, if one is in the market for a new PC, whether a
commercial OEM or somebody's home built, as my nephew-built
PCs I own are, then they are probably in the market for much
more CPU and memory, and the only way to utilize that stuff
is Vista, but again, it is a circular proof/counter
productive exercise if you aren't suffering really bad right
now.

No, XP can take FULL advantage of dual or more core sytems,
much better so than Vista, and this is more due to the fact
Vista is so heavy/bloated. This is what various magazines such
as Max PC have found thus far as well as my own experience.

Not according to the application developers I have contacted who
say that they cannot take advantage of multi-core nor extended
memory spaces with XP. It doesn't matter anyway, as the current
speeds don't justify the expense and PITA on the if-come that
your advice is valid. I deal in reality, not theory, so I view a
PC as a tool to do useful work. Where there is controversy as to
what an O/S can or cannot do, I can be sure that it don't work,
and I'm not going to spend my money and time trying to make it
work.

Sir, we have serviced thosands of computers, we have assisted in many
build ups, including a couple in the past 2 weeks both Dual Core Duos,
top of the line. XP flies like a damn F1 car on that setup. The system
had 4 gigs of ram, although it is true applciations do not have access
to all 4 becuase the OS pre-allocates part of it to itself, but you
still get a lot of ram to work with.

There have also been tests and build done by various magazines with Dual
and quad cores and XP and XP in each and everyone I've read of comes out
on top.

 

[HEMI-Powered]

Today, Saran made these interesting comments ...

Sir, we have serviced thosands of computers, we have assisted
in many build ups, including a couple in the past 2 weeks both
Dual Core Duos, top of the line. XP flies like a damn F1 car
on that setup. The system had 4 gigs of ram, although it is
true applciations do not have access to all 4 becuase the OS
pre-allocates part of it to itself, but you still get a lot of
ram to work with.

There have also been tests and build done by various magazines
with Dual and quad cores and XP and XP in each and everyone
I've read of comes out on top.

As I said before, but you obviously cannot comprehend, you run
your systems the way you like and think they way you like, and I
will do the same. I do NOT pay any mind whatsoever with YOUR
estimates of what do or do not work when I cannot get the
application developers of apps I want to use to support you. It
matters not whether XP can or cannot take advantage of multi-core
if my software does not. And, Sir, if you don't mind, I will use
my metrics, not yours, to make judgements on performance, memory
usage and requirements, and a definition of good, adequate, or
poor performance.

Incidently, so-called independent tests aren't. As with almost
anything "independently" tested today, it can easily be shown
that the magazines are pandering to them who advertise and their
"results" are at best biased and may in fact be entirely wrong. I
cannot imagine any major magazine where MS or the HW and SW
vendors advertise wanting their products disparaged, so I would
be really surprised to see anything but the company line.

Another BTW: lab testing of performance, such as disk write
speed, throughput, etc. usually removes O/S overhead. Easy
example: just look at the transfer rates for ANY HD and compare
the numbers to what I am sure you know - an order of magnitude
smaller. So, again, why on earth would I believe somebody like PC
Magazine to actually tell me the truth? Investigation of new
technology of any kind is a complex undertaking where
standardized testing is but one of many metrics one should use.
But, by far in my book is real-world personal experience.

If you have any of my last, I would certainly like to hear it.
But, I cannot find any corroborating evidence that supports your
assertion, outside the lab and the magazines, Sir.

 

[Alan]

Hi Tom,

Do you have a link for the MSFT announcement that XP Home support will now
be for the same period of time as XP Pro?

Alan

 

[Eric]

XP will always be faster then Vista, mainly because it's slimmer and more
efficient, while Vista just so "heavy" on resources, hence the "boat
anchor" analogy so many use. The 3D gui elements of Vista may look nice
but in the end help to slow things down, butthats jsut part of the
picture.

The whole OS is just sluggish compared to XP... it's just another
concoction to get people to get new hardwares and such. It's got virtually
nothing in the way of progress, just more of the same, for a higher price,
and slowness. XP seems an infinately logical choice if you care at all
about the speed of your system.

And yes DRM is a huge DISADVANTAGE... it's a plague, it complete tramples
over fair-use, and it takes on the presumption that we're all criminals
before we've ever done anything wrong. Yes, theres lots ot like about
DRM.....

I guess no one in this forum has actually used both XP and Vista and notived
any differences then, since not one response actually answered my question.

I was wondering what actual functional differences there might be that would
make one worth getting over the other, and all the responses are about the
technical differences I said to ignore (speed, support, software
compatibility) which might not even matter by next year.

The only response that answered any part of my actual question was this one,
with the suggestion that DRM is bad. Does DRM actually do anything good,
does anyone here actually support it, or is the only purpose of it an
attempt to block casual illegal music downloading? If that's the case,
there will be much debate and MS may be forced to get rid of it. I think
it's awful what they've done to CD copying, that it's very hard if not
impossible now for the casual user to make copies of their own CDs for their
own purposes. My CDs tend to get scratched up from normal use, and don't
work very well when they're scratched enough, so I need to make copies to
run while I save the original in a safe place or I have to keep buying new
copies of old games if I want to keep playing. Making copies shouldn't be
so hard to do, since we've always been able to make copies of cassette tapes
and VHS tapes and I don't think it killed their profits. They just made a
bigger issue out of CDs since you can burn a CD from an image that can be
sent to millions of others over the internet, which you couldn't do so
easily with cassettes and VHS, but can do now with DVDs and could do from
the start with MP3s... which is not so much a problem with the media but a
problem with the internet that makes it so easy to send copywrited material
to so many people. Our government has been researching a fix for the
internet for years but it will be at least a few more years before they find
a real solution, and they have the roadblock of trying to fix the whole net
which is global, so meanwhile we get screwed on CDs and now they're doing
the same with the MP3s...

 

[Wayne M. Poe]

I was wondering what actual functional differences there might be
that would make one worth getting over the other, and all the
responses are about the technical differences I said to ignore
(speed, support, software compatibility) which might not even matter
by next year.

Thats just it, there aren't really any function differrences. It
basically just Windows repackaged in a in some nice looking decor. The
3D and gadget stuff are in there to make you feel like you've really got
someting new. But in the end it's Windows.

The only response that answered any part of my actual question was
this one, with the suggestion that DRM is bad. Does DRM actually do
anything good, does anyone here actually support it, or is the only
purpose of it an attempt to block casual illegal music downloading?

Well it makes it difficult for average users who pay and try to do
things the legit way to do things. Like reinstall your OS, etc. Or i
nthe case of multimedia, you often "purchase" music only to find you
cannot back up the license and similar type inconviences.

Mean while those who did things illegitly in the first place are
continuing that path unobstructed.

DRM only effect people who do things legitly and this is why it's viewed
so negatively. In the grand scheme of things, it pretty much voialtes
every aspect of the concept of Fair-Use.

 

[Tom Porterfield]

Hi Tom,

Do you have a link for the MSFT announcement that XP Home support will now
be for the same period of time as XP Pro?

Sure -
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-24ExtendedSupportWindowsMA.mspx.

"Today, Microsoft is announcing the addition of an Extended Support phase
for the Windows® XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition
operating systems, providing consumers with an additional phase of support.

With the addition of Extended Support, the support life cycle for Windows XP
Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition will include a total of
five years of Mainstream Support (until April 2009) and five years of
Extended Support, matching the support policy provided for Windows XP
Professional."