Hate to ask again XP or Vista?

isofa

anewhope wrote: »

Corporations have been downgrading Vista machines to XP and that is quite understandable. Having a mix of operating systems in an environment will make it more difficult to administer, bespoke applications may not work and typically business machines are cheap and functional, therefore may not be getting reasonable performance with a copy of Vista on.

You will find with every release of Windows that this has been the case. Do you not remember the shambolic reception XP received?

Here's the problem, the internet has given those who cannot think for themselves a platform to soak up the opinion of others, whether right or wrong, and regurgutate this as their own without any real understanding.

Ah, PCPro, the tome of all computing knowledge..

I quite agree in the main, I'd rather read and listen to the informed opinions from people with detailed exposure to systems, from a variety of sources, than the rantings of biased opinions, with little research from those on a forum.

Not sure why PC Pro is coming in for such a knocking. It has some very good journos and experts working in the industry, and is certainly one of the better and more technical journals on the subject. They present a balanced view of Vista and XP, and often conceed that OS X is good, in a PC mag! Even though most agree Vista is ok, they have proved on the same spec, over and over again that XP is faster. However if you installed W98 on the same spec, it'd run like the wind, so obviously an older OS will be faster - it's a moot point for some.

From my perspective, as both a professional in the industry and a home user too, the main problems with Vista are: legacy code, still poor security, non insistence on driver signing, slow boot times, and a massive bloated OS. It just doesn't offer anything extra worth having IMO. I have better facilities in OS X, which boots very fast indeed, is more efficient, more secure etc. I use both Mac OS X and Windows daily.

Whether Windows 7 will really make the grade is to be seen, but the market and whole dynamic of the industry has totally changed IMO. Google Chrome and all manner of other products are going to shift the industry.

The most important thing to me is the application software, nowadays the OS is a side issue, as long as it can support the applications, files and peripherals, I don't spend hours using the OS, I spend hours using applications.

robt_2

Hoseman wrote: »

My comment is based on other people's opinions which is all Ive got to go on and there seems to be quite a lot of people who are undecided or in two minds. Ive heard of quite a few also who have gone back to XP after trying Vista. Ive never heard of this with previous releases and of course this is going to cause some debate as this thread proves. PCPro had a feature on this very issue also which surely means it is an issue worth discussing or people want to know about. While we're on the subject of debate, if you have anything useful to add, be my guest.

My point exactly, your going on 3rd hand opinions without any knowledge on the subject yourself.

The following is in regards to your original comment which was "that M$ have come out with a product that isnt significantly better than its predecessor." It is from another site where people get equally fed up with people not knowing what they are talking about.

The underlying arch at the kernel-level is massively different from the memory and heap manager, through to new technologies in the registry, redevelopment of the services model, the DLL-loader, and the thread-pool, WHEA, and completely reengineered boot-environment, a new driver model WDF , reengineering of the Winsock APIs - and all that is without even mentioning any of the security features at the kernel-level.

Then we have developments in the I/O technologies, WDDM which off-loads the display functions to the hardware and gives you the Aero UI, a completely rewritten audio-stack, rewritten print-stack, WPF, WCF, WWF, Media foundation, DX10. And I haven't even mentioned any front-end features.

Maybe you could explain what your definition of 'significantly better' is?

Hoseman

You guys are a laugh, before you buy anything do you go into it blind and hope for the best or do you read up and listen to other people's opinions? Im aware that sometimes youre more likely to find negative opinions but its a case of weighing it all up and deciding what is best for you. I can express an opinion based on what Ive read or heard or do you need to experience everything before you talk about it? I made it clear that was the case from the outset.

With regard to PCPro, I wasn saying it was the fountain of all knowledge, I was merely trying to lillustrate the point that its an issue that people are concerned/disussing/whatever. Also they know more than me but its obviously beneath some of you experts.

Heres the article for those of you who are interested:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/138195/xp-vs-vista.html

Conclusion:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/138264/conclusion.html

jmc160

Hoseman wrote: »

My comment is based on other people's opinions which is all Ive got to go on and there seems to be quite a lot of people who are undecided or in two minds. Ive heard of quite a few also who have gone back to XP after trying Vista. Ive never heard of this with previous releases and of course this is going to cause some debate as this thread proves. PCPro had a feature on this very issue also which surely means it is an issue worth discussing or people want to know about. While we're on the subject of debate, if you have anything useful to add, be my guest.

http://mojaveexperiment.com/?fbid=6NOuvWg6xVx

The above link (needs Silverlight) shows an experiment designed to address people who have based their own opinions of Vista purely on what they've heard in the press or from others. Word of mouth can be a powerful thing, but not always good!

To the OP, I'm a big fan of Vista, I have a computer running Vista Ultimate that acts as a media centre and PVR and a laptop running Vista Home Premium for everything else.

I'd say buy your new PC with Vista installed and try it out for a couple of weeks. If you don't like it, install XP.

jmc160

Hoseman wrote: »

You guys are a laugh, before you buy anything do you go into it blind and hope for the best or do you read up and listen to other people's opinions? Im aware that sometimes youre more likely to find negative opinions but its a case of weighing it all up and deciding what is best for you. I can express an opinion based on what Ive read or heard or do you need to experience everything before you talk about it? I made it clear that was the case from the outset.

Would you buy a car purely based on the opinions of others, or would you test drive it first?

Jesthar

chickmug wrote: »

I am looking at getting a new home PC low spec as use for email, internet, phetos, Word Docs and such. No videos, music or games. Am I safe to get Vista as last time the forum seems to be split in two?

The Vista vs XP debate aside, the key phrase here is 'low spec', chickmug. XP is going to run somewhat better on a low spec system than Vista could, as it has lower resource requirements.

A few other observations:

* If you go with XP, make sure you get XP Pro (NOT XP Home). It is a far superior product, especially security-wise, definitely worth the higher price. Make sure that it has at least Service Pack 2 installed, too - if it doesn't come pre-installed, downloading and installing it should be your first action when you get it.

* Vista still has some hardware driver problems, particularly with peripherals. Creative SoundBlaster cards have been a prime example of this. If you're going to build your own PC and go with Vista, make sure the components you select don't have any driver problems (research them on the web).

* Both XP and Vista (and most other software too) will run much better with a graphics card installed over using on-board graphics. XP should cope without one in absolutely necessary; Vista is likely to struggle. As a decent basic graphics card should cost under £50, it's not worth skimping on, though with a tower machine you can always upgrade later, of course (so choose you motherboard wisely!).

*2GB of RAM is really the minimum a new computer should have, and a matched pair of 1GB sticks of RAM is also the most cost effective amount to buy. Again, though, if cost is an issue, this can always be upgraded later - XP ran fine on 1GB of RAM for me for two years until I decided to get more!

Hope that helps,

~Jes

aliEnRIK

Jesthar wrote: »

The Vista vs XP debate aside, the key phrase here is 'low spec', chickmug. XP is going to run somewhat better on a low spec system than Vista could, as it has lower resource requirements.

A few other observations:

* If you go with XP, make sure you get XP Pro (NOT XP Home). It is a far superior product, especially security-wise, definitely worth the higher price. Make sure that it has at least Service Pack 2 installed, too - if it doesn't come pre-installed, downloading and installing it should be your first action when you get it.

* Vista still has some hardware driver problems, particularly with peripherals. Creative SoundBlaster cards have been a prime example of this. If you're going to build your own PC and go with Vista, make sure the components you select don't have any driver problems (research them on the web).

* Both XP and Vista (and most other software too) will run much better with a graphics card installed over using on-board graphics. XP should cope without one in absolutely necessary; Vista is likely to struggle. As a decent basic graphics card should cost under £50, it's not worth skimping on, though with a tower machine you can always upgrade later, of course (so choose you motherboard wisely!).

*2GB of RAM is really the minimum a new computer should have, and a matched pair of 1GB sticks of RAM is also the most cost effective amount to buy. Again, though, if cost is an issue, this can always be upgraded later - XP ran fine on 1GB of RAM for me for two years until I decided to get more!

Hope that helps,

~Jes

I pretty much completely agree with that

isofa

jmc160 wrote: »

Would you buy a car purely based on the opinions of others, or would you test drive it first?

I agree with that too, however informed (not heresay as much of the Vista bashing is) opinions do help to narrow down choices

For a home user, it's a pretty good OS as long as you have a fast machine and modern peripherals.

(PS as with the above poster, avoid XP Home like the plague - very different beast to XP Pro)

Pssst

buy a good spec 2nd hand one for cheap and get someone to install ubuntu linux on it. It looks just like windows but isnt,its faster,more secure and free along with loads of free software https://www.ubuntu.com