Vista or XP

BillScarab

I'm planning on replacing my PC in the near future and am interested in people's opinions on whether I should go for Vista or XP. Whatever I buy will be Vista ready so that won't be an issue.

If it was your money what would you buy and why?

At the moment I'm torn between the flashiness of Vista and the chance to learn about it and the fact that XP is a known quantity that will work out of the box with all my kit.

BTW please don't recommend Linux, I've nothing against it but for my PC at home I currently prefer windows. I spend enough time at work on Unix and Linux systems, having said that the old machine may end up being used for Linux at some point.

heatherw_01

First of all, I would check out the minimum specs of Vista here

A lot of people will say that Vista is bloatware etc etc, but it is down to what you want really.

If it were me, I would have Vista but is a personal choice.

elDeeJay

If you buy XP now, you will get a free upgrade to Vista anyway, so have them both!

wolfman

I'd go for Vista depending upon how much extra it would cost. You say near future so I'm assuming in the next month or two.

XP is stable, and works very well, but you should be perfectly fine with Vista. It's only businesses that will hold out switching (if switch at all) until SP1 is released. Security enhancements, more eye candy etc... will be beneficial for a home user.

I'm a .Net developer but also like to use Linux (Ubuntu) at home, so stuck between both worlds. Having played around with Vista I do find it a lot less work than Ubuntu, but Ubuntu is my OS of choice at home (am quite happy tinkering around with it).

Blacksheep1979

Unless you splash out and get a really good computer you won't be able to run vista in all its glory and tbh thats the main advantages of it. If you are happy with xp and it does everything you want, why change?

I hate all these adverts that persuade people they 'need' things ie an intel processor with ht technology - why do you need it? Because you were told you do, why do you need a dual core computer? Most of the time because you were told you do etc etc etc.

Yes there are advantages with the techs I've mentioned (and haven't) but for the average home user who looks at the internet and photos atc then the differences are negligable and the main differnce they notice is from having a fresh install of their os so they no longer have all the rubbish slowing it down and they go wow look at how fast and responsive they are.

BenL

As eldeejay has said a lot will come with upgrades.

My sister got a laptop for xmas and its badged up "Vista Capable", this comes with a Vista upgrade from XP Media Centre to Vista for £8 from ACER.

I use Vista at work as we are trialling it to make sure it works with the comapnies software (i'm a software tester).

Its pretty good and i've been using it for about 2 months now. If I need to pay for a copy for at home i'm not bothered though as its not that big a step up in my opinion.

Saying that though our workstations haven't got the graphics power to run the Vista Aero interface.

My PC at work has 2Gb RAM and the monitoring software says over about 40% is used up by Vista, then I need to load IE7, Office 2007 apps on top.

One of my other machines has 786Mb of RAM and looks to be jammed up to 75-80% just loading Vista.

You will need to spec up the machine, there will be a lot of unhappy people buying at PC World and getting Vista on 512mb RAM machines.

The Vista search function from the start button is cool and saves me a bit of time, well a few clicks instead of doing start - run then typing to load programs and files.

That for me is the most notable feature.

Its pretty good for networking, there is a function to draw a whole network map which at work is good but at home I only have about 4 devices on the wireless net anyway so no tracking problems.

Sharing files is easier to lock down specific users on the network that can be co-owners of files and folders instead of just everyone.

Other programs running on the machine get the improvements in style for the title bars and pop up boxes, menus as well.

The company software has never looked so good with these improvements.

We are having to use AVG anti virus the free edition at the moment as the McAfee product makes Vista Blue screen all the time apparently.

This we are told will be sorted soon and we will get access to the new product under the current licence they have.

Ben

sco0ter

A few pointers..

Beware of the UPGRADE editions you get free.. A lot of the Microsoft Technet discussion forums are saying that the upgrade versions WILL require an activated XP install to verify that you have a genuine article before Vista will UPGRADE... This means anything goes wrong and you will have to Install and activate XP before you could reinstall VISTA.

Another thing is... The business edition uses far more rescources than the other editions. This isnt really down to the software needing more its just the fact that if a business PC has it then it will utilise it to its full potential not the same as with the premium or ultimate editions (Vista RC2 Ultimate actually used about 2-5% more than XP did on my laptop). As the ultimate edition is geared a lot more toward multimedia application and the business edition doesnt even come with half the multimedia stuff.

As for PC spec... I have had RC2 running on a 1.4Ghz 512MB (128MB taken by graphics card) Laptop with no performance issues and only a 5Min less battery duration. I have also had it run on my Athlon 2.6 with 1 GB ram and geforce 6600GT with the full Aero interface and also running games with DX9 and having no performance issues or any less speed than XP.. remembering that RC2 was still beta and far from the end product I would say it is going to be a great product.

Dont listen to all the doom and gloom about needing dual core and 2 gig memory... If you can have it then thats better but the system will run just as well on the minimum spec machines as XP does.

All in all the call is yours... Microsoft is dedicated to making VISTA a better platform for games (hence the DX10 exlusive that XP wont get). as well as being the first operating system to support dedicated GPU's that means games developers can start writing games for DX10 and not individual graphics processor like they do just now.. DX10 will also take up to 60%-70% of graphics processing from the CPU and move it to the GPU meaning you wont need a mega fast processor to get the best from your system although you will need one of the specialised DX10 cards from Nvidia or ATI.

skiddy2k

I'm gonna stick with XP for a little while, till SP1 comes out at least anyway. Alot of essential programs that I need on my PC also are not compatable with Vista

BillScarab

Thanks for all the responses.

I need to replace my current machine as we are starting to get a lot of problems with it, random hangs, difficulty switching on etc. The hard disk failed a while back so it's currently running on an old 20Gb one I had at the back of a cupboard. Also, I got Medieval TW II for Christmas and thats not running too well on it. I'm planning on getting a Core 2 duo E6300 with 2Gb of Ram and then overclocking it, if Vista won't run on that I won't be happy!

To be honest I'm not overly keen on the upgrade voucher approach, I'd rather have a full copy of the OS, much easier if I ever need to re-install. However having seen the prices I may be going for XP just on cost considerations, Vista is still tempting though.

sco0ter

Vista will be installed on new PC's in a few weeks... Why not try and hold out till then.

[Deleted User]

I plan to buy a new laptop in a month or so, and will flattly refuse to have vista on it. No one has told me a benefit of installing it that would make me want it. If i want a flashy interface, i'll go use Mac OS X, but if I want a stable windows platform, i'm staying with XP