Windows 7 vs Windows Vista

esuhl

Hammyman wrote: »

When you've used Windows 7 for a bit then go back to XP, you'll realise just how dire it is and how it is long past its sell by date.

I have Windows 7, XP and Linux on my main PC and switch between them a fair bit. I also have XP on my laptop, and have used Vista extensively at work and on friends' PCs.

I actually really like the interface in XP - it's clean-looking and works well. I don't have much in the way of esoteric (or particularly new) hardware, and XP has been around for so long that everything seems to work fine with it! The security model in XP is somewhat lacking, but I have plenty of free security applications that get round that, and the only problem I've ever had in XP is when I inadvertently installed a malware toolbar, so the poor security model really isn't that much of a problem in practice. Personally I think XP is still a great OS and a pleasure to use.

Vista and 7 are really just different sub-versions of the same OS. To the casual observer they look pretty similar, but I find that 7 is slicker, smoother and less-buggy than Vista. It's strange because Vista got a pretty poor reception when it was released (there were some nightmare bugs, but I think many of the enhancements in it are quite inspired), while 7 was regarded as a success (it fixed a lot of minor irritations, but is really just what Vista should have been).

To the "normal" consumer there's probably no significant benefit in upgrading from Vista to 7. If you tinker with your computer a lot, just want a better OS and don't care about the cost, or have specific problems with Vista then it might be worth £100 to upgrade...

ada1988

Win 7 is much better i think.
I like the UI for win 7 and the speed for turn on the pc is faster.
it is compatible for more softwares.

spannerzone

I'd stick with Vista rather than spend £100 to be honest......last time I reloaded Vista onto someone's laptop after a nasty problem I was surprised how well it ran after applying the updates....I'd go so far as to say it was actually pretty good and that's comparing it to my W7 computers. The first time I used Vista I hated it as it was so slow, it would appear to have matured and got better with recent service packs?

kelliswarma

How big is windows xp program vs vista vs windows 7?:money:

spud17

spannerzone wrote: »

The first time I used Vista I hated it as it was so slow, it would appear to have matured and got better with recent service packs?

Don't forget that many machines have had their ram upgraded from the early days.
When Vista launched some laptops were being shipped with 512MB ram, bet there's not many like that still around.

kwikbreaks

Vista was the only MS operating system I found infuriating enough to cause me to shell out for an upgrade. In the early days of Win7 there were some bargains to be had - MS still had Vista to live down at the time and there was no guarantee that Win 7 wouldn't be another lemon.

I wouldn't downgrade my Win 7 machines to XP but my XP machines (a netbook and an EEE Box) simply don't have the grunt to run Win 7. I regularly use both and from the usability POV there is little to choose between them. Most security problems are carbon based rather than silicon based.

GunJack

kelliswarma wrote: »

How big is windows xp program vs vista vs windows 7?:money:

clean up-to-date install of XP takes about 8GB of hdd space, clean vista up-to-date takes closer to 20GB.....XP wins again

JamesK10

gary7788 wrote: »

I am currently running a HP laptop at home using Windows Vista operating system.I am thinking of downloading Windows 7 from the microsoft website to replace Vista on the laptop.
What are the pro and cons of Windows 7(home premium) against Windows Vista?
What would i gain for the £99.99 outlay of doing this?
Any advice would be appreciated
Thank you

By God, don't download it. Average price is £80 for a retail upgrade in a box, with two versions, 32-bit and 64-bit, that will work on any machine (I looked on Amazon), compared to a download where you won't even get a disc, for £20 more.

I keep Vista on my Mum's PC because it was getting old around 2007 when Vista was new, but it still worked. Essentially it's the same interface as 7 for older machines but I never used it on newer faster PCs because it takes too long to update to Service Pack 2 now, compared to only the one add-on for Windows 7. Also the faffing around you needed to do with power management to speed up file copying, I've never had to do that in Windows 7.

Whenever it's time to add more than 4Gb of RAM to a PC, 64-Bit Win 7 will be able to use all of it without a cutoff. The usual version of Vista that was sold (32-bit) would cut off at 3.25Gb of it.

As commented, by next October there will be a Windows 8, so it really depends whether you feel you need to bother with 7 - especially if they keep the visual interface choice to make it look like the version before.

carlpayne

windows 7 is better than Vista. Go for it.

esuhl

JamesK10 wrote: »

Whenever it's time to add more than 4Gb of RAM to a PC, 64-Bit Win 7 will be able to use all of it without a cutoff. The usual version of Vista that was sold (32-bit) would cut off at 3.25Gb of it.

Just a few pedantic points:

32-bit OSes can natively address up to 4GB of memory, not 4Gb (4GB = 32Gb). There are 8 bits (b) to 1 byte (B).

The 4GB maximum is the total memory (RAM, video and other memory), so the 32-bit version of Vista didn't "cut off" at 3.25GB unless you have exactly 0.75GB memory being used by other hardware components (usually just the video adapter).

If the CPU supports it, Windows can use the Physical Address Extension (PAE) feature that allows pages of RAM to be swapped in/out, thus providing a 36-bit addressable space (i.e. 64GB maximum) on 32-bit systems, although each individual application is still bound to the 4GB limit.

It's not true that 64-bit OSes have no memory "cut off", it's just that it's larger than anyone would be likely to need (but so was 4GB when we moved from 16-bit Windows 3.1 to 32-bit Windows 95). The maximum addressable memory for a 64-bit OS is (if my maths is correct) is 17,179,869,184GB, although in practice you would be limited by other constraints - I hear that Windows 7 Ultimate arbitrarily limits you to 192GB RAM, for example, and most current motherboards don't support anything close to that yet.