Why stick with XP instead of Vista?

toasterman

sco0ter wrote: »

Lets see..

Windows Vista Business... quite plain what thats aimed for
Windows Vista Basic .... Could be seen as the Windows XP Professional.
Windows Vista Premium... Could be seen as Windows XP Home
Windows Vista Ultimate .. Could be seen as Windows XP Media Centre Edition

No more versions left..

I think you've got that a bit muddled up.
Vista Basic is XP Home...cheap, no fancy aero graphics, etc.
Vista Business is XP Pro (cause it joins to domains).
Vista Home Premium is XP media centre edition, fancy graphics, aero interface, etc.
Vista Ultimate is everything from all versions.

As an IT pro, I think there is too many versions.
If it's meant to save me time by only installing business stuff on the business one, it's failing. Business Edition doesn't by default install telnet (which is damn handy when you get a problem), nor does it install any games at all. If the accounts staff don't get to play solitaire every once in a while they'll all go on strike.

In this modern age of flexitime, home working, people wanting to spend more time with their family, etc, why can't Microsoft see that the computer someone watches tv on at the weekend might be the same computer they connect to the office to work with, on Monday morning. That person won't know the difference between all the versions, will pick one, probably the wrong one - then wind up all the more angry when they find out they have to upgrade to get something to work.

Microsoft deserve all the criticism they get for the number of versions

sco0ter

toasterman wrote: »

I think you've got that a bit muddled up.
Vista Basic is XP Home...cheap, no fancy aero graphics, etc.

Not really as You can do a whole lot more on XP home than you can with Vista basic. I just compared it to Proffesional as when it was released it was geared towards IT people and Businessess who didnt want to use Windows 2000 or NT.

toasterman wrote: »

Vista Business is XP Pro (cause it joins to domains).

I suppose this is correct but the origianal comment was editions were too confusing and Business sort of speaks for itself whereas Pro doesnt.

toasterman wrote: »

Vista Home Premium is XP media centre edition, fancy graphics, aero interface, etc.

Again this is home. You can do almost everything with it from burning DVDs to playing games.

toasterman wrote: »

Vista Ultimate is everything from all versions.

Just the same as Media centre which was just XP with Media centre added but for some reason warranted its own version instead of just an upgrade.

toasterman wrote: »

As an IT pro, I think there is too many versions.
If it's meant to save me time by only installing business stuff on the business one, it's failing. Business Edition doesn't by default install telnet (which is damn handy when you get a problem), nor does it install any games at all. If the accounts staff don't get to play solitaire every once in a while they'll all go on strike.

And for every one employer who thinks like you there are 10 that dont. Some companies wont pay thier employees to play games or even use e-bay (recent news of 6 people sacked)

toasterman wrote: »

In this modern age of flexitime, home working, people wanting to spend more time with their family, etc, why can't Microsoft see that the computer someone watches tv on at the weekend might be the same computer they connect to the office to work with, on Monday morning. That person won't know the difference between all the versions, will pick one, probably the wrong one - then wind up all the more angry when they find out they have to upgrade to get something to work.

Thats where reading the box or doing research comes in... would you buy a car without checking it had enough seats for your needs???

toasterman wrote: »

Microsoft deserve all the criticism they get for the number of versions

and with only one more clearly labeled version than XP has why is this??? Could it be people just dont like microsoft ... People continually moan to this day about all the stuff XP installs and there are even programs to strip it out. They release a stripped version in Basic and still get panned... Some people will just be unhappy no matter what.

sco0ter

Last post above... sorry for the topic going off the original subject..

For The OP

Vista is excellent and great for day to day use. Only complaint is it does need more memory than XP to run some apps and is a bit more hungry where games are concerned but if gaming is not essential then Vista all the way.

tomsolomon

Isnt Vista just XP in a new Armani suit with a pair of shiney cufflinks :shhh:

toasterman

sco0ter wrote: »

Not really as You can do a whole lot more on XP home than you can with Vista basic. I just compared it to Proffesional as when it was released it was geared towards IT people and Businessess who didnt want to use Windows 2000 or NT.

There's very little difference between XP Home and XP Pro. XP Pro joins to domains and allows you to disable simple file sharing. Thats about the only differences I've come across between the two. Yes there is stuff missing from XP Home that's in XP Pro, but some of you can install afterwards - just isn't installed by default.

I said: "Vista Home Premium is XP media centre edition, fancy graphics, aero interface, etc."
You said: "Again this is home. You can do almost everything with it from burning DVDs to playing games."

No it isn't. Vista Home Premium has the windows media center. Its clearly the equivalent of XP Media Center edition.
Which in itself was xp home, with a fancy add-on interface.
There was also multiple versions of XP Media Center (which was further confusing) - some would join to domains, some wouldn't.

The fact that we're having this conversation proves the point made above about their being too many versions and people not being 100% sure which is meant for which. Even us two can't agree.

sco0ter wrote: »

for every one employer who thinks like you there are 10 that dont. Some companies wont pay thier employees to play games or even use e-bay (recent news of 6 people sacked)

Don't get me wrong - no employer wants them sitting playing games all day when they should be working. But throughout all of the clients of ours I've installed Vista into so far, their bosses have been fine with them playing solitaire. In fact in the case of two such places, it was the bosses that were the first to complain it was missing!

sco0ter wrote: »

Thats where reading the box or doing research comes in... would you buy a car without checking it had enough seats for your needs???

You know that isn't the same. You can buy any car you like and drive from Birmingham to Manchester. It doesn't matter if its a 1l or 5l. Petrol or diesel. They'll all get you from A to B. Seats you can see in the showroom.
There's not as much so visually obvious in computers, and a lot of people just don't understand computers as there's so many options that affect the performance/usability..... :rolleyes:
If you want to compare it to a car - how's this:
You want to buy a car, you check the number of seats, fuel, it fits your wife, kids in it etc. It's great. You get it home and realise your road map and tin of sweets aren't compatible with it. See - it just isn't comparable in that way.

sco0ter wrote: »

Could it be people just dont like microsoft ... People continually moan to this day about all the stuff XP installs and there are even programs to strip it out. They release a stripped version in Basic and still get panned... Some people will just be unhappy no matter what.

I certainly have never complained about that. I loved the fact that after you'd installed Windows XP, it didn't ask you for the install disc all the damn time to setup further things. I'd rather have an operating system take up 20gb space and me never need to put the disc in again. It's convenience for the end user.
The only thing I don't like XP trying to force me to have, is the recycle bin on the desktop. You can remove it with TweakUI, but why isn't it another option like internet explorer, and my computer, that can be easily removed with the customise desktop setting.

donnajunkie

wakandem wrote: »

The manufacturers are to blame for selling pc's that are not good enough for vista. Loads of laptops out there with vista premium but they only have a gig of ram that is shared with graphics. For an xp system to be that unresponsive run it 128mb ram, but then again pc companies were selling with xp installed and only 128mb ram when it first came out. No wonder it was considered crap.

so what does this actually mean for people with a computer that has 1gb of ram or less? does it not do anything? does it basically not work? does it mean even if you have a decent graphics card that a game just wont work?
what does it mean for the day to day usual things like surfing the net, watching videos and listening to music, playing games etc.

sco0ter

donnajunkie wrote: »

so what does this actually mean for people with a computer that has 1gb of ram or less? does it not do anything? does it basically not work? does it mean even if you have a decent graphics card that a game just wont work?
what does it mean for the day to day usual things like surfing the net, watching videos and listening to music, playing games etc.

Vista itself will run quite happily with 512MB of ram... The problem lies with the software you may wish to run on Vista.

Example..

Pinnacle Video Studio 11 that I have will run happily with 512 MB on windows XP.. The same program requires 2GB on Vista. This is the case with most software. Games as well require more ram and you really need a DX10 compatible card to get the full benefits.

As for day to day surfing, watching DVD's, Listening to music or using some sort of office program... there is no problems..

sco0ter

wakandem wrote: »

The manufacturers are to blame for selling pc's that are not good enough for vista. Loads of laptops out there with vista premium but they only have a gig of ram that is shared with graphics. For an xp system to be that unresponsive run it 128mb ram, but then again pc companies were selling with xp installed and only 128mb ram when it first came out. No wonder it was considered crap.

I agree with your statement but one thing... The PC's ARE good enough to run VISTA. They just arent good enough to run software ON vista.

And I used to run Vista on my Laptop with 512MB ram and shared graphics and never had a problem with it being slow. In most cases it was better than the XP home it came with.

donnajunkie

scooter,
thanks.
do you really need extra video software because on the daft little leaflet i have it says vista has its own media centre where you can do things like edit video. i dont know if my graphics card is directx10 compatible until it arrives and i can read the instructions. it is nvidia geforce 8400 which i know is good but that there are better than that available. with my budget it was the best i was going to get. i know it can be fairly cheap to upgrade ram. where are the best places to get ram from and how likely am i to need to pay someone to put it in for me? i dont think it is a good idea for people to take their pc apart unless they are qualified really. so who is best for doing that for me?

Psychofly

The 8400 is an awful card for gaming so it depends if that's what you're looking for. An ATI x1950 is 10 times better. DirectX10 will never run properly anyway at decent graphics quality on an 8400.

Vista Basic - a crap version of XP. Nobody should consider getting this in my opinion.
Vista Business - pointless for the home market. Only real benefit over XP Pro is the ability to join a domain which is 99.99% of the time only done in companies.
Vista Premium - basically XP Pro for the home with Media Center stuff.
Vista Ultimate - does everything all the others do.

I would say don't so below Premium. The other two are pretty useless for home use. I would only consider Home Basic if you use it purely for a couple of older games, and some emails. Anyone with a more in depth interest in PCs should be looking at Premium or Ultimate.