XP or Vista?

tinalee32

I have found a good pc for the budget I have, and now need to decided whether to have it pre installed with either Windows XP, which my son is used to, or to move with the times and have Vista Premium.

Any advice would be appreciated, thank you:D

BigBouncyBall

vista ultimate is not for most users, vista home premium is what most will go for, home basic is a little too basic in some respects.

XP service pack 3 should be out soon, which should make XP the most stable OS microsoft have produced. Vista is still waiting for its first service pack which will fix a lot of the problems, but it'll still be buggy.

I'd go with XP for another 12 months or so personally, or even skip vista and wait for the next version of windows; Windows 7.

That said, if you only do basic tasks, windows vista will be ok, if you are more of a 'power' user i'd give vista a miss for now.

Reluctant_spender

Tough one that, people are for or against either.

I would be tempted to go with Vista, but then again I like new and shiny

isofa

You might want to search these forums, this question and associated discussions crops up many times each month.

If you have some older software which won't be compatible then go for XP, else for a home computer you'll be okay with Vista. Certainly go for Home Premium for a home computer, the lower versions aren't worth bothering with, and equally, Business and Ultimate aren't really aimed at you.

If you are happy with XP, then you can always stick with it, but choose XP Pro rather than Home. And new PC will run faster with XP than Vista, because it's not so resource hungry.

Personally I'm sticking with XP Pro.

wolfman

I'd go with Vista. I've been using it for about a year. No problems so far. It's quite well established now.

As mentioned by isofa, just make sure you don't have an older software/hardware, and if you do google around to see if it'll work with Vista.

It's definitely an improvement on XP in my opinion. Well worth going for. Try running it in dual boot with something like Ubuntu too.

banger9365

i would go with vista has thing are moving away from xp now and the drivers are getting better now(it's cheap stuff thats not likly to work with vista,infact most driver problems are layzie manufacturers that coares this problem not vista), the software works with vista now unless you us old software ,usally you just have to update the program for it to work or us an newer version off it

BillScarab

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

XP service pack 3 should be out soon, which should make XP the most stable OS microsoft have produced. Vista is still waiting for its first service pack which will fix a lot of the problems, but it'll still be buggy.

Microsoft will be releasing Serivce Packs for Vista and XP in the near future. How can you possibly claim that Vista will still be buggy after the SP? It's not buggy now in my experience.

To the OP, make a list of any hardware and software you intend to use with your new pC and check if they'll work with Vista. If they will or the tings that won't don't bother you then go with Vista. Isofa is right in that on a specific machine XP will be faster but depending ofn the spec of the machine and what you plan ot use it for that may not be an issue.

How old is your son? When I bought a machine with Vista my children didn't seem to notice it was even different although they do like playing with the sidebar gadgets.

whatamess_2

I have been using vista ultimate for about 8months now and am a convert.

Nearly went back to xp but decided to give myself time to get used to it.

The only problems we have had are some pc games (pre xp) will not run and my printer was a pain to install.

Vista has been very stable on my machine.

aardvarkuk

All I would say is that you may want to get Vista as its new and most of MS future resources will be spent on Vista and that will surpass XP in not time at all, but do consider the point that some older programs that are used on XP may not run on Vista, if this is of no concern you should get Vista.

LuciferTDark

If you can afford it dual boot with XP & Vista & compare the performance of both on the same machine.

robt_2

aardvarkuk wrote: »

All I would say is that you may want to get Vista as its new and most of MS future resources will be spent on Vista and that will surpass XP in not time at all, but do consider the point that some older programs that are used on XP may not run on Vista, if this is of no concern you should get Vista.

If you have old programs that don't run you must be extremely unlucky - I have DOS programs running on Vista, all the way through to new release software!