Windows Vista vs Windows XP

[edyzmedieval]

This thread was fueled by the fact that Vista has increasing problems for me over the past 2 weeks. Internet Explorer keeps blocking, and it takes a lot of time for Vista to load at startup, and I have 3.5GB.

Choose, which do you think is a better OS.

[sapi]

Vista.

Ditch IE in favour of firefox, by the way - it's a horrible browser...

[Husar]

Go Vista, go, give XP the last blow!

It's working fine here, but then I got most Windows OSs working fine usually, only 98 and Me were a bit harder and would inevitably start to crash after a while. XP and Vista are about the same for me. My dad always says that's because I have nothing but games on my Pc but maybe that's just it, I don't have a virus scanner except Defender and my PC runs just fine, I guess all the hackers keep it stable so they won't lose access.

That reminds me I wanted to sell some old games which I never play anymore.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It's obviously a matter of personal preference, I tried MTW again a while ago and I just couldn't stand the graphics anymore, after a while I usually decide to keep games in good memory, that negates most compatibility issues for me. But it's not like those issues never existed when XP was released, some day we get yet a new one and everybody will proclaim to stay with Vista because it's so good and superior and more compatible etc.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

I actually, despite popular acclaim, find Vista much more stable that XP - XP has done some fairly random things for me before. The most significant of this included the system ignoring my user profile and creating a new one to replace it. It was very frustrating to have to resort my entire start menu, documents folder, and personalised options such as desktop wallpaper.

For me though, despite Vista's seeming superiority over XP, I do find that the old 9x generation of Windows were faster and more stable than the next generation OSes. I remember my upgrade from 98 to XP, and was disappointed when my overall speed of boot slowed by a rather noticeable amount. If I remember rightly 95 certainly was the fastest of the batch, followed closely by 98 and 98 SE. Windows Me was something I was strongly advised never to upgrade to, so I can't really comment on it.

[Bijo]

Ah, the old days of Win95, 98, 2000. 2000 Pro was very good.

Nowadays XP is just good. Since I use certain music software and since it seems there are people complaining about Vista I will not go for it yet. What I severely dislike about Vista is that it seems to hog down one's memory and that the interface is too different from XP. Then again, I have not really experienced Vista that much personally and am relying on anecdotal evidence. THEN AGAIN, why the hell would people lie about it? The time that I will finally utilize Vista shall arrive, but it is not soon enough.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I'm still using XP PRO SP2, though next year I'll probably get Vista.

[Pharnakes]

Me too, I'm sticking with xp for all the ussual reasons, but will probably go for vista fairely soon.

Indeed, I ordered 4gigs of ram with my new comp, against the day that I upgrade to vista.

[Lemur]

As another Orgah wrote, I'm gonna ride XP 'till the wheels fall off. Besides, good things are coming for the old school.

After pronouncing Windows Vista SP1 a "performance dud" two weeks ago, Devil Mountain Software, a Florida-based software development firm, reported that an upcoming update for Windows XP will offer substantial performance gains.

Running an Office productivity test suite on a preview version of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, Devil Mountain discovered a 10 percent performance boost over the current version of Windows XP, the company reported on its blog.

[Husar]

I read about that today Lemur and the source I read it from also said the testers are a bit biased towards XP (sorry, no nickel for you).
Of course in this office benchmark XP was twice as fast as Vista anyway which isn't really what my personal experience shows.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
A few ORGahs aside, I've yet to hear anything good about Vista.

XP Pro all the way. The fist OS MS have ever done nearly good.
.

[sapi]

.
A few ORGahs aside, I've yet to hear anything good about Vista.

XP Pro all the way. The fist OS MS have ever done nearly good.
.

With respect, I'm yet to hear anything bad about Vista from anyone who's actually used it

[Mikeus Caesar]

Nevermind riding it till the wheels fall off, i'm going to sit on the burnt-out chassis hoping i can make it go through the power of...



Imagination!

Tragically, i probably don't stand a chance. I imagine trying to stick with it that long would just be inefficient.

[Xiahou]

Here's my problems with Vista:
1)There's no need for it. I build my own PCs, so I won't be getting it pre-loaded for "free" on a new machine. Since I already have a perfectly good copy of XP pro, what possible reason could I have to purchase Vista? It offers nothing I want.

2)It's still comparatively untested. XP has been running for years in the enterprise and it's features and, more importantly, limitations are well known. While Vista doesn't offer any new must-have features, it has a big question mark when it comes to limitations, bugs, compatibility issues, ect. Why would I sign up for that?

As another Orgah wrote, I'm gonna ride XP 'till the wheels fall off.

Was that me? Sounds like something I would say. Regardless, it's sound advice.

[Husar]

While Vista doesn't offer any new must-have features, it has a big question mark when it comes to limitations, bugs, compatibility issues, ect. Why would I sign up for that?

No must-have features? What about AeroGlass?
It's actually true there are none, but once you get used to the new interface, XP starts to look rather boring.

[Bijo]

Let me get this straight: Vista has no must-have features AND on a computer that runs XP flawlessly and fast it will run slower AND professionally audio-wise Vista lacks superiority over XP AND XP SP3 owns or will own Vista SP1 and XP SP2? If the answer is yes then to hell with Vista. I is gun' stay wi' mah'XP. Don't need no DX10 anyway. I was planning on riding XP, like some others too, until it falls apart which hopefully won't happen.

I am not impressed how new OSs require more and more resources. If they would actually make them consume LESS resources then I would be impressed

Goddamn Microsoft, wretched company. And don't tell me with current hardware prices it's "okay", HELL NO. That's lazy. "Yeah yeah, let's make a resource hog. RAM and other hardware getting cheaper anyway: they can just buy some more and better hardware." Hheheheh >:)

[Husar]

I am not impressed how new OSs require more and more resources. If they would actually make them consume LESS resources then I would be impressed

You know, most DOs games ran fine on a 200MHz CPU, would you say we should have stopped development at that point?
Or maybe they should've made Crysis less of a ressource hog than Far Cry, I mean lower texture resolutions, less polygons, less scripts, less AI, smaller world......
What's the point of getting 200fps instead of 60?
And to come get to the original topic, what is Office performance anyway?
If my Core 2 Duo starts choking when I write a letter in Vista, I'll probably go back to DOS.
Reminds me of this new benchmark from Futuremark that tested whether my PC could show a HD-video, convert another one, upload yet another one and encode a fourth one at the same time or something useless like that.

That said, until I get my next paycheck from Microsoft (it's overdue ) I'll advise you not to get Vista, doesn't really offer anything important over XP.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

By the way, can they sue me for trying to appear like their employee when I'm not?

[Mouzafphaerre]

With respect, I'm yet to hear anything bad about Vista from anyone who's actually used it

.
One of those few ORGahs spake.

Well, it seems MS won't get any damnation unless Incompatible language and will keep monopolying until Incompatible language but we Troians shall resist as long as possible.
.

[Bijo]

Yes, Husar, they can sue you. They can sue everyone: they are Microsoft. But they're not wearing any dunce caps like you would see ghost images from on certain political figures >:) If you want to know about sueing, then take a look at

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Monster Cable

. I put it in spoiler tags 'cause I suspect if any of their employees detects this writing I will get sued, so you can understand how bad they are, heheheh.

And about the development and such... What justifies the fact that Vista would run slower than XP on the same machine, if this is a fact? What is their goddamn problem that this new.... "mighty" OS requires so much power? I don't care about their marketing talks and tricks and rubbish like that: just give me the goddamn truth! I want the truth! And don't tell me like Jack Nicholson that I can't HANDLE the truth!

It's all money. Money I tell ya. Find another reason for the people to consume.
[/rant]

[caravel]

You know, most DOs games ran fine on a 200MHz CPU, would you say we should have stopped development at that point?
Or maybe they should've made Crysis less of a ressource hog than Far Cry, I mean lower texture resolutions, less polygons, less scripts, less AI, smaller world......
What's the point of getting 200fps instead of 60?
And to come get to the original topic, what is Office performance anyway?
If my Core 2 Duo starts choking when I write a letter in Vista, I'll probably go back to DOS.

I think you may be missing the point. The fact is that M$ have always filled up the UI with extra bloat that is simply not needed. Just because an OS GUI looks visually better, doesn't necessarily mean that the OS is better in how it runs programs - which what an OS is supposed to do after all.

Here's my problems with Vista:
1)There's no need for it. I build my own PCs, so I won't be getting it pre-loaded for "free" on a new machine. Since I already have a perfectly good copy of XP pro, what possible reason could I have to purchase Vista? It offers nothing I want.

2)It's still comparatively untested. XP has been running for years in the enterprise and it's features and, more importantly, limitations are well known. While Vista doesn't offer any new must-have features, it has a big question mark when it comes to limitations, bugs, compatibility issues, ect. Why would I sign up for that?

Was that me? Sounds like something I would say. Regardless, it's sound advice.

That's exactly my viewpoint. New PCs with Vista OEM preloaded are a different matter. My point is that I wouldn't rush out and pay £200 or so for a retail box of an OS that as far as I can see has nothing much to offer me over XP Professional SP2 or an up to date Linux distro such as Fedora Core 8 or Ubuntu 7.10.

[Whacker]

With respect, I'm yet to hear anything bad about Vista from anyone who's actually used it

I'll bite. I work for one of the largest fortune 500 companies in the group that oversees IT security, standards and process, and business controls. I was very recently indirectly involved with the team that's evaluating Vista for internal client rollout, and I helped a friend on that team "test drive" the OS for a few days, and I've read several of the reports and recommendations they've produced.

I've never seen anything more bloated or incompatible than Vista. Not only does about 1/3 of our deployed machines not meet the Vista specs, but those ranges of platforms it was tested on barely worked as needed. It used more RAM than our current client platform based on XP SP2 for doing what tasks it could. Half of our applications would not work on it, and will need to be updated (insanely high cost). It crashed much more frequently than our XP clients, which was NOT due to lack of knowledge or bad programming for our in-house applications. My friend and several other testers whom I know are also gamers and have been trying Vista at home, their universal response to my question on this was that they still use XP and will keep using it for quite some time, mostly due to stability and compatability.

Of course I am not at liberty to specifically cite any figures or details due to confidentiality, so people can disregard this as they will. I will state however that my employer will NOT be spending any large sums on Vista or rolling it out anytime in the near or foreseeable future whatsoever.

This is also in regards to an enterprise setting. My and other's experiences that I can account for are all in line, that Vista is heavily bloated and unstable by people who actually understand the OS and are "power users". Normal daily users like Husar will often have different experiences, however I would equate this to someone buying a Ferrari Enzo with some severe mechanical problems, and then driving it like a Honda Civic and claiming that it's perfectly fine.

Cheers all

[Blodrast]

No must-have features? What about AeroGlass?
It's actually true there are none, but once you get used to the new interface, XP starts to look rather boring.

While only half-joking, Husar touched the sweet spot why the people who like Vista, like it: it looks nice.
Sure, there's not just one factor, there's lots of them, but when it comes down to it, this is the one that I heard most consistently brought up by Vista's supporters.

Of course it makes a huge difference as to what everybody expects from their OS to give them (as Whacker well pointed out): if all you ever do is use Office and a browser and a multimedia player, ANY OS will be equally "performant".

One of the reasons for M$'s current near-monopoly is that people seem content to shell out cash every time a new windows version comes up, and they don't seem to see anything wrong with having to buy new hardware just because the OS is new (forget that it doesn't bring anything useful). The fact that you have a richness of hardware resources doesn't mean that the OS is supposed to be a hog...

As long as people are happily coughing up the cash to get no additional features or performance, things will remain as they are now.

Now let me go back to my nice looking, fully customizable, < 10MB window manager, and GET OFF MY LAWN!

[Husar]

It's all money. Money I tell ya.

It usually is, before it was all about money, it was all about pottery and meat.

I think you may be missing the point. The fact is that M$ have always filled up the UI with extra bloat that is simply not needed. Just because an OS GUI looks visually better, doesn't necessarily mean that the OS is better in how it runs programs - which what an OS is supposed to do after all.

So Linux and Mac OS X look exactly like they did 10 years back?
Yeah, i know, Linux can actually be used in console mode and actually has to be used like that in some cases and that's exactly why I don't use it, I'm not a typing whirlwind.

While only half-joking, Husar touched the sweet spot why the people who like Vista, like it: it looks nice.
Sure, there's not just one factor, there's lots of them, but when it comes down to it, this is the one that I heard most consistently brought up by Vista's supporters.

And because it looks better and has those few small improvements on top of that, I don't see why one would choose XP for a new computer over Vista except if compatibility with old stuff is a concern.

Of course it makes a huge difference as to what everybody expects from their OS to give them (as Whacker well pointed out): if all you ever do is use Office and a browser and a multimedia player, ANY OS will be equally "performant".

Yes, and when you lose 3% performance in games I dare say that you will hardly notice it.

[edyzmedieval]

Vista is faster when it comes to games, I can guarantee on that. M2TW works like a charm with Vista.

[caravel]

So Linux and Mac OS X look exactly like they did 10 years back?
Yeah, i know, Linux can actually be used in console mode and actually has to be used like that in some cases and that's exactly why I don't use it, I'm not a typing whirlwind.

Linux looks as good as whichever desktop manager you choose to use, from over the top 3D accelerated effects and eye candy galore with Compiz/Beryl to the simplistic icewm, or if you prefer it, no desktop manager at all and simply use the terminal. You don't need to be a "typing whirlwind", I myself am a useless typist. The bash terminal is much more user friendly than M$ cmd or command terminal.

And because it looks better and has those few small improvements on top of that, I don't see why one would choose XP for a new computer over Vista except if compatibility with old stuff is a concern.

Compatibility with "old stuff" is always a concern. If a company cannot run vital software on vista, they cannot upgrade simple as that. Just because M$ decides to break backwards compatibility doesn't mean that every company should slavishly follow to shell out millions and rush out to upgrade all of it's bespoke systems.

Yes, and when you lose 3% performance in games I dare say that you will hardly notice it.

That's exactly what M$ are banking on. People that won't notice losing "3% of performance" and will be distracted by the revamped cosmetics.

[Whacker]

I have resolved myself to act in a civilized and helpful manner in this forum, that I may contribute to the glorious reign of the Lemur. However, sometimes one has to let go just a bit.

Vista is faster when it comes to games, I can guarantee on that. M2TW works like a charm with Vista.

Your "guarantee" stands in stark contrast to every single test/benchmark I've EVER seen that was conducted in an impartial, objective, and methodical manner. Pro tip: Tom's Hardware and a few of the other "major" hardware sites aren't remotely impartial or objective. Thanks for playing anyway, we have some nice parting gifts for you.

[Blodrast]

So Linux and Mac OS X look exactly like they did 10 years back?
Yeah, i know, Linux can actually be used in console mode and actually has to be used like that in some cases and that's exactly why I don't use it, I'm not a typing whirlwind.

As Caravel pointed out, you have a bazillion window/desktop managers to make it look however you want, from very lightweight to all the bells and whistles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_window_manager

As for the typing whirlwind part, please, this is not the 90's anymore. You have GUI's for everything you're doing, you won't need the command line for 99% of what you'll be doing. For the remainder of 1%, you _might_ need it.

Also, you need to realize one thing: people who use the command line do not do that because there is no other way around it, but because it's FASTER.
Yes, I can load up that GUI, and click on 5 buttons, and it will do something, showing me a nice thermometer/meter bar, and at the end it will make another window that will let me know that the task is finished, OR I can just type one command and achieve the same effect in less time (and most of the time, you don't even need to type the whole command - you can use the history, auto-completion, etc).

Why do you think that the keyboard shortcuts are called shortcuts ?
Because typing something is always gonna be faster than clicking through menus, icons and buttons.

We use the command line because we like it, and because it's faster, not because we _have to_.

For someone with more than 4200 posts here, I don't think you need to worry about typing skills.

Yes, and when you lose 3% performance in games I dare say that you will hardly notice it.

So you find it acceptable to buy a new thing that is actually worse than a previous version ?! But it's okay 'cause it's shinier ?
I'm curious, do you apply the same principle in any other aspect of your life, i.e. with any other purchases ?

I have resolved myself to act in a civilized and helpful manner in this forum, that I may contribute to the glorious reign of the Lemur. However, sometimes one has to let go just a bit.

I know what you're saying, I managed to keep myself from posting in this thread for so long, and I wish I had. But yeah, I know exactly what you're saying...

[caravel]

I have to concur with Blodrast, who has put over the argument better than I could have.

The command line is surprisingly faster than a GUI. I don't claim to be anything like a UNIX/Linux pro myself but when it comes down to it, using a terminal is easier than using the GUI almost every time. If I was to go to an official forum for a given distro for technical assistance with any issue, then the solution is often a cut and paste terminal command. Basically I can study the command and see what the poster is trying to do, and learn from that, or I can take it as read cut and paste it into my terminal and hit enter. This is a hell of a lot easier and faster than trying to to tell a user to: "click here, click there, click that, click the something tab, right click properties, uncheck the something box, click apply now reboot"... etc, etc. Basically you'll only find yourself using the terminal if something needs fixing, configuring or if the X server is broken (rare). Otherwise you'll spend most of your time at the GUI.

So adding to the argument: The terminal isn't used because it's overly technical and makes us feel as if we look clever by knowing seemingly complex commands, it's there because it's faster, more expedient and is much better for user support.

[Husar]

So you find it acceptable to buy a new thing that is actually worse than a previous version ?! But it's okay 'cause it's shinier ?
I'm curious, do you apply the same principle in any other aspect of your life, i.e. with any other purchases ?

Yes, games.
You know, MTW ran slower than STW, yet it was shinier.

[Blodrast]

Yes, games.
You know, MTW ran slower than STW, yet it was shinier.

Nope, comparing apples and oranges here, MTW had new features, improved stability, etc. With Vista it is the other way around over XP, for example.
I personally do not consider MTW to have been worse than STW, which is what I was asking about. If you liked STW better, that's a different story, we weren't talking about _liking_, but about _worse_.

[Whacker]

Real men use the command line!

to Blodrast and Caravel!