Windows Vista vs Windows XP

[Husar]

I personally do not consider MTW to have been worse than STW, which is what I was asking about.

I personally do not consider Vista to be worse than XP either, for me it runs stable, has more features and looks better. Before I just mentioned that it may be slower, but my point was that slower does not necessarily equal worse.
I'm sorry if it doesn't work for someone but I am not going to run around screaming that it crashes when it doesn't for me.
When a game or demo crashes it also seems to handle that better than XP in my experience. Maybe I magically acquired a fixed version or it's the tradeoff for me having no girlfriend, but my experience with Vista is that it's better than XP except for the compatibility.

[sapi]

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

Well, that does conflict with what I've seen, both personally and on other forums; but I'd expect that for an enterprise environment

From a consumer standpoint, the only main problem I have with vista is that it's a fair bit slower in some games (the only ones I've really noticed it in are those based on the source engine, but it's a significant hit there).

Oh, and IIS7. If you think that the office 2007 interface was a mistake, take one look at that, and vomit. Better yet, try using it

Otherwise, vista is simply a better OS, imho. It's more stable, and I've yet to find a program that won't run (not even using compatibility mode). Note, this is with consumer software, not business software, which, as you say, is a whole different beast.

Oh, and the search feature is a godsend. For that alone, I won't go back to XP. I'm very much a text-based person, as with the rest of you command line freaks; and being able to click start, type 'winw', 'indes', 'phot' etc and hit enter to launch something is fantastic. It even works with document names

Every application should be like that.

[Kekvit Irae]

If I had partitioning software, I'd dump Vista faster than an ex with syphilis and dual-boot to XP.

[sapi]

If I had partitioning software, I'd dump Vista faster than an ex with syphilis and dual-boot to XP.

foolish, but...

[edyzmedieval]

Otherwise, vista is simply a better OS, imho. It's more stable, and I've yet to find a program that won't run (not even using compatibility mode). Note, this is with consumer software, not business software, which, as you say, is a whole different beast.

MTW doesn't work at all with Vista, even with compatibility mode. STW works though.

[sapi]

MTW doesn't work at all with Vista, even with compatibility mode. STW works though.

You sure that's the OS, and not the graphics card?

I seem to recall a problem with the geforce 8 series cards and MTW even under XP...

[caravel]

Otherwise, vista is simply a better OS, imho. It's more stable, and I've yet to find a program that won't run (not even using compatibility mode).

I've always found XP and 2K to be very stable in general. In what way is Vista "more stable"?

[Husar]

I've always found XP and 2K to be very stable in general. In what way is Vista "more stable"?

That's true, but more stable in my experience when a game crashes, I've had games and demos crash in XP and then the Task Manager wouldn't come up, the game window would be on top omitting the Task Manager and especially with background programs running it would be hard to close the game without restarting the whole Pc, at least for me. In Vista I do not recall that happening, when you press Ctrl+Alt+Del Vista opens a completely new screen that allows you to lock the PC, change the user etc and also to call up the Task Manager which, IIRC, has never been behind another program so far and the whole process seems "cleaner" to me than pressing the hardware reset button to restart the whole PC.

It's not just that, I think Vista overall and that includes visuals and other things like this, makes a more polished impression on me so far. You may be entirely right that it's not that polished underneath, but at least for me that doesn't shine through.

And in the end we all just want to be happy,don't we?

[caravel]

That's true, but more stable in my experience when a game crashes, I've had games and demos crash in XP and then the Task Manager wouldn't come up, the game window would be on top omitting the Task Manager and especially with background programs running it would be hard to close the game without restarting the whole Pc, at least for me.

In NT/2K/XP the Task Manager should always appear on top, the only reason why it wouldn't is if you've unchecked the "Always On Top" option which is if I may add very unwise as it causes exactly the problem you're referring to.

In Vista I do not recall that happening, when you press Ctrl+Alt+Del Vista opens a completely new screen that allows you to lock the PC, change the user etc and also to call up the Task Manager which, IIRC, has never been behind another program so far and the whole process seems "cleaner" to me than pressing the hardware reset button to restart the whole PC.

The same is true for XP and 2K - just disable the welcome screen and by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL you will bring up the same screen that allows you to carry out exactly the actions you've mentioned above.

This is a screenshot of the dialogue box from the screen you mentioned. It hasn't actually changed at all since NT4 except cosmetically:
http://www.md.chalmers.se/Support/Ho...e-passwd-3.jpg

This is the same thing in 2K:
http://www.smc.edu/password/password...y-screen-3.gif

And in XP:
http://www.wfu.edu/is/thinkpad/guide...ltdelsmall.jpg

The Vista version is quite a departure from those visually, but if you disable the themes and revert to the classic appearance it may in some way resemble those above. Either way, underneath the gloss it's the same thing, with the same functionality.

It's not just that, I think Vista overall and that includes visuals and other things like this, makes a more polished impression on me so far. You may be entirely right that it's not that polished underneath, but at least for me that doesn't shine through.

And in the end we all just want to be happy,don't we?

So overall you've admitted that you're mainly impressed by the visuals and Vista gives you the "impression" of being more stable, mainly because it appears more polished (the themes service) and because CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't open only the task manager by default but instead goes to a "completely new screen" (which first appeared in Windows NT and has also been in 2000, XP and Server 2003)? Even if this were a new feature of some sort, I still wouldn't view it as any kind of indication of "improved stability" in the NT family.

[Blodrast]

Oh, and the search feature is a godsend. For that alone, I won't go back to XP. I'm very much a text-based person, as with the rest of you command line freaks; and being able to click start, type 'winw', 'indes', 'phot' etc and hit enter to launch something is fantastic. It even works with document names

Every application should be like that.

You do know that us command line freaks () had something like that for, oh, I dunno, some 20 years now, in *nix shells - it's called auto-completion.
No malice intended, but I do find it ironic that you prefer Vista for offering exactly what a lot of the other supporters blame *nix for, and want to run away from: using the command line!

(Husar, confess now, are you secretly using that feature ? 'cause if you are, you know, it's almost like you're using *nix, and have given in to the dark side... )

Real men use the command line!

to Blodrast and Caravel!

Aye, cheers to the command line freaks!

[Husar]

In NT/2K/XP the Task Manager should always appear on top, the only reason why it wouldn't is if you've unchecked the "Always On Top" option which is if I may add very unwise as it causes exactly the problem you're referring to.

I've never unchecked any box, it usually did appear on top but some games or demos caused it to be in the background or flicker weirdly nonetheless, something to do with the games forcing themselves into the foreground I guess(Gothic 2 for example, you cannot even alt-tab out of that, it will come right up again ). It didn't happen that often, but it did happen.

The same is true for XP and 2K - just disable the welcome screen and by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL you will bring up the same screen that allows you to carry out exactly the actions you've mentioned above.

Ah, yeah, I've seen that screen before, think it's default in NT but in XP I always got the Task Manager, probably because I never disabled the welcome screen, had only one user so it never showed anyway(yesyes, I know, very dangerous, gives me a thrill everytime ).

So overall you've admitted that you're mainly impressed by the visuals and Vista gives you the "impression" of being more stable, mainly because it appears more polished (the themes service) and because CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't open only the task manager by default but instead goes to a "completely new screen" (which first appeared in Windows NT and has also been in 2000, XP and Server 2003)? Even if this were a new feature of some sort, I still wouldn't view it as any kind of indication of "improved stability" in the NT family.

Well, you're right, the screen isn't new, I just forgot about seeing it before. Oh and I like graphics, I can't help it, I installed RTW again some days ago and after M2TW I couldn't help but think that RTW looks completely boring, especially the terrain, once I'm spoiled graphically I have a hard time going back with a few exceptions.
Main reason I use Vista is because I got it for free anyway, never made a secret out of that, I never ever bought an OS, got several from my dad and now I get them from MSDNAA.
So while the improvements may be minor I still don't see why I should avoid Vista as long as it runs fine and I like it and it makes me happy.
For the same reason I do not see why a gamer similar to me would choose XP over Vista with a new PC unless she/he wants to play certain old games that may not run in Vista.
I wouldn't even be surprised if Businesses used Win 2k, though I avoided that when I saw all those Win 2k patches for games after the release of 2k, didn't really have the best compatibility either.

(Husar, confess now, are you secretly using that feature ? 'cause if you are, you know, it's almost like you're using *nix, and have given in to the dark side... )

Yes, sometimes I do, it just proves that Vista is about as good as whatever the heck you're talking about.

[sapi]

I've always found XP and 2K to be very stable in general. In what way is Vista "more stable"?

I just find it useful to have it cleanly recover from driver crashes within a session, for example. Instead of receiving a BSOD or other error screen, vista will simply do a clean restart of the driver, and a few seconds later you can keep using it as if there was no problem at all, thanks to the new (and admittedly irritating for developers) driver model.

You do know that us command line freaks () had something like that for, oh, I dunno, some 20 years now, in *nix shells - it's called auto-completion.
No malice intended, but I do find it ironic that you prefer Vista for offering exactly what a lot of the other supporters blame *nix for, and want to run away from: using the command line!

If *nix had decent support for games, I'd run it

In NT/2K/XP the Task Manager should always appear on top, the only reason why it wouldn't is if you've unchecked the "Always On Top" option which is if I may add very unwise as it causes exactly the problem you're referring to.

Both the XP and Vista task managers have a lot of problems with popping up on top of fullscreen games; indeed one of the main irritations that I have with Vista is that, while it will pull you out to a different desktop for the ctrl+alt+del menu screen, it'll dump you back to the active one when using the task manager. Things would be a lot easier for the user (if a lot harder to code) if it ran in a isolated desktop as well.

[edyzmedieval]

You sure that's the OS, and not the graphics card?

I seem to recall a problem with the geforce 8 series cards and MTW even under XP...

I have a nVIDIA 7900GS. That isn't the GeForce 8, is it?

[caravel]

I have a nVIDIA 7900GS. That isn't the GeForce 8, is it?

No, that's the 7xxx series.

[Lemur]

Here's an interesting statistic: Microsoft claims that Vista is being pirated at half the rate of Windows XP. MSoft is spinning this as evidence that their validation scheme is working as intended.

Seeing as Vista is readily available for illegal download from the usual suspects, I think this means pirates don't much want Vista. But that's just my take.

[Mouzafphaerre]

.

MSoft is spinning this as evidence that their validation scheme is working as intended.

Seeing as Vista is readily available for illegal download from the usual suspects, I think this means pirates don't much want Vista. But that's just my take.

Mine too!
.

[sapi]

Here's an interesting statistic: Microsoft claims that Vista is being pirated at half the rate of Windows XP. MSoft is spinning this as evidence that their validation scheme is working as intended.

Seeing as Vista is readily available for illegal download from the usual suspects, I think this means pirates don't much want Vista. But that's just my take.

Yep, pirate copies of Vista are easier to get and use than those of XP (thanks to the volume licensing loophole actually working with WGA), so I don't think you can read that statistic any other way

[Xiahou]

If *nix had decent support for games, I'd run it

Heard of Wine?

Anything rated "Platinum" or "Gold" should run well under Linux...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Platinum - Applications which install and run flawlessly on an out-of-the-box Wine installation
Gold - Applications that work flawlessly with some special configuration

[sapi]

Last I heard Wine still had serious problems running modern directx applications (performance, not compatibility, wise)?

[Xiahou]

Last I heard Wine still had serious problems running modern directx applications (performance, not compatibility, wise)?

Oh it's definitely not perfect by a long shot. But apps that work under Wine generally work well. All you can do is search the appDB and see what experience others have had running a game. Obviously it's not likely to ever support games designed for Windows as well as Windows itself, but it's nice to know that if I ever make the switch, I won't have to give up all my Windows games.

[caravel]

Cedega is better for running games than Wine. TW games don't run too well however. I think RTW and M2TW can be got to a barely working state in some cases but STW/MTW don't seem to work at all.

[sapi]

I wonder how well virtualisation would work?

I know VMware server (free) can run using unix as a host OS, and the reports I've read on that sort of software indicates that the performance hit isn't really that bad (maybe ~10%).

Unfortunately, unless I'm mistaken (I'll check), they were only testing desktop performance, so didn't stress the graphics subsystem. Do any of you folks know what the overhead on 3d would be with virtualisation?

Else I might have to have a look into whether you can simultaneously have an image bootable and virtualise-able (to save space and simplify things, so that I could virtualise windows from *nix using the same install as was bootable on its own).

Any ideas, or is this off-topic rant getting a bit boring?

[Lemur]

I just found out that PC Magazine's Vista Death Watch is its most popular column. Dissent within the ranks, eh?

Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP because Vista has simply not shown any life in the market. We have to begin to ask ourselves if we are really looking at Windows Me/2007, destined to be a disdained flop. By all estimates the number of Vista installations hovers around the number of Macs in use.

How did this happen? And what’s going to happen next? Does Microsoft have a Plan B?

[Xiahou]

Great article, Lemur. I think he's really nailed it- especially the suggested fixes.

I also liked his article on Shrink-Wrap Software vs. Hosted Service

[caravel]

The biggest factor is the cost, and the number of variants, at the end of the day people want an OS that works and they want to pay something reasonable for it, i.e. less than £90.00. The cost of Vista is nothing short of daylight robbery and it has nothing much to offer over XP apart from DirectX 10 and some fancy eye candy. It clearly isn't what Longhorn was supposed to be. With Vista sales going they way they are it looks increasingly feasible that DX10 may somehow make it into XP possibly as part of SP3.

[Caius]

I'd prefer Win XP rather than other, there is no need of Vista. Until they force me.

But seriously, I miss Win98. It was different all the way.

[Bijo]

Nice articles, but sounds like nothing new to me. I don't think DX10 will become a part of SP3, though, even though I'd like it (even if I don't play games). Vista must perish and XP must continue. Instead of making new OSs that don't offer much important new functionality, they should upgrade XP as much as possible and make it more ultimate. If there's to be a next Windows OS, it'll have to be something TRULY significant. Vista is not it. Maybe that one I heard about -- Windows 7 or something -- will be the bomb.

[caravel]

I don't think DX10 will become a part of SP3, though, even though I'd like it (even if I don't play games).

If Vista carries on selling like it has been then M$ will have to offer DX10 to XP users because the gaming industry is not interested in M$'s selfish goal of forcing gamers on to Vista, they want to sell games.

[sapi]

If Vista carries on selling like it has been then M$ will have to offer DX10 to XP users because the gaming industry is not interested in M$'s selfish goal of forcing gamers on to Vista, they want to sell games.

If what they've been saying about the architecture is correct that shouldn't be possible

[Lemur]

Everybody raise your hand if you think Microsoft is being completely honest about it.