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.

[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.

[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]

[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

[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.

[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.

[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"?

[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!