Vista Vs XP Pro

gary the great

i got a new laptop with Vista basic but have the chance of changing back to Xp Pro.

I liked Xp and tbh i dont think im mad on Vista (although I havent used it to much yet to be able to pass a proper judgement). The media and other people seem to be saying its brutal. What is the consensus on here?

Should I go back to the tried and Trused XP Pro or stick with Vista?
Also if anyone could point out any got websites with a list of new features/reasons to and for that would help.

Thanks

mathias

It took me a couple of weeks and some searching for drivers but now that everything is up and running I wouldnt change back , it feels nicer to work with and the eye candy is nice , XP is looking old to me now ( still have XP on my laptop.)
About a month ago I would have agreed that Vista was pretty bad , but everyone seems to have got their act together regarding drivers and updates etc. and its fine now ,
You should keep it , its the way of the future after all , your going to have to learn it sooner or later!!

Ginger

If you are using SLI then stay with XP because Vistas support sucks...

Also the graphics drivers arent as mature as XPs. I have had problems with videos mainly de-syncing from video and voice where the video is lagging up to 5 seconds behind the audio. From what I have seen on the web it seems to be how Vista has new objects for rendering as compared to XP.

If you are a developer VS 2003 isnt officially support and 2005 needs to be run as an admin to debug. SQL 2000 is not supported so you have to use SQL 2005 with SP2..

Mainly if there is an issue with the program it will notify you and suggest a resolution

Mountjoy Mugger

Ginger wrote:

If you are using SLI then stay with XP because Vistas support sucks...

I need to clarify this. Is it Vista that doesn't support SLI or is it that nVidia haven't gotten their SLI drivers for Vista sorted?

Ginger

Sorry nVidia .. their have beta drivers out for Vista to support SLI but its ropey

gary the great

Ok thanks for the replies so far.
I know i'll get used to it if I keep using it but I dont know if im bothered putting the effort in at the moment.

I only really use it for Office, internet browsing, videos and music and sometimes the odd low end game like championship manager etc

Maybe i'll just stick with it, a few more opinions would be good

Ginger

You should be fine with Vista then if thats all your requirements are..

Gonzo_Fiend

Set up a Dual Boot and have the best of both worlds.

Mountjoy Mugger

If you are setting up a dual boot, you'll need to install Vista on a separate partition.

Gonzo_Fiend

Mountjoy Mugger wrote:

If you are setting up a dual boot, you'll need to install Vista on a separate partition.

Yes and you'll need to install XP first and then re install Vista. It's fairly straightforward and there are loads guides on the net.

8T8

gary the great wrote:

Ok thanks for the replies so far.
I know i'll get used to it if I keep using it but I dont know if im bothered putting the effort in at the moment.

I only really use it for Office, internet browsing, videos and music and sometimes the odd low end game like championship manager etc

Maybe i'll just stick with it, a few more opinions would be good

For that there is no need to go back to XP if you give Vista a chance I think it will start to grow on you. Ignore what most of the media are saying they are largely jumping on a bandwagon which is easer then actually doing a proper evaluation.

* Video & music is definitely handled better in Vista over XP no contest, better rendering engine, better thumbnail and metadata support, better search, better audio rendering engine.
* Office well that really doesn't make much of a difference whatever your running on.
* Games are okay at the moment in general low end games shouldn't have any trouble the biggest factor are display drivers which NVIDIA & ATI have now gotten to a reasonable decent state.
* Internet well Vista is more secure than XP & in this area with IE7 it runs in a protected sandbox.

gary the great

8T8 wrote:

For that there is no need to go back to XP if you give Vista a chance I think it will start to grow on you. Ignore what most of the media are saying they are largely jumping on a bandwagon which is easer then actually doing a proper evaluation.

* Video & music is definitely handled better in Vista over XP no contest, better rendering engine, better thumbnail and metadata support, better search, better audio rendering engine.
* Office well that really doesn't make much of a difference whatever your running on.
* Games are okay at the moment in general low end games shouldn't have any trouble the biggest factor are display drivers which NVIDIA & ATI have now gotten to a reasonable decent state.
* Internet well Vista is more secure than XP & in this area with IE7 it runs in a protected sandbox.

Cheers thanks for that. Looks like I may stick with VIsta so.
I'll have a mess about with the settings later and make a configuration that i like and see how I get on.

Im reading around the net that it affects performace? What are your experiences of that?
Im running a dual core with 1gb Ram so that should be grand?

Ginger

It will be fine for what you want to do with it with that sort of spec

ethernet

Too bad you have Home Basic -- no Aero. Apply the Windows Classic theme to bring back memories of the old days ...

I'd also recommend a dual-boot. The best of both worlds. If you get a new piece of kit, at least you can use it under XP if, for whatever reason, it won't work under Vista. Or, if one refuses to boot, you could use the other to backup files and repair.

Once you get over UAC prompts, all will be fine.

gary the great

Wouldnt bother with a dual boot as im not the most computer minded person in the world and would probably mess up.

And as my new laptop is a dell vista is built in, so i wouldnt be able to reinstall it without buying it which im not prepared to do!

Capt'n Midnight

You should be able to make the VISTA CD's from the dell program

But if it's vista home you will not be able to downgrade to XP. Thus you would need a separate XP license, and you can't use an OEM one from another PC. So unless you have a retail copy of vista not being used on a PC, you are stuck with VISTA.

If it's Vista business, the license allows a downgrade to XP , but you would have to borrow the CD, and activate over the phone you give them the vista key , they give you an XP one. You can install vista later on.

ublinina2

Whats the difference between FAT 32 and NTFS file formats ?

Capt'n Midnight

ublinina2 wrote:

Whats the difference between FAT 32 and NTFS file formats ?

FAT32 is a flat system, no security, less robust than NTFS, no compression, it is readable/writable with any modern OS ,there are many free utilities to repair problems. Files can't be bigger than 4GB - important if you are making backups.


NTFS has security ONLY when you are in windows, even DOS can read all unencrypted files on it with NTFSDOS, microsoft have not released details on the format, so while it is more robust than FAT32 , it's far more difficult to recover, you can only write to it safely with a working copy of windows ( if windows don't work you can use the recovery console to write/delete ONE file at a time at the command prompt ) Other OS's allow you to write to NTFS, but I'm still not 100% convinced that they are 100% reliable, certainly far far better than it used to be. NTFS allows you to compress individual files, but since you can't compress multimedia files not a lot of use to the average user.

EXT3 is a "Linux" format you can get windows drivers for

Placebo

is there any noticeable performance difference, considering theres more eye candy and i would assume more transition effects, does it cause the machine to load for eg: folders/documents/executables slower?
I noticed this in XP so i have turned off all effects, i dont even use the 3d [ugly blue, silver] theme

8T8

Placebo wrote:

is there any noticeable performance difference, considering theres more eye candy and i would assume more transition effects, does it cause the machine to load for eg: folders/documents/executables slower?
I noticed this in XP so i have turned off all effects, i dont even use the 3d [ugly blue, silver] theme

Vista will only enable such effects if the system is capable as WinSAT it's internal benchmark tool measures the performance of the PC during the install.

The desktop/effects are handled by the GPU not the CPU so as long as the GPU is up to the task their should not be any issues though of course optimally any Direct-X 9 class GPU with 256MB local RAM is the way to go*.

You can turn off Aero in Vista and go back to an implementation of the Windows classic grey look but the desktop is no longer accelerated by the GPU in this case.

* If your GPU does not have 256MB local or less then you are resolution bound with Aero enabled e.g 128MB supports up to 1600x1200 you can of course disable Aero to remove this limitation. Also most integrated GPU's and standalone ones from the past generation or two support accessing system RAM to augment their own pool so they too can do this to enable Aero though this is not the most optimal way and local would be better when working with high resolutions.