Vista or XP?

sinkingfish

I've just bought a new laptop that comes pre installed with vista home premium. I'm torn between keeping vista or doing a fresh xp install.

Anyone got any advice? Is vista that rubbish?

Thomas_S_Hunterson

XP will run faster, work better, have better compatibility, is more functional etc etc

It might not look as polished, but at the end of the day, you want a computer, not a painting

r3nu4l

On the other hand, how long will it be before MS stop supporting XP? Also most new applications (and games) will soon be written with Vista in mind and XP support as a secondary aspect.

On the whole, right now, a successful install of XP would not make much of a difference to you but you may well find yourself re-installing Vista in 12 months time.

Also, bear in mind that the more times you install, uninstall and re-install operating systems the more potential there is for something to go wrong

mathie

XP crashes a lot more.
M

Boggles

1

Boggles

r3nu4l wrote:

On the other hand, how long will it be before MS stop supporting XP? Also most new applications (and games) will soon be written with Vista in mind and XP support as a secondary aspect.

On the whole, right now, a successful install of XP would not make much of a difference to you but you may well find yourself re-installing Vista in 12 months time.

Also, bear in mind that the more times you install, uninstall and re-install operating systems the more potential there is for something to go wrong

All MS Os's should be reinstalled every 12 months, As long as you back up your pictures and documents, what could go wrong?

OP install Fresh copy of XP and leave Vista until it becomes usable.

r3nu4l

Boggles wrote:

As long as you back up your pictures and documents, what could go wrong?

You got the answer in that sentance The more times you do something the greater chance you get sloppy and miss something or a technical error occurs and you lose what you thought was backed up. Of course if the OP is comfortable doing an XP install and subsequent Vista re-install then barring any technical issues there shouldn't be a problem.

Either way the OP is getting plenty of advice.

grimm2005

some of the driver support for vista is horribly shoddy. Theres still no proper drivers for the geforce go 7900GS. so i'd say stick with XP till good vista exclusive stuff comes around or at least until driver support has reached an acceptable level

pts

I've used vista since RC1, and recently purchased Vista Home Premium. In the beginning there were problems getting drivers etc, but Home Premium which I have installed now runs very smoothly for me.
If you have a laptop with good hardware and no applications which are not yet compatible with Vista that you need I would recommend keeping Vista.

sinkingfish

wow, a lot to think about

we'll I'm expecting my laptop on Monday and i think I'll install XP maybe for the first 6 months or so. Here's another one, if I install a 32bit ver of XP then will it use the dual core straight off the bat or will there be some fiddling? I'm going to be dual booting with ubuntu and I've read that you have tp specify to ubuntu to use the second core.

is_that_so

r3nu4l wrote:

On the other hand, how long will it be before MS stop supporting XP? Also most new applications (and games) will soon be written with Vista in mind and XP support as a secondary aspect.

On the whole, right now, a successful install of XP would not make much of a difference to you but you may well find yourself re-installing Vista in 12 months time.

Also, bear in mind that the more times you install, uninstall and re-install operating systems the more potential there is for something to go wrong

XP will be supported until 2014. Vista will be forced on us from the end of January next.
That said now that I have risked Vista Business and it has not caused me any grief in the few weeks I have had it installed. But the upgrade came from Dell complete with all the required drivers and anything else that needed to be tweaked.
My own 2c is , if you don't feel the need or curiosity to move to a new systems until you have to, then XP is fine. Apart from lower memory requirements there is the familiarity of the GUI and the fact that there are drivers for pretty much anything you want to plug into XP.

alan4cult

I'd buy a decent Vista machine with a good spec, then downgrade to Windows XP and use it for games after installing a better graphics guard. I don't want a resource hogging os but XP will never need all the resources a Vista machine comes with.

Saruman

Just so you know, you can legally downgrade to XP, well format and put on XP using an existing license and then call up when activating giving you vista key and tell them you are downgrading to xp as you have stuff that does not work with vista yet.

I have come across lots of stuff that does not work with vista, even your bog standard brand new HP laser printers.
You go online and select vista in the drivers list and you get an apology
You can then put back on vista at a later date... its all on the microsoft website.

Jonathan

Saruman wrote:

Just so you know, you can legally downgrade to XP, well format and put on XP using an existing license and then call up when activating giving you vista key and tell them you are downgrading to xp as you have stuff that does not work with vista yet.

Is this only for retail versions or oem too?
What versions entitle you to to what version of xp?
Is it only Vista business/Ultimate that can downgrade to xp pro?

suppafly

Can anyone post up the programs(at least the major ones) that don't work in Vista yet. Would be handy to know instead installing and then finding out later

BopNiblets

I think pretty much everything will work in Vista except for a few firewalls, the non-MS software I've installed in Vista (Home Premium) that do work:
Firefox, Winamp, AVG Free, IrfanView, Open Office 2.2, Media Player Classic (with Real & Quicktime Alternatives), µTorrent, Google Talk, Multitext, Daemon Tools, Speedfan, Logitech Setpoint, ATI Catalyst Control Centre (and ATI driver), Strokeit, InfraRecorder, Audacity, AutoGK.

astrofool

If it comes with Vista, then there's gonna be no driver problems. Not worth it to install XP. Been using Vista on an Inspiron 6000 for a few months here without a problem, performance similar to XP as well.

311

I've vista home premium three weeks now ,I've installed all sorts of utilities games and media programs.

Thanks to a few tips here on boards ,opening programs with XP compatibility and administrator . Everything is fine.

I've actually thrown a lot more stuff at vista ,than I would have on my last machine. I suppose out of pure curiousity and it doesn't seem to lag like XP does ,when you install loads of stuff.

I'd recommend it ,although I still haven't got the hang of the filing structure within windows itself. At a glance the structures look the same ,but windows seems to organize them differently .

I think it's grand.

Voipjunkie

dual boot and then see which one you use the most it also means that you have xp available if you come across anything that will not run on vista


On those telling you vista is so bad my guess is that most of them have not used it or used early beta versions or are just apple/linux fanboys.

Capt'n Midnight

clarification

you can downgrade BUSINESS vista to XP PRO

you can't downgrade HOME

LoLth

A fairly decent list of software status with vista:
http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List

On a side note: SQL server 2000 wont install on vista.

I am not an apple fanboy. I work as sys support for an office of nearly 200. I recently set up a vista pc for one of our users (why god? why!!!!).

My impressions: Too clumsy. interface , and this may just be a familiarity issue , is not imho user friendly. The 3d desktop etc is completely unnecessary, the constant confirmation requests followed by an "are you sure" are annoying. I didnt notice any significant improvement in speed over an xp installation on a slightly lower specced laptop. Network discovery was a joke, it refused to conenct to the wireless network four reboots in a row then when it finally allowed me to set the access key it wouldnt accept it the first two times (and I was very careful typing it in so it wasnt a typo).

Personally, I'm sticking with XP for the next year at least. Vista needs to settle down a bit before I decide to make the switch on my home PC.

on a side note: anyone remember these exact same arguments over the 2k --> XP migration ? (I'll ignore ME for obvious reasons) and for 98--> 2k ? (actually I cant remember as much discussion over the 3.1 to 95/98 migration but we didnt really have as much internet access then so that would probably explain teh silence ).

astrofool

astrofool wrote:

If it comes with Vista, then there's gonna be no driver problems. Not worth it to install XP. Been using Vista on an Inspiron 6000 for a few months here without a problem, performance similar to XP as well.

I've got a 6000 too with 1.5GB RAM and I found it much slower than XP.