XP or Vista

papu

i actually laugh at the people who just complain about something , rather than investigating it further , out of the box the Explorer isn't as User friendly as I'd like , but after spending about 5 minutes , adjusting the left hand panel , getting the folders i use every very often to the favourites , and creating keyboard shortcuts for the folders i'm usually always in.

the fact that the explorer address bar now saves folders i recently visit saves me a bunch of time..

If you don't bother customizing anything of course it will take longer than a O's you have honed for the past 7years...

Myxomatosis

papu wrote: »

If you don't bother customizing anything of course it will take longer than a O's you have honed for the past 7years...

That's precisely the problem with Explorer in Vista, you can't customize it. Sure you can show / hide the folder view, detail pane and preview pane, drag a folder into favorites but that's it.

You can't get rid of that pointless space hogging purple bar, you cannot add buttons like "Up", "Copy to", "Move to", "Map Drive" etc etc etc.

papu

Myxomatosis wrote: »

That's precisely the problem with Explorer in Vista, you can't customize it. Sure you can show / hide the folder view, detail pane and preview pane, drag a folder into favorites but that's it.

You can't get rid of that pointless space hogging purple bar, you cannot add buttons like "Up", "Copy to", "Move to", "Map Drive" etc etc etc.

my explorer has May Drive , Up is not needed because of the left Folder pane which lets you expand and open Folders and also there is the back and forward buttons. right drag to copy/move to , or just add shortcuts to your "right click send to"

jonny72

Sure you can get a dual core pc with 2 gigs and ram and vista..

How much is that? 250? 300? more?

Or you can just go on ebay and get a 2.8 ghz dell pc with 512 ram with xp already on it for 80 .. 90 euros..

Shiny

....or while your at it just get a PIII PC with windows 98 for free on adverts....

Blazer

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Biggest problem is that people buy the cheapest Celeron laptop PC World and the likes sell, with the minimum of ram and than wonder why it struggles with Vista. Most people skimp while buying a pc, i see it regularly. They don't look for reliability or power when buying a pc, (like people do while choosing a car) they choose the very least they can get away with. I get far more use out of my pc than my car therefore I don't mind spending for a decent setup I can trust.

I'd blame Microsoft for making the minimum requirements for Vista too low, its not Vista. I've been using Vista 64bit for ages and have no issues with it, it just needs good hardware.

@ OP: go with Xp, if its a budget pc then it'll struggle with Vista

+1 .
Vista 64bit is a stable Os and no problem with games.
Never had a crash since I left poxy nvidia.

sdanseo

Neesa wrote: »

March 2007 I thought "Sure, might as well get into this Vista thing" for the same reason of it becoming the main OS for Windows. I hate Vista. I do. For so many reasons. At the start of the year I had headache after headache with hardware, nothing was compatible with Vista. This may have changed by now, I don't know.

If you want a hassle-free computing experience go with XP. I'm not saying it's perfect but I reckon it's the closest Gates has ever got. I have a laptop that runs XP and a PC with Vista. I cannot believe the amount of hassle the PC is and I probably couldn't give the topic justice with a Boards rant. Despite the PC being three years younger than the Laptop.

Vista crashes. A lot. It freezes to the point where your only option is to crash it manually by turning off the modem. Programms crash whilst opening. This is something I have never, ever experienced before. You open Word and while it's in the process of opening it will say "not responding".

There are other annoyances with the set-up that I find inferior to XP but how anoying these would be to your mother depend on what she's going to be using the computer for. If she just wants the computer for leisure, browsing the internet and that then my advice would be go for XP and be the envy of people who bought Vista just because it's newer. While their "newer" computers are crashing non-stop your mom will be getting on with whatever it is she wants to do.

Just my 2c.

Complete truth.

Vista is a series of unnessecary changes in file structure that MS have somehow managed to make complicated. It hangs, crashes and I had been getting the crash-on-startup bug as mentioned above. It is the single most annoying operating system ever, the introduction of an expert mode which doesn't warn you about anything and fúcking everything would be no harm at all. Xp was absolutely perfect, with a little sprucing up and a rename to Vista, everyone would have been happy. But no, MS had to try and make something user friendly and of course, as usual achieve the COMPLE OPPOSITE.

For example as said above, the file structure has been completely overhauled. This was NOT NEEDED. Everyone was used to the old, there was no explicable reason on God's earth why it should be changed that I can think of. But ah sure "we'll do it anyway to be different".

Pfffffft.

Linux is not a viable alternative to me as the styles I've tried I simply don't like - they lack the proffessionalism (yes I know, I said it) that windows implies regardless of whether or not its an hallucination. With windows at least if I've a problem (rare after 10 years using the thing), F1 usually gets the answer. Eventually.

I put Vista on this machine 10 days ago. I put XP back on literally two hours ago.

I've made my point. NEVER again, until I have to.

Just my own dhá phingin.