Windows Vista vs Windows XP

I have been running Windows XP pro. for about 5 years now. I am building a
new system and I am considering Windows Vista for a operating system. Are
there advantages to Vista over XP? What is the best version of Vista? Any
advise would be appreciated. Thanx

Post in reply to: Red Dog
Windows Vista was designed for the latest hardware
and would be the best choice for your new computer.
Either Vista Home Premium or Ultimate would be the
preferred versions of Vista for your new computer.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

---------------------------------------------------------------


I have been running Windows XP pro. for about 5 years now. I am building a
new system and I am considering Windows Vista for a operating system. Are
there advantages to Vista over XP? What is the best version of Vista? Any
advise would be appreciated. Thanx

Post in reply to: On the Bridge! (An MVP upgrade)

If you go this route then be sure you get 64 bit Vista. 32 bit won't be
able to use all 4 gigs of RAM, along with other 32 bit limitations. Yes,
all of your old 32 bit apps will work fine.

Post in reply to: Red Dog


Vista does not seem to offer too many purely technical advantages that I can
see except perhaps for you can get a 64 bit version. Unlike XP Pro x64, you
can actually buy Vista 64 bit boxed. Given the OS base footprint of memory,
and you are building, 4GB minimum and leave the extra memory slots open for
4GB more.

The next part of Vista I like is with Mail (Outlook Express is now mail).
Other than a quirk in the keyboard mapping that pops up once and awhile, it
seems to have some kind of spam filtering capabilities. Also nice now that
spell check is part of Mail.

After that it is visual. I do like the glass-aero interface, lots of show,
looks nice.

Being a Premium 64 bit user of Vista, I have not had any issues I can
attribute to being 64 bit. This is good.

Now for the ugly. It is noticeably slower than XP, slower to copy files in
and out on the network, slower to copy large files disk to disk. Just plain
slower and is very much noticeable. It isn`t the hardware either, the newer
Vista machine is 4 processors, each much faster than the XP ones. Drives on
Vista are SATA 150, on XP they are ATA 133. By rights, Vista should be
faster but is plain slow.

There are bugs. After viewing emails newsgroups, some keys on the lower
right of the keyboard don`t display correctly, the question mark is hosed,
quotes go wrong and I have to quit-restart mail to get it to work. Little
bugs like this abound.

Premium should be called Basic. It is missing stuff like the policy editor.
So if you wanted to do something like mount a SMB share from Samba, your
into hurt. I understand Ultimate has this, but I already thought I bought
an OS...

Me, if I had a legal copy of XP Pro 64 bit I would wipe Vista right off this
system right now. I have 8GB, so 64 bit has it`s merits for me. But am not
happy I can`t by XP Pro x64. (Might be able to lift a copy, but no my
style).

Dual boot is a PITA, if it can be done at all with OEM disks. But I haven`t
found a way. But suspect if you buy a full version of the disks you might
be able too. But I have yet to explore a bios feature my system has where I
can select disks. Perhaps this weekend if long overdue SP1 does good.

My other two MS-Windows systems that I have - one is XP MCE and the other XP
Pro. These will remain my main PCs until Vista is fixed. XP MCE and XP Pro
are both more stable, less bugs and run more effectively on the hardware -
period.

If you are loading Vista for a preview look you will not be disappointed.
But ready for production in business it is not. And it certainly isn`t for
everybody.

Red Dog wrote:

If you wanna get the OH?, (Used to be WOW!), then get Vista Premium, Or
Ultimate. I have Ultimate, (Full ver), and like it. Have not had any big
problems with it. I clean installed and dual boot with XP, but rarely
boot to XP anymore I run it on a 3.0gb HT Intel, 320gb HD and started
with 1gb mem, which was ok, but upgraded to 2gb mem and it does well
with that. I have the crappy 915 chip set, so had to add a vid card to
get the "WOW".

Cheers

Post in reply to: On the Bridge! (An MVP upgrade)

64 bit driver support is vastly improved from a year ago. Even my 10 year
old HP LaserJet 4+ has a 64 bit driver. Lack of 64 bit Adobe Flash is not
an issue because 32 bit IE runs fine (and Firefox and others), along with
all existing 32 bit plugins. Besides, I normally disable Flash anyways - I
don't need animated ads on every friggin web page I go to. I only enable
it when absolutely necessary.

The future is here. Get 64 bit Vista now. Unless you have some ancient
parallel port scanner or something that has no driver (and likely has no 32
bit Vista driver either), then 64 bit is the way to go on Core 2 Duo and
Quad based systems. This Core 2 Quad system I have can take 8 GB RAM!
How am I going to use that with 32 bit Vista (or 32 bit anything for that
matter)?

Post in reply to: Canuck57

Neither was XP in 2002. OS transitions take time. Everyone seems to
forget this because the 98/2000 to XP transition was so long ago. Everyone
forgets how XP was called "bloated, slow, nothing but 2000 with an ugly new
theme, slow, no drivers available, unbearably slow on my 4 year old computer
that ran 98 REALLY FAST, needs an absurd amount of hardware like a P4 2 GHz
with 512 megs RAM" etc., etc.

Now - 6 years later! - XP is The Greatest OS Ever and Vista is "bloated,
slow, nothing but XP with an ugly new theme, slow, no drivers available,
unbearably slow on my 4 year old computer that ran XP REALLY FAST, needs an
absurd amount of hardware like a Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz with 2 GB RAM" etc.,
etc.

Hell, the EXACT SAME CRAP was said about Windows 95 - it needed a Pentium
100 and 8 megs RAM to be fast when everyone was running 386/486s with 2
megs! OMG!

It's called progress, folks. Lather, rinse, repeat. In another 18 months
this will all be forgotten.

If you are building a new PC with Vista in mind then I would strongly
suggest that you take your parts list and head over to the Vista
Hardware Compatibility site before making any purchases
(https://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/). There you can find out whether or
not the drivers you will need are available for the various components
you are considering.

I'm in agreement with those suggesting a 64-bit version of Vista, but
you will definitely want to check that drivers are available if you
intend on recycling older components or peripherals in your new system
(anyone want to buy an old Canon flatbed scanner, works fine with Vista
x86, but forget about using it with x64).


--
mkprilliman

- Core 2 Quad Q6600 (O.C. to 2.8 Ghz)
- MSI P6N Diamond
- Onboard Creative X-Fi 7.1
- 4 x 1 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800
- 2 x MSI NX8600GTS (256 MB)
- 150 GB WD Raptor (system drive)
- 2 x 500 GB Barracudas (RAID 0)
- 1 x Dell 2407WFP surrounded by 2 x Dell 2001FPs
- Logitech Z-5500http://blog.prilliman.com

PotsOn wrote:


Hey you crazy old man, give it up ok? They're looking for you at that
nut house you escaped from.
Go back, you need help you raving moron lunatic idiot...LOL!
Frank

Go w/ a dual core and Vista and your set!

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