Windows XP or Vista?

XP For Me!

I'm definitely sticking to XP! It's been rock solid now for a few years and does exactly what I want, when I want and how I want. Vista is just too heavy of an operating system and is definitely not for me or for the large number of computers that I run! It seems that Microsoft did something right, even if it is after several service packs, XP still works and works well. The Vista fiasco is just something that will die the slow death as Millennium!

Dont forget the gamers!

I have a few thoughts on Vista so I will break it down and separate my observations. But, the hardware I have that came with Vista is an Alienware Core Duo 2.66GHz, 3 GB 800MHZ DDR2 RAM, 500 GB Raid 0 (2 250 GB hdds), and an NVIdia 8800GT (512 MB) video card. In a nutshell, Vista overkill specs.

Point 1. In the article it mentioned a lack of Anti-Virus support in the OS still. Well good. Because I dont want Microsoft having to put premium firewall, malware protection, and anti-virus software as part of their OS security. I want to buy a 3rd party solution on my own. I dont need the OS going from $299 to $499 because you got all this in it. And also, imagine the lawsuits from CA, Symantec and every other group with an anti-trust suit.

Point 2. I ran Vista for 6 monhts before downgrading to XP SP2. And to see improvement in performance is unacceptable but true. My biggest problems revolved around reduced user rights through the "kill switch" which I am glad to hear that SP1 will remove. But also, running older programs that needed DirectX9 for 3d graphics and video (games mostly) was a deal killer. It couldnt be done.

DirectX 10 had all kinds of issues with VIsta running the older items despite assurances of backward compatability. And gamers make a large portion of PC sales. Probably a majority. It isnt necessarily on Microsoft to patch things so no matter what game you have it runs. The game manufacturers are actually the ones to make patches to run the old games on the latest drivers. Good luck finding patches for most all the games out there to run on Vista. If it doesnt inheritantly run well, there are no patches or support for it really. You are out of luck. Now the business enterprise group makes the majority of OS sale use, sure. But your re-sellers and retail outlets like Circuit City service the every day user. And most are gamers. Some are home users, emailers, web browsers, sure. But the ratio of people who use a PC 80% of the time or more for gaming are buying the PCs from resellers and retail outlets at a ratio of 5:1 I bet.

And Vista isnt playing so well with the vast library of software and hardware peripherals that gamers have had for years. They are staying on XP as long as they can because of the stability and smoothness.

Point 3. This ties into gaming too. We want for our games the max of sytstem resources. But when Vista pulls a percentage of your system RAM to boost the video RAM (no matter what the card has native) to run its prescious "Aero" desktop, that takes away from my frame rate for games. And that I cant turn that off, or even if I dont run Vista in Aero, and yet system RAM is still being shared..that is unacceptable.

Windows Vista and Hotmail

Help!

I just got an HP with Vista, ir runs great but I cannot log into Hotmail or MSN from it. I've already spent about 15 hours with tech support from HP, my ISP and about 15 minutes with Microsoft, but nobody can help me. I turned off the firewall from Norton Antivirus and did many different thigs, but I cannot even get to my husband's ISP e-mail (att yahoo). Does anybody have any ideas, other than taking the computer back to the store and getting a refund???

No advantage to Vista

I think Microsoft's problem is they want everyone to upgrade to the newest OS without considering that anything new "must" perform better than what it is replacing. From what I've seen and heard Vista is concentrated on the "cool factor" instead of "dependability".

MS needs to stop trying for customers to upgrade their present computers. I will undoubtedly go to Vista, but only when I replace a computer. When I do I had better not encounter problems, if I do I will definitely downgrade to XP.

I will never need "cool", I will always need "dependable".

Windows XP or Vista?

You have it right, Scot.

Two weeks ago, I bought an Intel Core 2 Quad with 3GB RAM, a big hard drive and a Nvidia 8600 video card Vista machine. It replaced my 2.8 Ghz P4, 2GB RAM, ATI video card XP machine. I find that Vista runs ok on the new machine until I try copying files. That's when I realize that what people have written is true -- it's dog-tired slow. On top of that, UAC is going to drive me nuts (am I sure? Yes, for Pete's sake, YES!). Yet I don't want to turn off the increased(?) security. My options are to move back down to XP or over to Ubuntu. I think I'll move to XP with a VMWare virtual machine running Ubuntu. On the new machine, that combination should fly! I'm not happy to say this, but Vista is the 2007 version of Windows ME. I'll just have wait to see whether the next version has compelling features and decent speed.

XP for me

I agree. I have tried to run Vista on my desktop, which is admittedly old. I upgraded my video card, upgraded my memory, and Vista was a slow bloated mess. Thank goodness I set it up to dual boot, so I still have XP. Hearing that XP SP 3 is faster than XP SP 2 only makes me inclined to keep XP for as long as I can.

Perhaps if I used Vista on a computer built from the ground up to support it my experience may have been different. However, since XP and my old computer still work perfectly well, why not stick with it?