Vista over XP?

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by sparkymachine, Jan 11, 2008.

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  1. sparkymachine

    sparkymachine Registered Member

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    Just a question I wanted to ask here as to whether it is worth upgrading or even wanting Vista.

    From what I've seen and read so far, if I bought a new PC I would want XP on it as Vista appears to have little if no particular benefits over XP apart from it looks nice.

    I can't find a single thing about Vista I would need (or want) over and above what XP provides and it seems 80% of the problems in current forums are Vista related.
     
  2. polyglory

    polyglory Registered Member

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    I myself have XP Pro and I cannot see any reason for change, then I am only a bog standard user:D

    I shall remain with XP until I have to change:rolleyes:
     
  3. john3347

    john3347 Registered Member

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    I have a couple of XP Pro machines and a Vista Home Premium machine. The Vista machine works much better than one I used for a while a few months ago (that machine has been up-graded to XP Pro because Vista was even less stable then than now), but in my opinion, XP is a significantly better and smoother operating system at this point than Vista and Windows 2000 is significantly better than XP. I use Windows Classic settings with XP and Vista so I have absolutely no use for the childish "eye candy" that seems to be the feature that people who like Vista like. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
     
  4. TonyW

    TonyW Registered Member

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    Microsoft have been releasing figures of how well Vista has sold, but what they don't tell you is how many people have regraded to XP. All new machines come with Vista, and unless you've got a copy of XP, you're stuck with it.

    Someone said to me yesterday they think there should be a choice. He likened it to buying a particular brand of car, but being able to choose which colour you want it in.
     
  5. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Some shops do give you a choice. I have an Vista image for my new machine which vista rates as a 5.8 out of 6.0. Unfortunately I don't give vista nearly that high a rating. It's pretty, but bloated, and offers me nothing. So XP Pro it is for me also.

    Pete
     
  6. ChrisBUK

    ChrisBUK Registered Member

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    I bought a Dell laptop which had a free upgrade to Vista. I tried it out for 2 months and didn't like. I found it slower, more resource hungry, annoying and it offered absolutely nothing more than XP offered. So I switched back and I plan to stay with XP from now on. I now use Ubuntu as my main OS.
     
  7. Dark Shadow

    Dark Shadow Registered Member

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    XP rocks
     
  8. poirot

    poirot Registered Member

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    I am temporarily using this Vista Premium notebook since a month :
    i would like to know why in ControlPanel/Connections you cannot choose to dispose of Shares,namely Password Protected sharing. If you click on it and choose disable it only means you authorise ANY sharing without any password whatsoever. (why its impossible to disable this feature?)
    What i am asking myself is: with all the bla bla about Vista being 'secure' i wonder why this thing is impossible to modify...
    Vista firewall is more 'secure'....sure, if you can lose a month to understand how to cope with it and you are able to find the famous outbound protection and start it within Vista lifespan....
    I have personally used a lot of firewalls ,but NONE so difficult to tweak as Vistas's. I am talking if you want to achieve a degree of protection similar to comodo V3,for instance,not if you are just content to get the out of the box thing.
    I had to leave Vista Firewall in Vista, as i suspect the system is geared to make unexpected trouble with foreign programs.......
    Two reinstalls for as many unbootable (and unexplainable) BSODs in the two initial weeks were enough to convince me Vista is not for me.
    Given the fact that in the whole world they only sell computers with Vista i already bought a new XPPro to equip my next computer.
    I also began studying Linux world with a view to use it soon.
     
  9. Huupi

    Huupi Registered Member

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    Given the long time they [M$] prepared this Vista its quite remarkable that it can't hold a candle with XP,but then Vista is in its early stages and it takes some time to mature. There still many people now who rave about Windows 2000 pro and not happy with XP.
     
  10. farmerlee

    farmerlee Registered Member

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    From my experience XP is definitely my preferred choice. I've used vista on a few modern machines and so far its performance has been less than impressive. Plus i have found it quite buggy at times. Given a bit of time it should improve but i find at this time XP is a better choice.
     
  11. bigc73542

    bigc73542 Retired Moderator

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    I read where some are having problems with Vista or just don't like it. I have two computers and used to run XP Pro on both. I upgraded both to Vista Home Premium and they both are more stable and faster that XP was. I realize that some do have problems with Vista and through a bit of testing I have found out that Vista is very sensitive to the type and the amount of Security apps installed. the first thing I noticed with a security app Vista is not happy with is slow booting and slower system overall. But when I got rid of the offending app it was right back to fast boot times and a faster machine. At the present I am running Norton AV with antispyware 2008 with Spywareblaster and Vista firewall with extended security activated, I also have windows defender on. (it couldn't hurt) With this setup My Vista is as fast and more stable that XP Pro was. It is a shame that everyone can't have a Vista experience like this. There is no way I would go back to XP with Vista running like it is on both computers. One computer has an AMD Processor and the other runs an Intel processor, there doesn't seem to be much difference as to the way they work with Vista.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2008
  12. midway40

    midway40 Registered Member

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    I'm with BigC, I do not want to go back to XP. Not only it runs great on my computer but I believe it as played a part in the fact that have not had any kind of infection on my machine since installation back in February.

    There was mention of eyecandy on this thread. I do like it but for a different reason. I have a Dell 19" flat panel monitor that is set for 1280x1024 resolution. In XP at that resolution everything is too small. Of course you can increase DPI but that throws off the look of the desktop as in scaling (desktop looks like 1024 text with 1280 graphics :p ). 1024x768 is readable but it is "grainy" looking. On Vista 1280x1024 looks great, everything is readable and sharp (curiously Linux also looked better at 1280 than 1024).
     
  13. aigle

    aigle Registered Member

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    Can,t say about stability but don,t tel me that Vista is fatser than XP. I can never believe that. Vista is significantly slower than XP. Windows start up, shutdown, application launch etc-- all are slower than XP, a fact that even an avergae xP user can feel and so many reviews on net about this.

    Though I believe that Vista is safer than XP. Another thing about the eye-candy, I like the eye-candy but the Vista sometimes appears to me a bit cuddled with lot of colors without any soberness at all, not neat to see, esp copmared to Apple OS.
     
  14. poirot

    poirot Registered Member

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    I disagree with you aigle.....i dont even think it is more stable than XP!

    If you rely on windows firewall and dont run ANY other program apart from the inbuilt ones like windows Defender, then yes Vista might be on a par at boot, but what happens as you start adding programs ?

    I tried googling for the same exact thing with two HP notebooks in front of me, one with vista Premium ,AMD Turion processor,2GB RAM (only Antivius and Defender running+UAC) and the other a XP Home,P4 HT,3400MHZ,1GB RAM (HIPS+Antivir+Boclean+Returnil+GeSWall):
    even if you dont count all the times that the page wont correctly display in Vista, the XP experience is flawless and by all means FASTER, even with a situation when the vista notebook is new and the other one is a 3 years old one.
    If you dare using IE7 with protected mode in Vista,instead of a Mozilla of sorts, there is no contest as 3 out of ten times the page will not be displayed or will have huge delays.

    I am waiting to know from Vista connosseurs what can be done about disabling sharing printers in Vista Premium and why it is configured that way... or is it a 'security' measure?
     
  15. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    I took great pains to acquire my special XP Pro $M volume license but in all honesty i simply could never justify repeating that where concerns Vista, so i am quite content to rest, relax, and am more than satisfied with XP Professional untill $M can finally prove that their next O/S, Spectrum/Windows7 or whatever the name might be comes forward with much better proven results then Vista is panned out to be.

    Besides, i already transitioned my XP units to show most everything Vista has and more in the appearance department, plus XP vendors IMO are at their very best right now and peaking with fabulous new innovations in security that unlike Vista, are also very educational for the user and helps them know at least some of what & why is going on in their machines.

    Sure, like some, i could easily even pick up either a OEM Vista ready box or CD, but it's simply not up to the standards as they claimed in the beginning, and for me doesn't justify enhancing all the neccessary hardware requirements to make use of it's, correctly mentioned, BLOAT.
     
  16. the Tester

    the Tester Registered Member

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    If Vista has no added features that you want,I would stay with XP.
    I myself have no desire to look at Vista.Quite satisfied with XP.
     
  17. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    I dunno want to bash at Vista because many customers really do find it to their liking and thats not fair to them to make light of their choice. We all have our own preferences and is our rights, but if you favor it then you have the satisfaction that nakes it your right.
     
  18. bigc73542

    bigc73542 Retired Moderator

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    See the thing is you have no idea how Vista runs on my computer and maybe it is just that I have enough knowledge from having owned two computer shops and close to thirty years in computers to actually set a computer up to run right. Regardless of what you think or say, Vista on my two computers is faster and more stable than XP ever was. Maybe instead of telling me not to tell you it is faster than XP you might spend a little more time in actually trying to figure out why your computer is slower with Vista. I take it you have actually had Vista on your computer??
     
  19. aigle

    aigle Registered Member

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    I don,t have Vista on my system. Have used new laptops of my friends with Vista and my exprienece is based upon that. With due respect i will say that 30 or more years of experience in PC can,t make Vista fatser otherwise MS would have already done it for all their customers.
    Is there any benchmark showing Vista fatser than XP in general?
     
  20. poirot

    poirot Registered Member

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    sorry ,bigc73542,but what you say puts the thing in a distorted perspective: if your vista computers are so tweaked by your expert clicks to actually be faster than an equivalent XP machine this does not count in a general conversation about vista's virtues.
    Too easy on your part to get rid of ,say,40 useless Services in vista and claim later it is fast.....
    Talk here is about 'normal' machines......
    I dont think there are 500 million people who owned two pc shops for thirty years and are able to tweak vista the way you did.............
    At this very moment i have had since a month on my desk two notebooks which are fit to be compared ,one Vista and one XP, and the only way i found for the vista machine to be as quick as the XP one,was to proceed without an initial password and without any added program.

    Nobody answers about the printers sharing affair ,though...
    Or how can a 'normal' user achieve control of the W.firewall rules, especially the 'outbound' ones.....
     
  21. LockBox

    LockBox Registered Member

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  22. jrmhng

    jrmhng Registered Member

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    My old laptop with XP home was stolen and my new Thinkpad came with Vista Business.

    Vista for me is slower and less stable (BSODS).

    Eye candy is good. Having dynamic preview in the alt tab function also helps with productivity. New startmenu with instant search also helps increase productivity.

    Would have liked to stay on XP however Vista is fine and hopefully bugs will be ironed out soon.
     
  23. sparkymachine

    sparkymachine Registered Member

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    Owning computer shops doesn't necessarily mean anything. Recently I wanted to add half a gig of memory and found out that the two 256Mb sticks I had were different speeds. The guy in my new local shop could hardly believe his eyes and was very surprised that my pc worked at all, never mind being stable. I also learned that this same guy who originally built my PC has a reputation for replacing other components (cheaper and lower spec) when you take it in for an upgrade - this isn't just gossip. One lady I know very well asked him to add some memory and found out he had replaced her Athlon 2000 for a 1700!

    Not that I am casting aspertions on your good self, I'm sure you are highly competant and trustworthy.

    I asked the person in this newly opend shop about his experience with Vista just yesterday and he hadn't had that many dissatisfied customers over Vista but that many companies prefer to keep with XP which he has no problem with either.
     
  24. bigc73542

    bigc73542 Retired Moderator

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    Just to put things into perspective a bit more. I have removed "0" processes from vista. Vista is installed and is running as it come off of the DVD. And I do appologize for being a bit sharp in my last post. I have not altered anything in Vista except rearranging some of the short cuts such as control panel, run and the like just to make them easier to access. besides that Vista on my computer is the same as you would find on most other computers. Maybe the difference is that I don't find it necessary to overload my computer with redundant or unneeded security apps except the usual av,fw.as. These type of apps can be very detrimental to Vista's speed. I have found several AV's that actually don't seem to effect the speed of Vista at all. I am sure that helps the speed and stability of my comp. Since I have had Vista on here (almost two years counting beta versions) I have never had a blue screen or lockup. Must be doing something right.
     
  25. aigle

    aigle Registered Member

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    Infact the laptop I used from my friends were also in usual config, without loads of security applications, ususally one security suite installed by default on the laptop( Norton or McAfee).
     
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