Vista vs XP

I have been in the IT industry for 25 years. I am waiting for at least another year or two before I jump onto the Vista bandwagon. Microsoft has never been good at getting a stable release out of a new consumer OS that actually works. And when it does, it will tend to not support any old peripherals you have - plan on buying everything new.

I would go to Windows Server 2003 (and have), but Vista isn't ready for prime time.

Bob

I have a few thoughts on this subject, but after writing them all down I think they are a little longer than what this forum can post. So I posted the article to by blog site. Here is a link the my post:

http://www.thenetworkguy.net

I have windows vista on all new computers and my laptop ... and i dont face any problems with it ... just had to sort out with configuring.... on my laptop i just desablaed some visual effects and it is flying.

I am still vascillating between them! Pros for XP - established, not buggy, drivers for almost all hardware supported by the OS. Pros for Vista - 64 bit version, full support, updates, etc. (only limited support and security updates now available for XP). I'll be interested to follow this discussion!

When I got my laptop it came with Vista. If I had the time or energy I would have put XP on it. Now, after 18 mos., I am used to it. But given a preference I would still choose XP.

It's great. I run my business on Vista. http://www.smallbizsites.biz

Let it be known that I am not opposed to Vista or to upgrading to Vista, just that I think that there are a number of things to consider first. I have Vista on my new laptop, and love it! The laptop was purchased new and built around the Vista model, and I upgraded the RAM to 4 GIG's. So far for what I have been using it for (Basic Office stuff) it has been working great.

I also like some of the security features as well, such as the internet/firewall. I think it is better than the firewall that was inserted into XP. Remember good old Microsoft added it and it became part of XP release 2, but was not native at first. So with Vista I see where there are a number of security items that they (Microsoft) thought about and included into the original design instead of an after-thought. I think this does lend towards a better OS geared to run smoother and faster.

As always there are costs associated and deployment concerns to think about before upgrading or just buying new.

I am glad to see the different comments on this topic.

At this time, I think that Vista has been out long enough to get past the first major hurdle of patches especially since Microsoft has released the first Service Pack.

From what I can tell about the Service Pack, there are a number of great security and networking improvement patches included.

Happy Computing! Happy Networking!

Bought a laptop for my wife with fast Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 2GB ram running Vista. It ran noticeably slower than her old pentium 4, 1GB ram XP Pro laptop. Spent a day downloading all the XP drivers for the laptop and reinstalling XP Pro on the new laptop. Now it flies like a new machine should.

Cost of ownership of Vista? A day of my time to downgrade to XP.

If M$ is not going to come out with a faster OS than XP before they faze out XP, I will be moving to another platform all together. With all the online services available, the most used application can be internet based and OS independent. I have started shifting to Google Docs for all my M$ Office tasks. Granted, Google Docs is not as feature rich as the desktop counterparts. But, as for my needs I can do without those features that I don't use anyway.

The goal is to move my computing needs to all server and internet based and using any dumb terminal to access them as I need them. When that is attainable, the answer to whether XP vs Vista vs Mac vs Linux is better would be simply based on how fast and easy is it to boot up a computer to open the browser of your choice. The features and functionality of the OS are irrelevant other than low level things like security, networking, etc.

I heard MSFT is building a new OS.

My friend remembers discussing Vista with a few guys on the Windows team when they were writing it, they were all "Meh." No enthusiasm whatsoever.

When they talked about the new OS they are currently working on, the guys got excited and said it is going to be cool.

Interesting, Anita, that you brought this up! I just got my parents a new laptop and had to show them how to use a computer. I thought it was going to be easy, but they have Windows Vista and I had to train myself on the new program before helping them. What a hassle! I don't like the functionality of it. Usually, when you upgrade, it's by small steps and a familiar look to the previous, but this isn't the case with this operating system. I don't like it.

Thanks for posting this information!

The only place I would recommend Vista is on a new computer with at least 4 gig of RAM. I would never upgrade an old XP machine.

Vista with SP1 is a decent OS, but if you are buying a new Computer, and getting a new OS you 'd better have a darn good reason not to buy a Mac with OSX.

Windows 7 will have to do a lot to make it worthwhile.

Recent benchmark tests show that Windows 7 is no faster than Vista. In fact, the benchmarking shows that Windows 7 is misleading you into thinking it is faster because of some clever technical wizardry. They accelerated the user interface so it feels faster but the actual results are a dead heat. This is an interesting development since Vista was found to be as much as 40% slower than Windows XP. Granted, Windows 7 is still in beta but how much "faster" can they make it?

Link 1 [infoworld.com]

Link 2 [infoworld.com]

I'm using Vista and I like it.

Change is good,

-Andrey