PoLiX Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 Those who have used both a good amount, not just say it sucks and haven't tried it or used it as a live enviroment for a good amount of time... Which would you say seems to be a better go? I've had vista for some time on my laptop, but I'm just tired of the high amount of resources Vista uses... I have 2gbs of ram, and barely enough to spare for my video card, and can't play any game but continuum... Which is kind of sad imho. I've debated getting 2 2gb sticks of ram to replace the 1gb sticks in this laptop, but debating if just going XP is more worth it. Not really concerned about DX10, or anything else "Vista only", and HP has all the XP drivers for my laptop, so no worries there. mmm...
»1587200 Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 After using Vista, I'm sad that I bothered. I actually footed the cash for a legit copy of Xp Pro earlier today to get away from Vista. I'm sorry, but when an OS takes up 700mb of my 1gb of memory while doing nothing, then well, it has to go. All it is is eye candy, that's it. And I can get all the eye candy I want using Windowblinds.
Bak Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 yeah we bought a high-end quad-core computer for work and put vista64 on it... what a pain in the !@#$%^&*. Restarting takes as long as my 4-year-old XP laptop and there aren't even any programs on it. Also, this is probably specific to the 64 bit version but you can only put in signed drivers. It's not a pop-up warning you, it just won't allow it. The only way to get around this is to restart the computer in a special mode (and you can't make it a permanent setting, so every time you restart you need to press F8 and select the mode, so lame!).
ESCANDAL0SA Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 i have vista on my laptop and i don't really like it, my new laptop should be faster than my old one (which had XP) but it isn't. i wanna go back to XP but i'm not sure if it'll affect the drivers =/
PoLiX Posted February 27, 2008 Author Report Posted February 27, 2008 Reading on Tom's Hardware, it sounds like XP out performs it by an incredible amount, dissapointing as they say. Even when they 2xed the ram, it made no major effects, as I was thinking of doing. I use to have 2.5gb of ram w/ a slower processor, and a very old agp video card, and got better fps in games than I am on this brand new computer, so I fully agree w/ them. I think I'm going to download and burn all my drivers, and then do a file back up and wipe this thing for xp tomorrow.
Hakaku Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 When I first upgraded to Windows Vista, I had to spend two entire days debugging my laptop. If I weren't computer literate, who knows what I would have done - Windows Explorer, of all things, was constantly crashing.After that, I went through everything. I enjoy a lot of upgrades and security, and obviously the Aero theme. Luckily I have lots of space, so everything has run smoothly. However, I still have problems with Vista's Language Bar not docking properly, freezing Windows. And I absolutely loathe the 'view' settings for folders. They never stay in the same display view, even if you specify a certain view, it still won't remember later on. Oh, and the UAC should be turned off by default (worst invention ever). But that's not to say I didn't have problems with XP. Comparably, I've never really gotten any BSOD on Vista, but I was getting quite a few on XP at times. I forget a lot of my criticism on XP, especially when I first made the switch from Windows 98SE, so I can't add much more atm. In the end though, I like Vista because it supports far better my needs than XP has. Since I work a lot with languages, proper display of text is really important (XP wasn't very great at handling a lot of things). Although if I were more geared towards programming, I definitely would never switch over to Vista due to so many incompatibilities.
rootbear75 Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 (edited) as long as you have all the CDs and !@#$%^&*, i'd say go to XP...the only reason i stay with vista, is because of the pre-installed security suite and school software that i came pre-installed. once i get the money, im going to buy another computer (not sure lap or desk) to install all my fun stuff on, and use this one for school.... and for some reason, when i WANT my computer to use memory when loading, it seems to only remain at 50%-75% of utilization... which is re!@#$%^&*ed.. i have those 2 GBs in there for a reason... Edited February 27, 2008 by rootbear75
Shock Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 I used it on a PC that wasn't capable of running it, so my opinion is biased. I'd rather use XP atm.
Incomplete Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 I have XP on the PC and Vista on the laptop....lets just say I stopped using the laptop.
Drake7707 Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 Vista is more optimized for fast user interactability and design, that's why it's not as performant as XP. Vista is nice for the extra security for those who need it, the shiny layout that can also be put in xp with 3rd party tools, and it reacts and boots faster than xp (well at least on my laptop it did). The big con for me is however that it constantly uses more than it should letting my cpu get hotter, meaning my fan rotates faster meaning more noise, and i hate noise on a computer (especially on a laptop). An other reason i stepped down was because i didn't need the extra security in any way, vista is good for novice users on that aspect. Also some games still refuse to run on vista because they are protected with memory encryption like gameguard etc, and if that's not compatible with vista then you're screwed, but that was a year ago. It might have changed already. I've been thinking to switch back to vista, to give it another shot but i'll have to wait until there's a new activation patch as the previous (the bios emulation exploit) has been patched
rootbear75 Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 (edited) and it reacts and boots faster than xp (well at least on my laptop it did).rofl ur kidding me right? it takes like 5-10 minutes to get my laptop booted up from start to finish (finish being all startup programs loaded and everything running smoothly) EDIT: typo Edited February 27, 2008 by rootbear75
PoLiX Posted February 27, 2008 Author Report Posted February 27, 2008 True. My g/f's 2yr old laptop loads XP faster than my brand new one loads vista.
Shock Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 rofl ur kidding me right? it takes like 5-10 minutes to get my laptop booted up from start to finish (finish being all startup programs loaded and everything running smoothly)5-10 minutes is quite a long boot time. Might wanna try removing some of those programs from your startup.
Drake7707 Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 and it reacts and boots faster than xp (well at least on my laptop it did).rofl ur kidding me right? it takes like 5-10 minutes to get my laptop booted up from start to finish (finish being all startup programs loaded and everything running smoothly) EDIT: typo not really o-O", vista took around 30-60 seconds to start, xp over a minute at least.
»doc flabby Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 (edited) not really o-O", vista took around 30-60 seconds to start, xp over a minute at least.Is this comparing a new install of vista vs old install of XP? If so, that's quite an unfair comparison I've got a 1.7Ghz centrino laptop with 512MB of ram. Original XP install from 3 years ago. However I run with no visual enhancements and have edited start up services to remove ones you don't need.My Xp boots to login screen in about 10-20 secounds. However logging takes around 10 secounds. Once its logged in disk grinds for about a minute, then its done. My windows 98 box boots up faster than my XP laptop, but its a new installation, my xp laptop has 3 years worth of crap on it. (my start menu on XP has 3 columns Ive got room for 1 more before i run out of screen space!) http://tweakhound.com/xp/bootvis/index.htmThere is a program called bootvis that will measure you boot time, an allow you to tune. Edited February 27, 2008 by doc flabby
»1587200 Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 (edited) There's also Autoruns by SysInternals which allows you to view, edit, enable and disable all items that are set to autorun when you boot.http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb963902.aspx Edited February 27, 2008 by Guest
rootbear75 Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 rofl ur kidding me right? it takes like 5-10 minutes to get my laptop booted up from start to finish (finish being all startup programs loaded and everything running smoothly)5-10 minutes is quite a long boot time. Might wanna try removing some of those programs from your startup.i thought i did... and i prob exaggerated the boot time... it prolly only really takes a few minutes
ESCANDAL0SA Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 5-10 minutes? lmao. mine loads in about 1 minute and some change.
Dav Posted February 27, 2008 Report Posted February 27, 2008 XP/linux duel boot will be my weapon of choice soon. Vista is junk and will have a short shelf life.
PoLiX Posted February 27, 2008 Author Report Posted February 27, 2008 finished backing everything up... XP here I come... again.
PoLiX Posted February 28, 2008 Author Report Posted February 28, 2008 On g/f's lappy, wow... mine runs so much faster so far. Now to get drivers. 2gbs RamWith Vista I had ~32mb ram free idle.With XP I have ~1.8gb ram free idle. Yes, I have 2 or 3 things I haven't installed that'd sit idle all the time when I had Vista installed, but I even looked into see if those caused it, and they used about 8mb ram total...
Aileron Posted February 28, 2008 Report Posted February 28, 2008 !@#$%^&*, I was just about to play devil's advocate for Vista. I have only 1 GB RAM on my Desktop, and Vista is running alright for me. There are some tricks you need to know in order to get Vista to work: 1) The first thing you should do is turn off all the visual crap that comes with it. You probably should also turn off the stupid sidebar, as all of the options there seem nice, but have an evil twist. (A 'performance' gauge which drastically decreases your computer's performance, a weather program that only gives the local weather at present and thus is just as good as looking out the window, and news feeds which actually are evil propaganda from MSNBC.) 2) When running games which aren't specifically formatted for Vista, 9 times out of 10 it won't work unless the option "Run this program as an Administrator" in the properties menu is on. The good news is that if your program isn't working, 9 times out of 10 this is all you need to do to solve the problem. For the remaining 1 time out of 10, you probably should turn it on anyway, as having it on Vista's safe mode has other detrimental effects. For instance, feeling oldskool I went back to play Baldur's Gate and Fallout on my computer. It works fine, except it doesn't save files in the proper locations if Admin mode is off, and that games saved with admin mode on cannot be loaded with admin mode off and vice versa. 3) I haven't figured how to do this out yet, but you want to turn off the program diagnostics too. One of the less stable games on Vista I have is Oblivion, which tends to 'crash' as I'm exiting, which wouldn't be frustrating except Vista spends the next half hour trying to 'diagnose' the 'crash', if I let it. When that happens clicking 'cancel' doesn't work, you have to bring up the task manager. Games I've gotten to work on Vista with 1 GB RAM: OblivionResident Evil 4Company of HeroesHalo 2 (Vista version, so wasn't difficult)Neverwinter Nights 1Star Wars KotOR (otherwise known as Neverwinter Nights 1 1/2)Freelancer (hate to say it, but this game is probably better than CTM)Halo 1Dungeon Seige II...Several older !@#$%^&*les. (As if some of those weren't old enough) I am experiencing occasional frame rate issues with Oblivion and Halo 2 at times, but I'd expect with a rather low-end RAM card I'd probably be experiencing that if I had XP. Everything else is running great. To me, Vista is annoying, not crippling.
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