Going back to XP. Has anyone else??

FatRakoon · 31 Jul 2008 at 21:44

I have been using XP64 since its release and thats over 3 years.

I have no anti-spyware, no antivirus, and Windows firewall is off too! I have nothing on the softwrae side of things to protect it....

I do however have my firewall on the router switched on.

I have been to some seriously shady sites in this 3 years, I have downloaded some sticky content but I have never been hit by a virus in all that time.

( I do run NOD32, AVG, or AVAST and NOSPYWARE, SpyDoc etc on some of my other PCs however... Im not stupid! but on my main PC I have just never felt the need to )

Fothsn · 31 Jul 2008 at 22:01

Being using Vista Ultimate 64Bit since day one, have Vista on both my PCs and laptop, Vista is best PC purchase I have made if I’m being honest, excellent value for money considering what it does and how long I’ve had it. Was given my mates XP Pro laptop to fix and couldn’t help at how XP feels so basic and vastly outdated. No chance of me going back to XP.

Fothsn · 31 Jul 2008 at 22:04

FatRakoon said:
I have been using XP64 since its release and thats over 3 years.

I have no anti-spyware, no antivirus, and Windows firewall is off too! I have nothing on the softwrae side of things to protect it....

I do however have my firewall on the router switched on.

I have been to some seriously shady sites in this 3 years, I have downloaded some sticky content but I have never been hit by a virus in all that time.

( I do run NOD32, AVG, or AVAST and NOSPYWARE, SpyDoc etc on some of my other PCs however... Im not stupid! but on my main PC I have just never felt the need to )

How do you know you haven’t got a Virus or something logging your details and sending them off somewhere without a Virus scanner? It’s plain daft not to have some sort of security on any OS sorry.

andyp · 31 Jul 2008 at 22:36

Burnsy2023 said:
That's a stupid reason then considering I am spanning my desktop across three monitors.

Burnsy

Try firing up FS9 and running it across three (or two) monitors and see what happens

Uriel · 31 Jul 2008 at 22:50

I'm running dual boot. I've ran XP once in the past 3 months. No desire to go back at all.

Burnsy2023 · 31 Jul 2008 at 23:29

andyp said:
Try firing up FS9 and running it across three (or two) monitors and see what happens

Supreme commander doesn't have issues with dual screens so it's not an OS problem.

Burnsy

FatRakoon · 1 Aug 2008 at 02:27

I dont have FS9 ( Flight simulator I assume ) but I do have Supreme commander and on Vista32Prem I was able to get dual screens working.

So,I also concur ( ooooh, big word for me ) that its not a Vista issue.

andyp · 2 Aug 2008 at 19:54

Burnsy2023 said:
Supreme commander doesn't have issues with dual screens so it's not an OS problem.

Burnsy

Is there an option in the nvidia control panel under xp to span your desktop across two monitors?

Yes.

Is there an option in the nvidia control panel under vista to span your desktop across two monitors?

No.

Simple as that.

andyp · 2 Aug 2008 at 19:55

Also WDDM does not allow some modes that were previously handled by the driver such as spanning mode

WDDM is Vista only.

Now tell me it's not a Vista issue

Burnsy2023 · 2 Aug 2008 at 20:05

andyp said:
Simple as that.

So, my point stands. It's not an OS issue at all, it's a nVidia driver issue. But I span the desktop in the display properties and then use UltraMon for the taskbar.

So, it's not as simple as that

Burnsy

Draeger · 2 Aug 2008 at 20:23

HarryPainful said:
I find vista to be much faster than XP.

4bg, 500GB sammy and 3.2 C2D.

Likewise.

I'm running Vista Ultimate 32 bit on an ASUS P5K with a little C2D E6300 overclocked to @3.00Ghz, 2Gb Geil ULL RAM, 3x 250Gb SATA HDD's and an ATI X1900XTX.

It absolutely fly's compared to how it did with XP Pro running on the same set up.

I was, like many others, reluctant to make the jump to Vista, but there's no way I would go back to XP now. :cool:

FatRakoon · 2 Aug 2008 at 21:41

There is no doubt that it feels much faster than XP...

Not XP64 though.

toucam · 2 Aug 2008 at 21:50

Vista is absolutely flying here, never going back

Amnesia · 2 Aug 2008 at 23:14

for all you guys who are finding its flying compared to xp....can you possibly give some kind of comparisons in games.

i remember a thread a couple of months ago about xp vs vista and i remember doing some comparisons (xp vs vista) and i found xp to be faster. which i did post the results of.

maybe if you can do an inbuilt benchmark or run a timedemo and share the results.

i do have vista installed on my system and dual boot between xp and vista but myself i find xp to be faster or more responsive in games.

Burnsy2023 · 2 Aug 2008 at 23:33

memory said:
for all you guys who are finding its flying compared to xp....can you possibly give some kind of comparisons in games.

Bare in mind that people may not actually be referring to game performance. It could just be desktop and application responsiveness.

Burnsy

FatRakoon · 3 Aug 2008 at 00:43

memory said:
for all you guys who are finding its flying compared to xp....can you possibly give some kind of comparisons in games.

Now come on, there is no need to be spiteful... You know full well that they cannot do that because its just not possible.

The thing is, that when buggering about in and around the desktop, basic stuff, Vista does "FEEL" like its flying.

When it comes down to the real work however, this is not always the case, and vista will once again fall over flat on its arse

( I would like to point out that I do actually accept that both Vista32 and Vista64 are a big boost over XP, they still fall short of XP64 )

memory said:
i remember a thread a couple of months ago about xp vs vista and i remember doing some comparisons (xp vs vista) and i found xp to be faster. which i did post the results of.

I also setup a system with all 4 ( XP + Vista, 32+64 ) and while XP64 came out on top in pretty much everythign I could test, XP32 actually won one of the tests and in truth, the difference between them, in all tests was not really all that much!!!! - I hate to admit it, but if I was to be totally honest with you all, whether you choose XPHome, Pro, or 64, or Vista32 or Vista64, then I have to be honest but if its because of performance, then while XP64 is definitely the leader, the difference is so small that there is not really anythign to worry about at all... Not really.

And as for people telling you to move to Vista, this too really piddles me off because there is NOTHING tha tVista can do that XP cannot and as for DX10, then sure, visually its better than DX9, but games dont play any better ( or worse come to think of it ) so if you are happy with XP32 then stick with it and dont waste money that even MS have said is a flop... Wait for Windows7 cos thats out soon enough!

memory said:
maybe if you can do an inbuilt benchmark or run a timedemo and share the results.

Again, back to reality, I too would love to see anyone post somehting ( thats worth posting ) where Vista is faster than XP64

memory said:
i do have vista installed on my system and dual boot between xp and vista but myself i find xp to be faster or more responsive in games.

Oone-niiIIl...One-nil ... Oooonnneee-niiilll

Mexican wave etc etc

Fire Wizard · 3 Aug 2008 at 00:49

FatRakoon said:
there is NOTHING tha tVista can do that XP cannot

Hello FatRakoon, I'm sorry but I have to disagree with you there. The below is just a few features that Windows XP hasn't got by default:

DirectX 10
User Account Control - Internet Explorer 7 Protected Mode
Parental Controls
SuperFetch
Readyboost
Windows Aero
Windows Search

The above is simply of the top of my head. Then you also have the significant changes under the hood of Windows Vista. Now, admittedly, some of the things I have mentioned are pretty small. However, they do improve the overall user experience of using Windows Vista which in my opinion, is very important.

so if you are happy with XP32 then stick with it and dont waste money that even MS have said is a flop... Wait for Windows7 cos thats out soon enough!

Would you care to link me to something that confirms what you have just said please? Windows Vista is far from a flop and is actually a very important release; the changes within Windows Vista are very significant. Now, the changes may not be so immediately prominent to the user in Windows Vista. However, this does not mean that it's effectively a pointless release and not needed.

Criticism and conclusion:

There are many other smaller improvements made to Vista that will improve the experience of the OS. For example, fewer reboots should be needed when DLLs and drivers are upgraded, NTFS volumes can be shrunk on-the-fly, NTFS can repair corruption automatically in the background (eliminating the need to reboot to run chkdsk), and improved backups based on volume shadow copy can be made, along with many others. Together, these improvements make for an extremely compelling upgrade. Vista is not simply XP with a new skin; core parts of the OS have been radically overhauled, and virtually every area has seen significant refinement. In terms of the magnitude and extent of these changes, Vista represents probably the biggest leap that the NT platform has ever seen. Never before have significant subsystems been gutted and replaced in the way they are in Vista. As such, it's a hugely important release.

Source - Windows Vista: Under the Hood.

Amnesia · 3 Aug 2008 at 00:59

Burnsy2023 said:
Bare in mind that people may not actually be referring to game performance. It could just be desktop and application responsiveness.

Burnsy

yeah thats true....i automatically figured it was for games(silly on my part).

Amnesia · 3 Aug 2008 at 01:11

FatRakoon said:
Now come on, there is no need to be spiteful... You know full well that they cannot do that because its just not possible.

The thing is, that when buggering about in and around the desktop, basic stuff, Vista does "FEEL" like its flying.

naaa i wasnt being spiteful...thats why i changed my original post to finding it flying rather than claiming its flying as it could come across in a bad way.

as for the test it can be done if ppl have dual boot systems like myself but nevermind its not important anyway.

in the past i have laughed at the vista performance as it was crap in comparison but since sp1 vista has improved loads. but it still doesnt seem as responsive for me.
i was thinking maybe its some tweaks im missing out on or games which i havent tried.

i think il probably install vista64 though...atleast that way even if i do have a small drop in fps it wont be as bad as there will be more gains than a pretty interface. i do quite like the thought of 4gb of memory

.

andyp · 3 Aug 2008 at 11:27

Burnsy2023 said:
So, my point stands. It's not an OS issue at all, it's a nVidia driver issue. But I span the desktop in the display properties and then use UltraMon for the taskbar.

So, it's not as simple as that

Burnsy

The driver issue is caused by WDDM.

Which is unique to Vista.

I can extend my desktop across my monitors through display properties. That creates two seperate 1280x1024 displays.

What I can't do is horizontal span and create one single 2560x1024 display - which is what I need.