Vista and XP for a home user?

Rick Martel

Rick Martel

Rick Martel

Associate
Joined
2 Mar 2004
Posts
222
Location
North London
im curious what are the benefits of vista over XP? and has the service pack 1 for vista and the current updates improved it anyhow to be an option to purchase over XP? improvements in speed, bug fixes, etc
 
Vista Benefits-

Plays DX10 games
Media centre has more option (but is less easy to control with the remote) + media handling is better the basic XP but not as good as third party XP utilities.
Mainstream 64bit/4gb support.
Faster search if you have forgotten where you put things.
Prefetch is useful if you regularly use 1 or 2 large programs and want to quickly access them.

Disbenefits

It is pain to turn off all the noddy mode features (networking is the worst).
The interface is an acquired taste and you cannot get it to operate as W2k 'classic' as per XP if want something which is more efficient.
The new search system slows the whole system down for long periods and leads to a lot of disk trashing; this is pointless if you save files in the right place.
Driver availability is still not as good as XP.

SP1 on the 64 bit version of Vista has solved some problems and feels faster (bot not anything like as responsive as XP)
 
Rick Martel said:
one question. XP does not support 4GB of ram? how would i set up 4GB of ram on xp?
Click to expand...

XP 32bit will work with 4gb installed but will not be able to use all of it. The larger your graphics card memory the less usable space; with a pair of 280gtx I have 2.8gb show up on xp 32 bit
 
Bomag said:
Vista Benefits-

Plays DX10 games
Media centre has more option (but is less easy to control with the remote) + media handling is better the basic XP but not as good as third party XP utilities.
Mainstream 64bit/4gb support.
Faster search if you have forgotten where you put things.
Prefetch is useful if you regularly use 1 or 2 large programs and want to quickly access them.

Disbenefits

It is pain to turn off all the noddy mode features (networking is the worst).
The interface is an acquired taste and you cannot get it to operate as W2k 'classic' as per XP if want something which is more efficient.
The new search system slows the whole system down for long periods and leads to a lot of disk trashing; this is pointless if you save files in the right place.
Driver availability is still not as good as XP.

SP1 on the 64 bit version of Vista has solved some problems and feels faster (bot not anything like as responsive as XP)
Click to expand...

The disk thrashing only takes place when Vista first indexes all the files.
Driver support is now on a par with XP , especially 64 bit
 
4gb+ support comes in 64bit versions of whichever os you choose.

sp1 has improved vista loads and yes its much faster.

DX10 games have been mentioned but i cant think of even 1 that would be worth upgrading or changing os for.


the search really is great on vista as mentioned

personally i choose to dual boot though until i fully get used to vista.

....there is more than i mentioned but i g2g atm
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom