When to switch to Windows Vista?

I have a few machines on XP and install XP on friends PCs when they mess them up and XP feels so snappy purely because it doesn't have the new window open/close animations and fades etc and not that Vista is slower because if you turn off the fading in Vista it's just as fast as XP at loading windows and closing but of course doesn't look as swish.

Vista = the in thing.
 
fothsn said:
Doesn’t XP feel so basic after using Vista though? Give Vista a good months usages and hopefully you will be forever converted :D
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It does, especially as I use Vista at work too.

However, as I have a laptop, i'm somewhat limited in my disk space (100gb drive unformatted) so not really enough room to dual boot, and I was finding gaming performance just not as good as XP. For example, I can run Company of Heroes on HIGH settings @ 1920*1200 in XP, but only 1680*1050 in Vista. When exiting the game in Vista, the disk thrashes and the machine is unusable for +10 seconds whilst the resources are unloaded and the desktop is redrawn.

Unloading the game in XP is instantaneous.

I put it all down to a lack of laptop drivers, as my lappy should run it fine (C2D 2ghz, 2gb DDR2, 100gb 7200rpm SATA hdd, 512mb 7950gtx GO).

I'll probably stick with XP until I build a desktop later this year, which is a pity :(
 
[TW]Fox;10841569 said:
So the next issue - 64bit or 32bit?

Got an Xfi and 4Gb as ram as well which I imagine means 'fun'...
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No problems here Fox with x64 Vista, 4gig of ram and a X-Fi. Creative's latest drivers sorted out the issues with that combo. Go for it.
 
With Vista using over 1Gb before you do anything you may has well go 4Gb of DD2 and if your going for 4Gb you may has well install the 64bit version I hear it's supports 4Gb better than the 32bit version. Why this is I don't know it's just what I've read.
 
I was dual booting for a while, using xp about 85% of the time as i didn't really bother booting into Vista but I started using it again yesterday and all of the apps and games I run ran just as well, I'm confident now that if I was to choose vista over xp I would as all my compatibility and mem usage fears have been allayed.
 
I run Vista 64 bit on my HTPC with 4gig and a E6600 and I would say it runs better than my 32bit XP main PC with a Q6600 at 3.6ghz and 4gig of ram in day to day running. Obviously fling any CPU intensive application at it and the XP machine will be quicker but the general use of Vista with prefetch etc makes applications load quicker etc and the interface looks a lot nicer.

So my advise would be go Vista 64 bit the problem with the X-Fi drivers with 4gig aren't too bad now.
 
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I started in DOS 6.22, have always gone to the newest thing as soon as it is released and vista was no different. Through this I have noticed the pattern (and it isnt a suprising one)

1) The new OS always introduces a few new niggles
2) You dont realise it, but you rapdily become used to the slicker interface, then when you go back the old suddenly feels slow and clunky
3) You spend the first hour going "ooo" then after that you forget your using a new system

It was that way when i went from 2000 to XP and then from XP to x64 (though this was even less exciting) I then went to 32bit Vista Business and have recently chopped it in for 64bit Vista Business as I upped to 4GB RAM.

I ran the 32bit Vista from the day it was released in February 2007 without having to format etc etc until two weeks ago when i put on the 64 bit Vista. EVERYTHING worked in the 32 bit one and it became noticably better as the hotfixes piled on through windows update.

64 bit is much the same with two exceptions. 1) Rivatuners low level driver wont install so if i wanted to mod my 8800 to a quadro i now cant and 2) until I had applied all the windows updates the latest Nvidia nforce driver set wouldnt install for my 680i mobo.

I have an X-Fi and it hasnt ever caused me issues in either OS, though you do need to find the Vista compliant software release out there on the net as the OEM supplied CD wont work.

As you have the license, install it, try it and if you hate it go back to XP. You have 30 days to activate it so no need to "waste" the license if it isnt for you. I can guarantee if you DO go back though you'll be horrified by how clunky XP feels in comparison.

One final thing, if you do install Vista then make sure you manually install this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

It still doesnt come though windows update (god knows why) and its a vitally important virtual memory fix that causes many many games to have untold problems with Vista.

In short... DO IT.
 
m4cc45 said:
One thing you will notice is, with the right hardware and configured correctly, the stability. It's unbelieveable to say that in the 6 months or so I've been using Vista is that I have never had a system crash.
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And yet within just over a week i've managed to get a nice BSOD today :p. Admittedly i am trying to overclock my aTI card and ATItool has only got the beta thats vista 64 compatible, damn thing doesn't save my voltages properly so when it runs the 3d clocks it bumps up the clocks without any juice and kills the output.

Other than that, vista runs on the rig in my sig wonderfully, i love it and i'm amazed at how many things are 64 bit compatible. General usage seems faster too, browsing folders etc. and i droppd half a FPS in crysis going from xp 32 to vista 64
 
mrk said:
You can't blame a UT3 fault on vista though because the rest of us have no issues in UT3 on vista - the problem lies elsewhere on your configuration and you've just "tucked it under the sofa" to hide th eproblem :)
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Sorry dude - but I tried everything drivers, the special ones FOR UT3 on Nzone, tweaks etc. When I installed and just downloaded the latest drivers it ran stunningly on XP.
I'm no PC novice, neither am I new to the UT franchise.
 
As you presumably are running XP already, why not just install Vista as well and dual-boot? Then you can make your own mind up.
 
Dual boot, run everything, compair performance between them, go back to XP after deciding the small advantages in Vista are outweighed by the issues, and then allow me to smack you round the head with the Vista disk and say "I told you so!"

The fact your are a fairly well educated guy in the computer worlds, and are here asking for reasons to upgrade, means that you obvioudly havent found any yourself, and therefore dont have any.
 
What Vista "issues" can I ask?

The moment you disable the minimise/maximise animations of windows you have the window response of XP (I tested side by side) and computability is greater with newer hardware on Vista than XP.
 
accross 2 of my PCs, my laptop, a mates laptop, my girlfirends laptop and a housemates Shop bought PC with many many versions of Vista ive had speed issues, generall compatibility issues, issues with sleep, issues with hibernation, issues with drivers, issues with applications, general annoyance at the non user friendslyness, lower performance in many apps, lower performance in games and benchmarks, issues with networking and sharing files, remote access to and from vista pcs, pre installed applications not working. So yeah, a lot of issues. Not confined to one machine however. what works on one may not on another, i suppose another issue is consistencey. There just is not enough reasons to upgrade to Vista at this time, with the 'at this time' bit (hopefully, for microsofts sake) being the key part in that statement.
 
Skeeter said:
accross 2 of my PCs, my laptop, a mates laptop, my girlfirends laptop and a housemates Shop bought PC with many many versions of Vista ive had speed issues, generall compatibility issues, issues with sleep, issues with hibernation, issues with drivers, issues with applications, general annoyance at the non user friendslyness, lower performance in many apps, lower performance in games and benchmarks, issues with networking and sharing files, remote access to and from vista pcs, pre installed applications not working. So yeah, a lot of issues. Not confined to one machine however. what works on one may not on another, i suppose another issue is consistencey. There just is not enough reasons to upgrade to Vista at this time, with the 'at this time' bit (hopefully, for microsofts sake) being the key part in that statement.
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Wow thats a lot of issues!!

To counter balance, in the (nearly) 11 months of constant heavy use I have given Vista Business I have had about 3 issues in total, one of which is that Rivatuner wont fully install under Vista 64 due to them not providing a signed driver. The others have been very quickly ironed out by hot fixes. It took XP until SP2 to feel as stable and as complete as Vista now feels before even its first SP.

i use Hibernation nightly without issue, once that little "use password protected filesharing" tickbox is gone i havent had any NW issues and side by side, Windows XP and Vista on this machine return performance results so similar its not worth mentioning. I have all forms of prefetching and indexing turned off on both systems, always have and always will (I know some people disagree with me here) so its a reasonably fair comparison.
 
I waited untill microsoft pulled support for Win98 before I upgraded to XP, just before sp2 came on line. I can see me doing the same thing before going for Vista, The only thing that would make me upgrade o/s earlier would be if I bought a new system with it allready on, or if I felt I needed more than 4GB of memory. At the moment 768mb is coping well enough for me though!
 
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