Which Windows OS?

sastusbulbas

sastusbulbas

sastusbulbas

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1,805
Hello all,

Not sure which is the best OS to get, and they all cost roughly the same.

I was wondering if 64 bit Vista is worth the trouble? I plan to build a new PC but I am unsure of which OS to use, my preference was XP Pro 32 bit.

I am under the impression that Vista 32bit is not faster or such than XP pro and understand it is more resource hungry, but what extra performance gains will I get over XP in real life?

Usual use such as games and internet, music etc and Blue Ray/HD/DVD movies would be preferable.

I am also wondering about Vista 64 bit and using more ram, but I am under the impression old games such as C&C Yuri's Revenge, C&C 3, Dawn of War and the like are not compatible with Vista 64? And what about stuff like Zone Alarm and Avira, free spyware and the like?

What problems are usually encountered with 64 bit OS and old software and freeware?

Ta peeps,
Steve
 
Apart from a new inconsistent GUI.

A new "crap" network stack

A new "crap" audio stack

Vista doesnt have much advantages over XP, the speed different isnt exactly excellent, some people just need to have the newest thing around whether its crap or not.

But you should try it yourself to see if it suits you first.
 
Firstly, these are my own real-life experience and opinions - I don't know much about the in's and out's about the OS's and to be honest it makes little difference to me. In that respect I am sorry if this doesn't help answer your questions.

From my own personal experince I would stay away from Vista 64-bit for now. I purchased it about 14 months ago and used it for a few months - had to reinstall twice, firstly becuase it completely crapped out on my and secondly because the right-click menu's would take literally minutes to open and cause my PC to freeze. Another major problem I had was running, for the want of a better description, more specialist programs such as AutoCAD, Matlab, STAAD Pro, Solid EDGE etc.

I have to be honest, I didn't try many games, but I had problems with Farcry and Rollercoast Tycoon 3 - I don't play too many games any more.

Many of the problems are probably sorted now. Vista offers a nice bit of eye candy and after you get used to the new way of doing things it's quick and easy to use. I must say I didn't notice any huge improvement or degradation in performance as my more power and resource hungry app's wouldn't even run. All OS's seem to suffer slow down with age.

My personal vote would be to go for XP/MCE - they may be getting old now but they are pretty robust and deal with everything I have needed. There is great support for freeware, shareware and commercial software and they will work - it's a gamble with Vista.
 
TraxData said:
Apart from a new inconsistent GUI.

A new "crap" network stack

A new "crap" audio stack

Vista doesnt have much advantages over XP, the speed different isnt exactly excellent, some people just need to have the newest thing around whether its crap or not.

But you should try it yourself to see if it suits you first.
Click to expand...

Heh, nice unbiased facts there! What exactly is wrong with the Vista network and audio stacks? I've had no problems with the networking (apart from the file copy bug which was fixed in SP1) and I find the ability to control the volume of individual applications really useful.

I run Vista x64, and I think that providing you have enough RAM to run it properly (2GB will do but 4GB is ideal), it's a really good OS. Boots more quickly than XP, 'hybrid sleep' mode is really useful. Now the initial driver issues have been solved it's really stable - haven't seen a single BSOD since I installed Vista x64 SP1 about three months ago. Memory management is pretty good - SuperFetch isn't just a gimmick, it allows programs to start much more quickly than they would have done under XP.

Security-wise, XP is pretty solid with SP3 but Vista does have some improvements - with UAC on, IE under Vista is the most secure Windows browser bar none (though far from the best!) and if you run under a limited account you'll be pretty well protected.

Overall, Vista has greatly improved since it was launched. I tried 32-bit Vista soon after it came out and wasn't too impressed - driver issues, random crashes and general slowness. I'm not sure if it's because of the 64-bit functionality or just because things have matured, but 64-bit SP1 is like a different OS entirely. My first encounter with Vista was also on 1GB RAM, which made it almost unusable for anything beyond surfing the web. With 4GB it's a dream. I'd say that having enough RAM is the most important thing for a good experience with Vista.

I still use XP on my laptop which I take to Uni, and going back to XP from Vista isn't exactly unbearable. But if you have the hardware to run it properly, Vista is a significantly better OS which in my experience is much smoother than XP and just as stable, probably more so. I say this after having run my Vista system at constant 100% load for several months (Folding@Home on all four cores) - so it certainly doesn't fall over under heavy usage.
 
Ricki said:
From my own personal experince I would stay away from Vista 64-bit for now. I purchased it about 14 months ago and used it for a few months - had to reinstall twice, firstly becuase it completely crapped out on my and secondly because the right-click menu's would take literally minutes to open and cause my PC to freeze. Another major problem I had was running, for the want of a better description, more specialist programs such as AutoCAD, Matlab, STAAD Pro, Solid EDGE etc.
Click to expand...
+1 on this - with XP vs Vista, it's really a matter of which one tickles your fancy. XP is older, but pretty rock solid. While Vista has some neat tricks, every other person seems to have an eternal nightmare getting it working. It does seem to be a case of flip a coin - heads it works fine, tails you're going to uninstall it within weeks.

Vista SP1 has sorted a lot of bugs, as has the hotfixes - but it's still a developing OS and now that Windows 7 is on the horizon, I doubt it'll ever get a chance to flourish properly. Bear in mind that XP will still be supported by the time the next OS comes out (if it isn't horrifically delayed like Vista)

In short - try Vista if you can, but hold onto XP as it's the better OS.
 
Each to their own, but I've had Vista on three different machine each doing different things and I haven't had any major problems (no more major than I have had with XP):

1) Work laptop - Dell Vostro 1700 with Vista Business x86. C2D 2.2GHz, 2GB Ram, 8600M. Used for development (MSSQL Server, Visual Studio 2005 & 2008).

2) Home laptop. C2D 2GHz, 2GB Ram, 7950GTX Go. Vista Home Premium x64. Again a bit of development work and some games. Nvidia Go drivers were shocking so I ended up using XP for games and Vista for everything else (which I hated having to do).

3) New home desktop. C2D E7200 (@3.4GHz), 4GB Ram, 8800GT. Vista Home Premium x64. It absolutely flies and I love it. There is no way XP is coming anywhere near this machine, ever. I am dual booting with Ubuntu (x64 too), but I find myself in Vista 80-90% of the time.

I would agree that it needs 4GB to truly shine, but when you can get 4gig for under £80 I don't see that as a problem particularly. And as Mattus said, Superfetch is superb :)
 
Get the Ultimate Retail version

Got x86 and x64 then

I really believe digs about vista should be backed up with current hardware specs

Seems most that have a dig at vista have generally under-performing specs so knock vista when in the majority of cases it's their system that can be at fault or rather below par

Can still recall the time i told online friends i was trying xp, got the usual "ohh man that's no good" etc , Now some of those are loving xp and saying the same about vista lol

Yeah resources are better managed in vista, People look at ram usage for example and almost have a fit without realising it isn't being wasted per say

My 2p worth or 3.6c worth

PS: Care to post your rig setup ??

Ciao

Def
 
I have xp64on my main pc (sig one) as i found vista 32 a little sluggish on it and i couldnt really work out why that happened :(

On my laptop its a whole different story though, vista is almost a dream on it (in comparison to xp or linux) as it just worked! i would have liked it to be 64 bit but the 32 bit works well with 2 gig of ram and a turion. Meh id give 64 bit windows ago if your using newer hardware though
 
TraxData said:
Apart from a new inconsistent GUI.

A new "crap" network stack

A new "crap" audio stack

Vista doesnt have much advantages over XP, the speed different isnt exactly excellent, some people just need to have the newest thing around whether its crap or not.

But you should try it yourself to see if it suits you first.
Click to expand...

Inconsistent GUI? what do you mean by that? It is leaps ahead of XP's GUI, XP is really ugly to look at. Navigating explorer with the breadcrum bar is a lot better than the old way once you get used to it.

Agree i don't like the way network is handled in Vista but i rarely touch it for it to be a peeve to me

The audio stack is amazing, Ok Creative are lame for having tripe drivers, but that is hardly MS' fault. I find controlling different applications volume awesome & the sound is different to me than within XP i can't put my finger on it though.

Overall when Vista was first released yes it did deserve to be slated, but as time has advanced it has improved 10 fold, but thats also down to hardware/software being more matured now & with SP1 things are getting even better. It was the same way when XP was released.

Personally it is your own choice which you choose but i will always choose Vista over XP now :)
 
i was a long advocate for xp even through the first year of vista when it was released, i have now come to see sense , vista is a very nice operating system. breadcrumb bar, even though i had no idea it was called that until i read the above post, is just the way it should have been years ago, so obvious and natural. cant do without that.

the speed is very noticable too, launching apps, booting,shutting down.

the only downside at the moment is the hit games take when using vists compared to xp, that will change via better driver support.


oh and vista just looks a whole lot better.
 
I've been back and forth from XP x64 to Vista x64.

I like Vista, it's a nice OS, but I just love the polished feel of XP. In XP, everything just works. No driver problems, no niggly crap.

For example, I think we all agree that Vista w/SP1 is FAR better than Vista wo/SP1. But I just can't get the service pack to install. I made a clean copy of Vista, downloaded SP1, and installed. But it wouldn't boot, just got stuck on "applying updates".

So I reinstall, and this time I just use WU to apply everything. I get all the smaller fixes installed (I thought the point of a service pack is to roll everything into one update?) and then proceeded to install SP1. It failed. I tried again. It failed.

So again I reached for the redist, and it installs fine. But when I reboot, it complains of corrupted files and refuses to boot.

I appreciate that it's not perfect, but surely a service pack should well... you know... WORK? It just doesn't very well tbh.

With XP, I install, then I install SP2 for x64, and then i'm good to go. It's quick, fast, and it works. I feel with Vista there's a good OS under it all somewhere, but it's just too overcomplicated for it's own good.
 
Defiance_co said:
G

PS: Care to post your rig setup ??

Ciao

Def
Click to expand...

Asus Pn5-E Sli board
C2D 6400 @ stock speeds - really need to OC that - suggestions welcome!)
4gb of PC6400 OC RAM
8800 GTS 320mb
Bog standard IDE HD - in need of upgrade, but it's still working, so loath to get rid of it.

Nothing flashy, but more than capable of running Vista.
 
Hi All,

Thanks for the replies,

Still, no answer to the old games and such problem, and I do want to keep my old games like Age Of Empires, Dawn of War, All The Command and Conquer titles, I even have Jet Pack LOL :)

I also want to continue to use freeware such as Avira, ZoneAlarm, SuperAntiSpyware and the like, but have no idea if all my old games and chosen freeware will work or be compatible with Vista 64 bit premium?
 
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