Vista or XP Pro?

Greg Goodfellow · Post by **Greg Goodfellow** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:38 pm

Speaking of Father's Day, wifey told me she is getting me a laptop, primarily to play music from at car shows. She's getting conflicting opinions from my daughter's fiancee' as well as from my wife's sister. She's not sure about whether to get Vista or go to XP Pro. I was shocked to find out that any computers were still using XP. She's afraid that there's a steep learning curve. Folks, what should we do? I'm thinking that Vista would be the better bet, since I'm supposed to get a laptop, along with a projector and smartboard, for my classroom this year. I'm just assuming they're getting Vista on the machine. Any advice you can give would be most welcome.

Also, what music software would you suggest, such as PCDJ, or should I just stick with Windows Media Player for now?

Any advice you can give would be most welcome, and thanks in advance!

Lester · Post by **Lester** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:11 pm

Greg Goodfellow wrote:I was shocked to find out that any computers were still using XP.

I assume you didn't mean to type it quite that way?

Microsoft isn't switching off direct OEM and vendor licensing of XP until January 2008, and system builder licensing in January 2009. Product end of life coming several years later (and I could probably track it down, but what it is today is not what it ends up being 2-3 years from now. Win2k support lasted through Jun 2005.)

So, in short, just because MS started selling Vista, the world didn't run out and buy a copy. (Retail sales have been terrible... OEM sales have been better, but only because, for awhile, you had to buy Vista on a new PC. Most vendors have backtracked, now allowing XP to continue being installed at the factory.)

That said, Vista kind of sucks. If you're buying a system "just because", and you don't have any specific high-end reason for buying it (which looks to be the case), you might be alright with Vista. Regardless of whether we want it or not, it will be force-fed to those that want/need to use Windows. One caveat for your project, Vista is packed with new "digital rights management" technology that may or may not play well with your music files, depending on what they are and where they came from. I haven't used Vista in an DRM enabled capacity, so your mileage is your own, and may vary drastically.

If you plan on doing any video editing, music editing, or game playing... I'd say go with XP. A laptop isn't going to support DX10, and Vista has a bit of a track record for breaking DX9 games (such as FEAR or Doom.) Vista should be avoided like the plague until Service Pack 1 is released.

Hoosier Daddy · Post by **Hoosier Daddy** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:36 pm

I have no interest in Vista, having lived through Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98 1/2, the Millenium edition, and now XP. I liked 95, 2000 and XP -- the others were horrid for one reason or another.

Just because Microsoft rolls it out doesn't mean you're getting a bigger, better deal. The computer industry (and specifically Microsoft) was my first exposure to the business model that says 'We'll get it out the door first and fix everything that's wrong with it later'.

Right now, there are a lot of compatibility problems with Vista and other programs. I want to see "VISTA Compatible" on at least 80% of my frequently used non-Microsoft stuff, like RealPlayer, QuickTime, Quicken, and all the Macromedia stuff (Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Flash, et. al.) that I use on a daily basis. I also want a sizeable percentage of fellow 'puter users to say "Hey, VISTA is good stuff, and it WORKS!!!

Right now, no one is saying that ...

ashton · Post by **ashton** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:36 pm

As for music, I really like winamp 2.x, as it became pretty bloated after that. Get the advanced crossfading plugin, and you have a seamless stream of music, with very low resource useage.

fearpeddler · Post by **fearpeddler** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:38 pm

XP XP XP XP XP XP XP........ dont think i can stress it enough..... get an upgrade package for vista in the future, but right now XP is the way to go, like any new OS you're not gonna see too much vista stuff (app wise) for a while....

Hoosier Daddy · Post by **Hoosier Daddy** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 11:38 pm

Lester,

Out of curiosity, will you be upgrading the Message Board to the latest, greatest phpBB roll-out?

Ace Purple · Post by **Ace Purple** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:19 am

While Vista has worked out pretty well on my home computer, after dealing with some IT nightmares at work related to Vista, I have to give a strong recommendation for XP Pro over Vista.

Tom Taggart · Post by **Tom Taggart** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:23 am

XP Pro. Although Lester has a good point that there is a lot of speculation here, not actual experience, why buy a headache? Let someone else debug Vista.

See article here:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/p ... ost.html#a

Excerpt:

"In order to appropriately protect content, Vista will probably have to disable any special device features that it can't directly control. For example many sound cards built on C-Media chipsets (which in practice is the vast majority of them) support Steinberg's ASIO (Audio Stream I/O), a digital audio interface that completely bypasses the Windows audio mixer and other audio-related driver software to provide more flexibility and much lower latency than the Windows ones. ASIO support is standard for newer C-Media hardware like the CMI 8788. Since ASIO bypasses Windows' audio handling, it would probably have to be disabled, which is problematic because audiophiles and professional musicians require ASIO support specifically because of its much higher quality than the standard Windows channels (you can get more information on Vista's audio architecture and the changes from XP in this post from Creative Labs)."

Reference post at: (watch the wrap)

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs ... ge.id=1694

Lester · Post by **Lester** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 8:00 am

To clarify my earlier comment... if you're not doing anything heavy, (the equivalent usage that most of us would subscribe to our mother or grandmother) then Vista will be just fine. It would be no different that throwing Ubuntu on something. It will surf the web, it will play music, it will play DVD's (with appropriate player), etc. Also worth considering... if you plan on selling your laptop in 3-4 years, a Vista license might get you more money.

If you plan on doing anything else, go with XP. Vista runs slower, lacks software compatibility, and is weak on driver support (Driver support shouldn't be an issue if it is pre-installed on your laptop.) Also, as Fear Peddler pointed out, some manufacturers sell XP on the laptop, with the Vista upgrade free.... meaning you can get it with XP, and upgrade to OEM Vista later on down the road.

Hoosier Daddy wrote:Out of curiosity, will you be upgrading the Message Board to the latest, greatest phpBB roll-out?

Sometime after March... if it is ready to go. As best I can tell it is in Beta right now... and I don't do beta on anything that effects someone other than myself.

cgarison · Post by **cgarison** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 8:52 am

I like Vista because the start menu has finally been decent tool to launch programs. Plus, the overall look and feel of the interface is easy on the eyes. As a bonus, Vista has a sleep mode that restarts very quickly unlike the sleep mode in XP that would ocassionally slip the computer into an unrecoverable coma.

That being said, let's talk about issues with Vista...

1) It requires lots of RAM. I am running 4 Gig of RAM and I wish I had more.
2.) It is graphics intensive. I have an Nvidia 7600 with 512 MB of RAM and I wish I had much more to use the Media Center functions.
3.)It is slow! It takes twice as long to load applications like Excel 2003 and Access 2003 than it did in XP. Even worse is that it takes even longer to launch the Office 2007 applications than the 2003 apps. This is a kick in the pants considering that I am running a 2.4 GHz Core2Duo and I wish I had much, much more CPU power. FWIW, MS Outllook 2007 is the worst offender for taking a long time to perform a task. And it is very hard to uninstall Outlook 2007 and install Outlook 2003. And unlike the rest of the office suite, you cannot have both on the same computer it is either 2007 or 2003.
4.) I do not trust the Vista Firewall. I am sure that the whole internal firewall is designed to hide the inadequacies of SMB2. Instead of having a program just ask to send a single packet through a traditional firewall, it will ask to send packets between 3 - 8 times. It is a PITA. But dealing with this pain is the only way to what programs are on the computer and possibly trying to phone home or do something else devious. PC Tools Firewall Plus is good firewall program that is freeware and it does an excellent job. FYI, the purpose of the development SMB2 was MS's way to "fcuk with Samba." That is an actual quote from a fromer MS employee.
5.) User Account Control is a really bad concept and is the most annoying thing that I have used in any version of Windows. It is possible to disable this feature, but it is not recommended unless you are running a supplemental firewall, anti-spyware, and anti virus programs.
6.) Aero Glass SUCKS! The only available color for tool bars that are not an Office 2007 program with the ribbon interface is the default bule. There is no way to change that setting anywhere in the control panel. I am pretty sure there is a hack, but I have not had the time to find it.

That is the short of life with Vista. My home PC is not a pure Vista Machine. I have a 500 GB drive setup for XP and a 500 GB drive for Vista. I find that I use Vista a bit more than XP at this current time, but it has taken me 5 months to get to the level where I have been able to move around Vista as well as I move around XP. The learning curve for the ordinary user is not that steep, but trying to get rid of the annoying UAC prompts, protecting the PC and making a PC run at a better than slug's pace takes patience and a bunch of time to tweak the PC.

Lester · Post by **Lester** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 9:43 am

cgarison wrote:1) It requires lots of RAM. I am running 4 Gig of RAM and I wish I had more.

How so? I got money says your system isn't seeing anymore than 3.5gb of it (if that much). Adding more won't bump that number up without Vista 64bit (and a motherboard that supports it).

Big Media · Post by **Big Media** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:56 am

I know I am late to the game here but I vote for XP, too.

I have Vista on a laptop at home and it is pretty and stuff but it runs like a Ford Pinto (thanks Elliott). It is much like having a trophy wife that refuses to put out.

All of my XP machines are running full-blast (meaning with several apps going at once) on old hardware and will still blow smoke screens around my Vista laptop.

Greg Goodfellow · Post by **Greg Goodfellow** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:17 pm

Thanks for all the help, guys! And Lester, you're right. I meant to say NEW computers. With my still-limited computer skills, it looks like XP is gonna win out.

cgarison · Post by **cgarison** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:21 pm

Lester wrote:
cgarison wrote:1) It requires lots of RAM. I am running 4 Gig of RAM and I wish I had more.
How so? I got money says your system isn't seeing anymore than 3.5gb of it (if that much). Adding more won't bump that number up without Vista 64bit (and a motherboard that supports it).

Yes, the motherboard that I bought does support a full 4 gig of Ram. In fact, I just stepped down from 64 bit Ultimate to 32 bit Home Premium over Memorial Day weekend and with my video card it is more like 2.825 gb.

Sad part is the performance ding was not as great as I was expecting. (Maybe that should be the good part.)

And FWIW, the concept of ReadyBoost is a total crock of crap. I have run with and without ReadyBoost using a 2GB PNY ReadyBoost memory stick and cannot see a difference in performance. I also used a standard memory stick (also 2 GB) and it also showed no performance increase. Perhaps it recovers from sleep mode a small fraction of a second quicker, but for the most part that technology is crap.

Lester · Post by **Lester** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 7:47 pm

So you're telling me you're running Vista 32bit, and your system is reporting all 4gb of RAM?

I don't mean to call shenanigans... but... um...

SHENANIGANS.

It has nothing to due with the motherboard, it has to do with 32bit addressing of 4gb of RAM under Windows... Vista and XP (32 bit) can't do it. Even with PAE enabled, they're going to top out around 3.5gb, in the best of conditions.

What motherboard are you using?

cgarison · Post by **cgarison** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 7:32 am

Lester, that is not what I said.

My Intel P965 board can run Vista 64 bit and read all the memory. (The addresibility limit is 8 Gig) I had this configuration until May 27th when I messed thing up royally and hosed up my Vista Ultimate 64 bit installation.

I decided to downgrade and go with the free copy of Vista 32 bit Home Premium. Now, all I can read is 2.8 GB of ram.

Lester · Post by **Lester** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 7:50 am

That was the number I was looking for. Thanks! (Don't know how I missed it the first time)

Did you try doing anything beyond basic tasks using 64-bit? I'm thinking about XP-64 on my next build, and I've actually seen a handful of games list it as a supported OS. I've done Office, eXceed, etc on 64-bit (through testing at work) but never tried firing up Doom 3.

SPIKE NESMITH! · Post by **SPIKE NESMITH!** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:40 am

new != good

Lester · Post by **Lester** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:32 am

In regards to Vista...

new != good ^10

The People's DJ · Post by **The People's DJ** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 11:45 am

Lester wrote:In regards to Vista...

new != good ^10

No no no no no!

In regards to Vista...

FREE!= good^10

And no I haven't found it free

yet.

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Vista or XP Pro?

Vista or XP Pro?

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Vista or XP Pro