Giving Vista what it deserves...

[DGhost]

The people who disliked xp at launch disliked XP RTM!

The XP they like now is XP sp2!

Those two are not same!

actually, the shift was well under way prior to XP SP2. And even after it's release the shift was quite noticable because were quite a few people who had to be updated to XP SP2. In fact, i've worked on several computers this weekend that were still running XP SP1 and had to be updated.

I agree that XP SP2 was the "final touch" that really drove the last remaining people to it. But XP was quite solidly adopted long before SP2 was released.

of course, remembering back most of the bitching about XP was because of things that were really, really trivial.

"OMG it includes so much excess software that I have to install" - regardless of the fact that the average hard drive was plenty large enough to take the hit

"OMG it takes up so much space" - regardless of the fact it did so because it copied the install sources to the hard drive, so you didn't have to dig for your cd every time you made a change.

"OMG i hate the bubblegum interface" - regardless of the fact you could change it.

Sounds like you have already decided for us that Vista is as good as XP, and the worst part is - we can easily show where or how you are wrong. We can demonstrate it, readily, and you won't care or want to care.

I presently run Vista, both public and private builds, on several computers. The newest one is a year old. The oldest one is 4 years old. All run with Aero enabled, with a full feature set. I have less reliability problems with it than I did with XP. Performance on all computers is at least on par with a Windows XP machine with the same software load installed. The last program that had compatability problems was finally patched a few months back. The user experience is quite a bit better and i find myself missing Vista features when I use an XP computer.

Demonstrate to me where I am wrong. Point it out on my computers.

[DGhost]

Of that Xp rtm crashes more than xpsp2?

XP RTM (or at least SP1) was not more prone to crashes than SP2. The drivers available at the time were. this is a common thing that happens with hardware. Look at Vista drivers a year ago versus Vista drivers 6 months ago versus Vista drivers today.

The difference between Vista and XP is that there were significant core changes that make it a lot harder for a driver to crash Vista. A lot of these changes have been bitched about by various prosumers (ie, the Vista audio stack being in user space now and not having direct hardware access, thus breaking hardware acceleration in the traditional sense. Creative X-Fi cards have no problem doing hardware accelerated 3d audio though... funny that...)

vista is slower than xp?

My experience on a mixed variety of computers does not corrolate with that. The one exception to that has been driver performance of legacy graphics cards... and that burdon falls on their manufacturers to actually optimize the performance of their product...

[Technoid]

actually, the shift was well under way prior to XP SP2. And even after it's release the shift was quite noticable because were quite a few people who had to be updated to XP SP2. In fact, i've worked on several computers this weekend that were still running XP SP1 and had to be updated.

I agree that XP SP2 was the "final touch" that really drove the last remaining people to it. But XP was quite solidly adopted long before SP2 was released.

There was several years between rtm and sp2, and most of the "adopting" was because of 2 points, xp rtm was faar better than win98 (urgh ME), it became the default bundled OS.

of course, remembering back most of the bitching about XP was because of things that were really, really trivial.

"OMG it includes so much excess software that I have to install" - regardless of the fact that the average hard drive was plenty large enough to take the hit

"OMG it takes up so much space" - regardless of the fact it did so because it copied the install sources to the hard drive, so you didn't have to dig for your cd every time you made a change.

that sounds more like the vista "OMG"'ds Ive heard, can't really remember anything like that, the most annoying I remember from that time was the "OMG I love XP, no other os is soo good" noobs.

"OMG i hate the bubblegum interface" - regardless of the fact you could change it.

Changing it would require brains

I presently run Vista, both public and private builds, on several computers. The newest one is a year old. The oldest one is 4 years old. All run with Aero enabled, with a full feature set. I have less reliability problems with it than I did with XP. Performance on all computers is at least on par with a Windows XP machine with the same software load installed. The last program that had compatability problems was finally patched a few months back. The user experience is quite a bit better and i find myself missing Vista features when I use an XP computer.

Demonstrate to me where I am wrong. Point it out on my computers.

Now, that is a bit like being asked by religious person to prove that his god does not exist....

[Fat Tone]

Ahhh, the murc of old returns

[Gurm]

On modern hardware, I just like Vista better. It runs nice and fast. But its core requirements are really REQUIREMENTS more than XP's are.

People say 'oh XP really shines with more than 512MB of RAM', but let's face it - XP runs fine on 256mb until you load it up with Office and Photoshop and whatnot.

Vista... needs 2GB. 1.5 will get you by, but once you load it up you kinda need 2. That's a pretty hefty requirement for anything older than a year or so. Even last year's laptops often shipped with 256 or 512, and single-core chips. On a single-core chip Vista really needs quite a hefty amount of speed to work well. It also needs a good video card, and supporting hardware that it likes.

THAT SAID - once you get to the speed Vista needs, and have hardware that can handle Vista, it runs just as well as XP. The laptop on which I'm currently typing runs Vista, although it shipped with XP Dell supports it under Vista completely. And it screams. I have all the bells and whistles turned on and my experience is flawless. Of course it's got 2GB of RAM, and a GFX card that handles Vista, etc.

[Brian Ellis]

But WHY should you need such horsepower to run a mere OS? WHY should you need 10 Gb of HDD space just for the basic OS? 20 years ago, I was running a 386 25 MHz with 1024 KILObytes of RAM and WordPerfect was doing all I needed of a word processor - and I can't type any faster now. I was running an ECAD system on it, as well and various other things. I was programming on it and compiling my work was faster then than it is today, because the results were running under a lean and mean OS, called MS-DOS, not under a bloatware like Vista. The proggies worked efficiently, fast and never crashed. Yes, the screen was less pretty, but who the hell cares, the darned things worked well, fast and efficiently? Dammit! A computer needed to run Vista today would have been classed a super-computer 20 years ago!

And what do I get with the Vista catastrophe? Pretty eye-candy and the inability to run about one-quarter of the applications I was reasonably happy to use under XP! No thanks!

[Fat Tone]

Come on Bry. You have a point to an extent, but you weren't doing any of your video editing then, you weren't doing much more than one thing at a time, you probably weren't networked and there wasn't a big bad internet world to protect you from.

[Nowhere]

...and there wasn't a big bad internet world to protect you from.

Come to think of it...that's very convienient for OS vendors...


BTW Gurm, I understand that majority of laptopos sold in the States now don't have Celerons with 512-1024 MBs of RAM?...
(yep, and they put Vista on them...)

[DGhost]

Technoid - and i'm pointing out that the prosumer kneejerk reaction that is going 'OMG Vista is teh DEVAL!!!' is what is actually preventing that trend from happening with Vista. Or at least delaying it. Vista is in general far better than XP was.

Modern hardware, Vista runs perfectly fine. It runs far better on a dual core machine than XP ever will. And, as opposed to XP, it will take advantage of extra memory that you give it. If you track actual memory usage of Vista, you would see that it easily breaks 512mb and rarely, in desktop usage, breaks 1GB. Especially if you have a dedicated graphics card. But giving it that extra GB will result in tangible increases in performance because it can use it to precache data and further reduce disk access.

Now, it's not quite the same with UMA systems. The fact that the graphics cards sucks up some extra memory does some extra memory hit, but it's really not bad for desktop usage. If you try to run a game though, you are looking at an extra 100-200mb of ram that is being taken up. This is not dissimilar to an XP system. The difference is that it is much more pronounced since Vista does use more memory to start off with.

I will also admit that performance on a single core machine is a little rough at times. However, I have a Pentium-M and a Athlon64 3200+ (Clawhammer, baby) that both run it without problem It's not as smooth as it could be, but it is still extremely usable and it still keeps pace with XP. If not being faster.

Like I said earlier, On average, Vista runs as good or better as an XP computer with a similar set of software installed on it. The major differences are the little under the hood changes that result in extra boosts in performance. Instead of waiting for Outlook to read it's ginormous self off the hard drive, it's already in memory.

btw, the system I am writing this on right now is a Dell e1405. It's a dual core, 1.83 ghz system with an integrated graphics card. It runs vista flawlessly. I believe it picks up everything out of the box (i have not reinstalled in a while), and if not out of box then off of windows update. The new powermangement features have completely eliminated the need for me to install any third party system utils that were, for me, mandatory under XP.

[Brian Ellis]

Yes I was doing video then: granted only linear titling, but it was a start. I was not networked, granted, but I was certainly multi tasking (forgotten the name of the utility!).

[Tjalfe]

nothing stopping you from still running DOS and doing linear editing

[Brian Ellis]

Memory returned, DESQview!

The problem with DOS apps is that there are no drivers for modern hardware and peripherals.

[cjolley]

Memory returned, DESQview!

The problem with DOS apps is that there are no drivers for modern hardware and peripherals.

By cracky, if you would just be a real man and work with COBOL and punch cards you wouldn't be worried about sissy stuff like so-called "drivers".

[Claymonkey]

*wheez* by gum in my day if we had 16mhz on our 386 we counted our stars and got by with disk compression to fit more on our 40mb hard drives. *cough*

Thus was my first experience with x86 after leaving the world or the Apple 2e (I'm not as old as some of you

Still I ran Vista on my laptop for 3 months and have since switched back to XP. I'll probably give Vista an honest chance again when SP1 came out. Hopefully by then all the network and printer issues will be cleared up. If I have problems connected to MSN depending on my location through Vista then I know something is funky.

Still XP was a pain until SP1 and I stayed with 2k.. all things considered this has been an easier transition.

[Dr Mordrid]

I didn't start using Windoze until the Amiga went belly up and there was no upgrade path, and then it was a real letdown. Until then my systems were all equipped with Video Toasters and ran circles around the Windows editing hardware of the day, not to mention Windows 95 being lame as hell compared to Workbench & AmigaOS.

IF the editing software today ran under Linux I doubt there would be a Windows system in the house. As it is Erik prefers running Ubuntu to Windows and I cant blame him; his rig runs like a racehorse under it. No PC games, internet gaming and Oo2 for schoolwork and his writing, but he has an X360 and PS2 for that.