So I have a new box and can't pick between xp pro and vista premium. I DO NOT game at all and do not care about vistas visual crap. All I want is something solid and stable...

The only CPU intensive thing i do with my pc is photoshop and bridge...

WHAT SHOULD I DO....

XP


Vista is just XP with more DRM, and more than 10x the clutter and clog.

XP. It'll generally run faster and the hardware support is much better. Really, the only upside to Vista is the pretty crap it has, but if you don't even care for that stuff there is no point to using it.

Posted by Beryl XP Vista is just XP with more DRM, and more than 10x the clutter and clog.

I miss you Beryl. Still sexy i presume.

Posted by Professor Chaos I miss you Beryl. Still sexy i presume.

1) Danke, and what super-photoshops of me did *you* see? ;)

2) What Stewie said - Vista doesn't even have support for SLI yet. It doesn't provide much use for an end user, and certainly takes a lot away.

Posted by Beryl Vista doesn't even have support for SLI yet. It doesn't provide much use for an end user

I agree. SLI doesn't provide much use for an end user.

Especially for Prof Chaos, who doesn't game.

I turn off the visual crap for Vista in the same way that I turn it off for XP.

It doesn't much matter what you use, Vista is fine now. It will be much better in the Fall with Service Pack 1. People will begin coding for it. New hardware will come out that takes advantage of it. All will be milk and honey. The DRM is not a problem is you don't use buy DRM media, which you shouldn't.

Well I think I'll keep XP for now.

I just went on Nikons website and my Nikon film scanner is not supported by Vista, so that basically answers everything. When Nikon comes up with appropriate drivers, then maybe I will make the switch.

Posted by MutantMandias I agree. SLI doesn't provide much use for an end user. Especially for Prof Chaos, who doesn't game. I turn off the visual crap for Vista in the same way that I turn it off for XP. It doesn't much matter what you use, Vista is fine now. It will be much better in the Fall with Service Pack 1. People will begin coding for it. New hardware will come out that takes advantage of it. All will be milk and honey. The DRM is not a problem is you don't use buy DRM media, which you shouldn't.

So you have no arguments for vista other than "It sort of works when you make it more like XP, and maybe will work as good as XP in the future" ... Then why say anything at all?

Vista is slower, supports less hardware *and* software, uses 10x the space of XP, uses far more RAM than XP, outputs inferior audio and video (due to DRM, regardless of what media it is), and provides no obvious reasons to upgrade despite these and other defects.


"I just load an app on XP, it loaded like a rocket instead of a crawl; the visty slug.A dual core acts like a dual with 2 GBs of RAM on XP, not so with visty." - Blackhawk of UER


"The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cite fear of compatibility problems as one of the reasons not to allow their tens of thousands of employees to upgrade to Microsoft's latest operating system"
http://news.com.co...002_3-6166868.html

"The DOT's ban on Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and Office 2007 applies to 15,000 computer users at DOT proper who are currently running the Windows XP Professional operating system. The memo indicates that a similar ban is in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has 45,000 desktop users."
http://www.informa...rticleID=197700789

The FAA, DOT, NIST, and a list of companies have banned upgrading to Vista just for the headaches it can cause.

Posted by Beryl outputs inferior audio and video (due to DRM, regardless of what media it is),

This is false, Vista's DRM does nothing to non-DRM media. It will play back non-DRM files the same as any other OS.

"I just load an app on XP, it loaded like a rocket instead of a crawl; the visty slug.A dual core acts like a dual with 2 GBs of RAM on XP, not so with visty." - Blackhawk of UER

Sorry, not trying to pick on Blackhawk, but he was basically making shit up about Vista in the big thread a while back. Stuff that was easily proved wrong. The Superfech application loading is one of the few features of Vista that actually works as advertised. There are lots of benchmarks out there proving this.

There are lots of good, legitimate reasons to dislike Vista. No need to resort to falsehoods about it.

Posted by Beryl "The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cite fear of compatibility problems as one of the reasons not to allow their tens of thousands of employees to upgrade to Microsoft's latest operating system" http://news.com.co...002_3-6166868.html "The DOT's ban on Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and Office 2007 applies to 15,000 computer users at DOT proper who are currently running the Windows XP Professional operating system. The memo indicates that a similar ban is in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has 45,000 desktop users." http://www.informa...rticleID=197700789 The FAA, DOT, NIST, and a list of companies have banned upgrading to Vista just for the headaches it can cause.

Whatev's.

I said it doesn't matter much what he uses and it doesn't. All of that government back stepping happened with XP when it was new as well, but not nearly as strongly, and the original XP was in much worse shape than Vista is now.

You are correct. I have no arguments for Vista other than "you might as well be using it because you will ultimately be using it." I won't put it on any of my older machines, but all the new ones I build get Vista, because the speed difference is not an issue with new hardware in my opinion. There is no real advantage to using XP.

You sad fucks who rage against new systems simply because you went through puberty on the most recent one.... get over it. I heard all the same shit about XP... how people would never leave Windows 2000. And before that it was NT4 and Win98. I still fucking miss DOS 2, but I have gotten over it.

Posted by MutantMandias You sad fucks who rage against new systems simply because you went through puberty on the most recent one.... get over it. I heard all the same shit about XP... how people would never leave Windows 2000.

I've used Windows 2000 since 1999. It does everything that I want with great stability, performance, and compatibility with basically everything (even a few "XP ONLY" programs I use), without any of the restrictions, virtualitzation liscensing troubles, activation and other hassle, or other silly issues with newer operating systems. A full install is a fair bit *less* than a gig and ran comfortably in 64MB RAM on a 333MHz machine for several years. It also costs just 30$ to buy a license. "Upgrading" without benefits is silly, that's just throwing money out the window. I'm not a zealot - I'm a fan of Solaris, I use XP on my laptop simply because it came with it, and I usually advocate "Microsoft Fundamentals for Legacy PCs" (a special highly optimized version of XP Pro) as the best OS choice for businesses - however it's just stupid to pay for nothing.

Posted by Washu This is false, Vista's DRM does nothing to non-DRM media. It will play back non-DRM files the same as any other OS.

Hmm, you're right, I was under the impression that there was a lack of Component Video/Digital Audio output as well as a lask of ASIO support for *all* applications, as it is, there's just restrictions on DRM media (and no ASIO support).

Wait for Windows 7.

Posted by Beryl Hmm, you're right, I was under the impression that there was a lack of Component Video/Digital Audio output as well as a lask of ASIO support for *all* applications, as it is, there's just restrictions on DRM media (and no ASIO support).

True, Vista does not support ASIO. However, it's not all bad. The audio subsystem is all user-level now so crappy drivers cannot crash the system (I'm looking at you Creative). Second, the WaveRT port driver is supposed to replicate the functionality of ASIO, but I don't know how well it works in practice.

I was thinking though, how is XP with quads? i will run a Q6600 and was told that Vista handles it much MUCH better than XP...

The actual performance gain would probably be negligible at best, especially if you're not a gamer. Multi-tasking performance will already be very good anyway. I have read reports of people running Bit Torrent, multiple chat programs, open browser windows and graphically detailed 3D games at the same time with no performance loss on some of Intel's newer Core 2's and Core 2 Quad's. That's without any kind of special coding for multiple cores.

Also, is this to say you got an E6600 but now are looking to go to Q6600? You might want to wait on that. At least until DDR3 and more boards with support for 1333mhz FSB come out. There are some out already, including the one I'm getting (Gigabyte DS3R) but they're kind of pricey still.

I actually returned the E6600 for the Q6600 today. 292 vs 260 so I figured what the hell... And I decided to get a GA-P35-DS3R because of the P35 chipset (dfi was 965...)

I'm still missing my Quadro Video card to boot up the system...

Good show. That's exactly the board I was gonna suggest. Well, that or the ASUS P5KC. Either way it would have been P35 with support for the higher FSB and DDR3.

Posted by Professor Chaos I actually returned the E6600 for the Q6600 today. 292 vs 260 so I figured what the hell... And I decided to get a GA-P35-DS3R because of the P35 chipset (dfi was 965...) I'm still missing my Quadro Video card to boot up the system...

I would not load Vista unless you needed it for a really good game. Really good.
Play with Vista if you can do it for free, otherwise don't touch it!
Don't make it a primary system that you need to rely on; it's not reliable if for no other reason than MS hide and juxtaposition EVERYTHING.

It takes forever to just make simple changes because MS changed almost everything en if it wasn't broke, they broke it!
XP pro is good for at least 3 if not 5 more years.
Vista can't be repaired; it's seriously flawed, almost from the kernel up.

It will be at least another 5 if not 7 or more years until MS can shoot a new load.
Hopefully someone will seize this opportunity to finally crack Ballmer's nuts, and end MS's OS monopoly once and for all.
It's proven resource hog, seeings believing! Right now my XP Pro machine is running 60 processes and using less then a quarter of it's 2 GB of RAM
Page file is about 400MBs. A DVD movie is running on it and two Firefox connections are in use with many smaller apps running.
Vista will chew up almost this much memory with no second party apps loaded or running easy. Mine was up to 700+ MB of RAM usage at idle after a lighter load than is on this XP Pro machine.
Slick technology impresses me; I'm not impressed with Vista, at all.


MS goofed, no offense Washu, but even with my limited computer skills I can see the train wreck happening.
MS is retreating to their "protect the empire's copyrights, Henry Ford's the Model A is the only car ever needed" mode.
They think the public will buy whatever they sell, and put up with any outrageous behavior they see fit to dish out.
Not so.

After dorking around with Vista for the last week, I'm totally agreeing with what has been said. Right off the bat, the memory usage is INSANE. On Ultimate 32-bit, I was getting up to 700mb of my 1GB RAM used by Windows. After disabling MANY un-needed services, I was able to get it down to 350mb used after boot... but that's still about the same as a fully loaded, un-touched XP config. After doing the same in XP, I can get it down to less than 100mb used by Windows and services.

Even after disabling those services, gaming performance was just horrible, probably due to driver instabilities. Most notably was World of Warcraft. Areas in which I had gotten over 40-50fps on XP with all settings maxed were now down to 15-20fps even with settings pulled back a fair bit. At first I tried to live with it, but then I noticed the sound card also wasn't playing a fair bit of the game sounds properly, and that was just too much.

So, if you're not a gamer: Vista is awesome. It runs beautifully and looks really "pretty" once you disable a bunch of services. If you *are* however a gamer, it will turn your world upside down... in a bad way. I have since gone back to XP Pro and I'm currently using 88mb of RAM with all of my drivers installed, Firefox running and some chat apps. I love it.