Vista versus XP
 

I'm about to splash out and replace my ailing system, and just about everything half way decent comes with a Vista package. (Please, no "get a Mac/go Linux" suggestions; I'm too set in my ways.)

I see Microsoft says the'll drop XP next year, so I suppose I'll have to accept the inevitable and go Vista. However, I keep hearing from friends that they are having a terrible time with Vista, from incompatible drivers for many f their older programs to being unable to use it for work-related applications because our employer's site does not support Vista.

So, question: is a Vista 'Service pack 2' in the wind, that will hopefully resolve many of these problems, (and if so, when)? Also, is there anyone out there who is positive about Vista? From what little I've seen of it, it isn't a big enough step beyone XP to make it worth the inevitable grief that's so sure to follow if i get it.

I have just got a laptop with Vista. Your friends are right...most of my old software will not work inc. my old antivirus.
It tends to predict what I want to do with anoying popups to link me to the wrong programme.
It is a step up from XP, but only just.

I much prefer XP. My old laptop that is broken is XP. My newish laptop is Vista and is a pain in the bum. I have issues with pretty much everthing I have loaded on it, as with most people I have 'old' software that needs to be upgraded with Vista drivers, this is really annoying!

I should have my old lappy repaired next week and I cant wait to be honest.

I am considering buying another laptop just purely for my photography stuff, if I do I will certainly go out and look for an XP Laptop.

It shouldn't matter if they drop XP. Millions of people use XP and will do for years too. It shouldn't have an effect on anyone really except all new computers will have Vista and new software will be released with suport for Vista instead of trawling around the internet looking for updates....

I have Vista now and after the first few frustrating weeks of getting stuff to work or finding alternatives I now actually prefer it to XP.
The only annoyance I still have is the permissions part where it always asks you again if you give it permission to install or run something.
Lots of neat features built in now and after running it daily for the majority of this year it hasn't once crashed.

To answer your question just look at the number of equipment suppliers who have rapidly gone from 'Vista only' new equipment to 'Vista or XP' due to the very real concerns and reluctance over Vista.

I've been running Vista on my Core2Duo E6600 with 2GB RAM desktop for a few months now, and I much prefer it to XP. My install is very stable, and I have had no software or driver issues at all.

The only possible issue is a warning whenever I load up Photoshop Elements 4 and Vista warns that this application was not designed for Vista. I've never had any problems with it though.

My Celeron M 430 Laptop which came with Vista is sluggish, but again no problems with stability. However, I'm just about to put Ubuntu Linux on it, for no particular reason other than curiosity.

Microsoft has just issued SP1 for Vista in beta form, to its testers. So it wont be long before it's shrinked wrapped. Also released in beta is SP3 for XP.

My life is based on DOS programs which run fine under XP. I hear that they will not run under Vista, especially the ones with graphics. Is that true?

Don't suggest "get modern software". These are legacy database systems which would have to be entirely rewritten. They are important to a business.

I've tried DOSbox under XP. Will it run under Vista? Which Vista?

There are so many flavours of Vista that I fear there may not be a single answer.

seacue

Vista v Xp
 

I recently splashed out on a new desktop system which came with Vista Pre-installed. I'm not impressed with Vista, and would like to remove it from my pc and install a new copy of XP.
What I would like to know is the best way to go about it. Previous experience has taught me that you can't always downgrade without doing something drastic to the hard drive.
Any help on this much appreciated.
John

GreenGranite,
I would suggest a touch of caution here - many large organisations, and manufacturers, said that they would wait for the SP1 before they looked at rolling out Vista widely. This is mainly based on past experience that the SP1 tends to be a major upgrade to fix a load of the problems that got left in the original release.

In this case, I think Microsoft was a bit taken aback (certainly the Product Marketing guys I spoke to seemed to be genuinely shocked this time last year when they asked how many people would wait for SP1 & saw nearly all of the hands in the audience go up) so they have pushed forward an SP1 to get us all to move to Vista and I'm not sure that it has all of the content we'd like to see especially in regard to supporting legacy applications.

Of course we're now saying "We'll wait for a proper SP" but I guess it'll be like the first Vista release - we'll test it & make our own judgement based on how big an impact it will have on our support teams, SLAs etc.

That is the main reason why XP is going to SP3 - MS tried to can it earlier in the year & got a huge backlash against that, so SP3 is some of the features to help XP & Vista SP1 work better together.

Personally, I'm holding onto XP until I can see that Vista is as smooth & easy to use. And while I understand the comments about "Not Linux & not Mac", every Ubuntu Linux release gets smoother & easier and I figure the decision will soon get harder.

MS orginally intended to stop making XP available to Retail & OEMs after Jan 2008, but have have now extended this to June. System Builder License Availability end date is Jan 2009. Licenses will continue to be available through downgrade rights available in Volume Licensing programs after end of general availability.

Mainstream XP support will continue for 2 years after that, while extended (paid for) support will continue for a further 3 years (i.e. up to 2013). XP SP3 (which backports several of the better parts of Vista) will be available in January.

So your new system will be EOL long before XP is dead and gone.

My advice? Go for XP. Even on a high-end machine Vista is slower than XP most of the time. And it'll be a long time before peripheral makers stop including XP drivers.

:ok: Mac

Oh and seacue - "My life is based on DOS programs which run fine under XP. I hear that they will not run under Vista, especially the ones with graphics. Is that true?" - they won't if they try and talk directly to the hardware.

Either DosEMU or DosBox should run most of them fine under Linux.

My post about the service packs was meant purely as info, not as a suggestion that now SP1 is here it'll be ok batninth :)I too think it's a bit on the quick side and smacks of the "quick give them a service pack so they buy it" type exercise. I shall avoid it because of the DRM issues which tend to cripple the OS

I have a setup CD for XP SP2 - I have made TWO backup copies to ensure that I can continue to use it for the foreseeable future.

MS extended the extended support period for Win 2000 by 3 years (2007-2010) due to the demand / pressure to do so. I would not be AT ALL surprised if even mainstream support for XP were to be continued beyond 2010.

Vista? No thanks.

I have a stable fast install of Vista. I find it loads btter than xp, dx10 is great & I would not go back.

I really don't see that those working in a dos database environment are entitled to coplain about Vista - it wasn't made with that in mind. Those people should content themselves with 3.1.

Most problems that I see are caused by software & hardware vendors rather than MS itself, after all, vista was in development for five plus years - the 3rd party community are a little disingenous to come out & say they don't have compatible software, drivers etc when they've had plenty of time to patch/update theur products.

Fargoo, go to user accounts & switch off user account control & your vista experience will improve no end.

Parapunter

MS tend not to give too much notice on this stuff. Yes, you can get access to Beta & Release Candidate code, but they don't answer questions on it so when you hit a problem you're left waiting for the next version to see if it has gone away. In reality that means that the manufacturers get 2/10ths of naff-all time to actually test before full release.

Anyway - I thought there was supposed to be upward compatability - if it is .NET 2.0 code then it should run on Vista....pity it doesn't seem to. And the .NET 3.0 release is available for XP so they should be able to test applications on that. The fact is I've seen ordinary applications that run fine on XP yet don't seem to run on Vista- nothing to do with 5 years of advance warning at all.

Parapunter,

I don't really care who's fault it is, if my equipment and software work with XP and not with Vista then Vista is of no use to me.

Quite so - I agree entirely.

Would that Gates' greedy geeks understood that.....

Parapunter said - "Most problems that I see are caused by software & hardware vendors rather than MS itself, after all, vista was in development for five plus years - the 3rd party community are a little disingenous to come out & say they don't have compatible software, drivers etc when they've had plenty of time to patch/update theur products."

Vista has been in dev for longer than that, but they decided the codebase was such a mess that they did a complete restart 3 years ago. It's now just a different kind of mess. Since MS only publishes a limited subset of the system APIs (and makes you pay for the SDK) and the codebase is closed, writing drivers is somewhat unpredictable. And, of course, you have to pay MS for driver signing (which doesn't mean they're bug free) before the OS will even attempt to load them.

MS is not particularly developer friendly.

Mac

PS: In fairness, many of the Linux kernel API's change with each new release. But at least the code is open and you can see what's and why. Much more dev friendly.

Anyone using 64-bit Vista, with its 'signed drivers only'?

MS is not particularly developer friendly.
...
In fairness, many of the Linux kernel API's change with each new release. But at least the code is open and you can see what's and why. Much more dev friendly.

As a professional software engineer I have to profoundly disagree.

If you write to a specification, and can't look at the source code, you have a much better chance of writing an application that will work on the next version and the version after that than if you have to poke around the source code (at considerably more expense than just reading the API spec) to see what the API does because the documentation is crap or non-existent.