UAC has saved me from several viruses/spyware. Don't hate it because you don't have the patience to click "allow".

I vote Vista - I've had a much better experience with it. It's easier to navigate, easier to trouble shoot, and 64bit is much more stable than XP 64.

So, if you already have Vista, use it. If not, then don't bother buying it.

Yeah... but I only get that if I'm installing something. Which I don't mind at all.

Wait, what? I'm not a Vista hater or anything, but how does Aero speed up the interface? All it does is add visual fluff... which COSTS speed.

Personally, I find the interface to be a lot slower, and its pretty much my only problem with it.
-Whenever a program crashes, there's a progress bar that looks for solutions that has to be closed.
-You can't reliably force a program to close without actually finding the process and ending that...
-Explorer insists on loading thumbnails even in directories that contain thousands of files...
-Explorer still crashes and takes half the interface with it! (Although this is really no different from XP)
-File copy and especially unzipping using explorer are very sluggish operations, even with the latest service packs



It's really hard to say if this is true. They moved/renamed a few parts of the Windows interface and the new locations are very confusing for veteran windows warriors. But I won't judge Vista on that, because I don't mind getting used to a couple of new things if they turn out to be better. We'll see.

Burning a DVD in Vista is pure stupid. I just want to write files to a DVD. I don't want to write a ****ty multi-session filesystem on it that not everything can read. Just write a ****ing image.

For Vista, I have a simple guideline.

If your computer came with XP, it should probably not be upgraded to Vista. Vista demands alot of resources, this is one of the biggest complaints about Vista. Basically Microsoft should adjust the minimum requirements of Vista to something like:

2.0 ghz dual core or better
2gb ram or better
A dedicated PCI-E GPU

Because once you have ample resources Vista runs beautifully, is much more responsive because it does a better job caching UI/HD. XP seems to hit a wall, it doesnt matter how much faster the CPU/GPU get it simply doesnt cache the UI/HD intelligently.

XP will always be faster for gaming, but multitasking wont ever feel as smooth.

No, that's a common misconception (yet more people who think they know Vista but don't!).

Aero itself is not just the fancy UI. It's also a GPU-accelerated backend. It takes the load of rendering windows off of the CPU. This means that when your CPU is being raped, Windows will remain far more responsive. It also fixes numerous mulit-monitor issues with spanning, and allows the fancy UI without any real performance loss.

XP does something similar with Error Reports. You can turn both off.

XP is the same way? Vista is actually better about killing programs than XP was, especially when you're trying to reboot the system. If you hit reboot, it'll prompt you to kill any programs that aren't quitting normally, and if you don't respond in about 10-15 seconds, it'll go ahead and kill them for you.

XP does this too, and you can turn it off if you really want. Vista actually improved thumbnailing performance over XP though.

Yes, but unlike XP, all of your system tray icons will return. Everything resets itself when explorer comes back up.

Unzipping on XP was also terribly slow. File copy performance WAS fixed with a few hotfixes, and really only bothered network copying. I typically max out my hard drive/network when copying.


Many parts of the interface were changed for the better, and on the off chance you can't figure out how to get what you need, just search for it. That was the entire purpose of adding search boxes all over.

For example, someone was complaining about the number of clicks it takes to get to network connections. I can do this just by going to control panel, and searching for "view network" and hitting "View Network Connections".



XP does the same thing by default.



This is wrong. If you have a powerful enough system, the gaming performance will become negligible. And if you're running DirectX 10, you may even see a performance improvement at high quality settings. (See Anandtech's latest article about FarCry2)

CM, as an obvious expert on Vista (more expert then anyone else I've talked to at least), I was wondering if you could tell me this:

In windows xp, I have all my desktop icons hidden, and have an address toolbar in my windows bar.
This is so that I can have hundreds of shortcuts on my desktop, and run them by typing in just a few letters (for instance, I type FA and I get a short list consisting of Family Guy, Fallout Tactics and Fallout 3).
Is that still possible in Vista?

I know that's a long-winded way of explaining something simple, but last time I asked someone this they misunderstood me completely.

Unless I'm looking at the wrong article, its only comparing Vista dx9 to dx10. I don't see any Vista dx9 to XP dx9 comparisons. But I agree, If your system is powerful enough you wont notice any difference.

I'm not really sure what you mean, but the start menu's built in search will search start menu items as well as desktop items. If you start typing "fa" into the start menu, a list will come up with anything that matches.

Hmm, that's close to what I mean, but not quite.
I wanted it to say anything in the desktop, but not in the start bar.
Also my bar let's me navigate my pc by typing in d:\games\etc
Basically it works like the address bar does in any xp folder (you can run apps from there too)
Also it let me do things like regedit and that, without having to go start->run

The Vista start search does almost exactly that.

Hmm, I'll have to try it out on my nan's pc.
See, that's kinda the main requirement, as arbitrary as it might sound to you. I've fallen in love my way of using the pc, and if vista can't do it would annoy me no end.

You mean the "Address" toolbar that you can add to the taskbar? You can do that in Vista. But the start search is better.

I just use Launchy (Thanks genk or whoever showed it to me) (for both XP and Vista)

Deadman: Looks like it to me, Address bar is still there and you can still disable desktop icons.

Although really, the start menu is superior, as it's indexed and can run more than whats on your desktop. Just hit the start button and start typing.

Haha yeah, the start key was introduced like a decade ago, and it's finally useful.

Irony is though I still don't use it. I use quick launch, and even then I usually have most of my programs running 24/7 anyway.

Just downloaded this program. It really is made of win.

This questions is like asking "Would you rather be punched in the right testicle, or the left testicle?"

Right.

Seriously.

XP waiting on Windows 7

Fixed.

Here's what I think. I personally run Vista Ultimate. Runs great, just takes a while to customize to my needs. I would never switch back to XP. I don't have to tweak anything to get it to recognize and use all my RAM and Hard drive. I run games pretty smoothly. I ran XP for the longest time. But then again, I haven't paid full price for an OS ever. XP was a student deal at IU. Vista was part of that survey program a while back. If you have the resources to run Vista, performance is not an issue. Its just doing the minor tweaking (as will all OS's) to run it to your preferences.

this ^