Windows Vista vs Windows XP

I have been running Windows XP pro. for about 5 years now. I am building a
new system and I am considering Windows Vista for a operating system. Are
there advantages to Vista over XP? What is the best version of Vista? Any
advise would be appreciated. Thanx

Windows Vista was designed for the latest hardware
and would be the best choice for your new computer.
Either Vista Home Premium or Ultimate would be the
preferred versions of Vista for your new computer.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

---------------------------------------------------------------

"Red Dog" wrote:

I have been running Windows XP pro. for about 5 years now. I am building a
new system and I am considering Windows Vista for a operating system. Are
there advantages to Vista over XP? What is the best version of Vista? Any
advise would be appreciated. Thanx

this is the best advice: get a 4 core with 4 gigs and get vista ultimate
with downgrade rights to xp (you will be entitled to an XP pro disk along
with the vista one)

that way you have best of both worlds, in case you think vista stinks.. you
can downgrade to xp without paying anything extra.

you can also do this with vista business.. but this depends on where you buy
your pc from, so ask before you buy.


"Red Dog" <> wrote in message
news:E9EBFC20-CE08-48CA-81F5-...
>I have been running Windows XP pro. for about 5 years now. I am building a
> new system and I am considering Windows Vista for a operating system. Are
> there advantages to Vista over XP? What is the best version of Vista?
> Any
> advise would be appreciated. Thanx

"On the Bridge! (An MVP upgrade)" <On@the,bridge> wrote in message
news:47ded0e5$...
> this is the best advice: get a 4 core with 4 gigs and get vista ultimate

If you go this route then be sure you get 64 bit Vista. 32 bit won't be
able to use all 4 gigs of RAM, along with other 32 bit limitations. Yes,
all of your old 32 bit apps will work fine.

what you say about the ram is true..

but here is my thoughts about this

get 4 gigs of ram even though only the 3 will be visible from a 32 bit OS.
You do this because in the future 64 bit will be mainstream. However
using 64 bit now is not advised since many hardware drivers do not come in
64 bit and even simple programs like adobe flash dont come out in 64 bit.

in any case whatever Vista you get, you are entitled to the 64 bit version
for free or at a minimal cost of the shiping and handling cost of MS to send
you the media.
If you get ulimate retail both disks are in the box.

(stupid box by the way) lol


"Bob Campbell" <> wrote in message
news:...
> "On the Bridge! (An MVP upgrade)" <On@the,bridge> wrote in message
> news:47ded0e5$...
>> this is the best advice: get a 4 core with 4 gigs and get vista ultimate
>
> If you go this route then be sure you get 64 bit Vista. 32 bit won't be
> able to use all 4 gigs of RAM, along with other 32 bit limitations.
> Yes, all of your old 32 bit apps will work fine.

"Red Dog" <> wrote in message
news:E9EBFC20-CE08-48CA-81F5-...
>I have been running Windows XP pro. for about 5 years now. I am building a
> new system and I am considering Windows Vista for a operating system. Are
> there advantages to Vista over XP? What is the best version of Vista?
> Any
> advise would be appreciated. Thanx

Vista does not seem to offer too many purely technical advantages that I can
see except perhaps for you can get a 64 bit version. Unlike XP Pro x64, you
can actually buy Vista 64 bit boxed. Given the OS base footprint of memory,
and you are building, 4GB minimum and leave the extra memory slots open for
4GB more.

The next part of Vista I like is with Mail (Outlook Express is now mail).
Other than a quirk in the keyboard mapping that pops up once and awhile, it
seems to have some kind of spam filtering capabilities. Also nice now that
spell check is part of Mail.

After that it is visual. I do like the glass-aero interface, lots of show,
looks nice.

Being a Premium 64 bit user of Vista, I have not had any issues I can
attribute to being 64 bit. This is good.

Now for the ugly. It is noticeably slower than XP, slower to copy files in
and out on the network, slower to copy large files disk to disk. Just plain
slower and is very much noticeable. It isn`t the hardware either, the newer
Vista machine is 4 processors, each much faster than the XP ones. Drives on
Vista are SATA 150, on XP they are ATA 133. By rights, Vista should be
faster but is plain slow.

There are bugs. After viewing emails newsgroups, some keys on the lower
right of the keyboard don`t display correctly, the question mark is hosed,
quotes go wrong and I have to quit-restart mail to get it to work. Little
bugs like this abound.

Premium should be called Basic. It is missing stuff like the policy editor.
So if you wanted to do something like mount a SMB share from Samba, your
into hurt. I understand Ultimate has this, but I already thought I bought
an OS...

Me, if I had a legal copy of XP Pro 64 bit I would wipe Vista right off this
system right now. I have 8GB, so 64 bit has it`s merits for me. But am not
happy I can`t by XP Pro x64. (Might be able to lift a copy, but no my
style).

Dual boot is a PITA, if it can be done at all with OEM disks. But I haven`t
found a way. But suspect if you buy a full version of the disks you might
be able too. But I have yet to explore a bios feature my system has where I
can select disks. Perhaps this weekend if long overdue SP1 does good.

My other two MS-Windows systems that I have - one is XP MCE and the other XP
Pro. These will remain my main PCs until Vista is fixed. XP MCE and XP Pro
are both more stable, less bugs and run more effectively on the hardware -
period.

If you are loading Vista for a preview look you will not be disappointed.
But ready for production in business it is not. And it certainly isn`t for
everybody.

Red Dog wrote:
> I have been running Windows XP pro. for about 5 years now. I am building a
> new system and I am considering Windows Vista for a operating system. Are
> there advantages to Vista over XP? What is the best version of Vista? Any
> advise would be appreciated. Thanx

If you wanna get the OH?, (Used to be WOW!), then get Vista Premium, Or
Ultimate. I have Ultimate, (Full ver), and like it. Have not had any big
problems with it. I clean installed and dual boot with XP, but rarely
boot to XP anymore I run it on a 3.0gb HT Intel, 320gb HD and started
with 1gb mem, which was ok, but upgraded to 2gb mem and it does well
with that. I have the crappy 915 chip set, so had to add a vid card to
get the "WOW".

Cheers

"On the Bridge! (An MVP upgrade)" <On@the,bridge> wrote in message
news:47ded5ef$...
> what you say about the ram is true..
>
> but here is my thoughts about this
>
> get 4 gigs of ram even though only the 3 will be visible from a 32 bit OS.
> You do this because in the future 64 bit will be mainstream. However
> using 64 bit now is not advised since many hardware drivers do not come in
> 64 bit and even simple programs like adobe flash dont come out in 64 bit.

64 bit driver support is vastly improved from a year ago. Even my 10 year
old HP LaserJet 4+ has a 64 bit driver. Lack of 64 bit Adobe Flash is not
an issue because 32 bit IE runs fine (and Firefox and others), along with
all existing 32 bit plugins. Besides, I normally disable Flash anyways - I
don't need animated ads on every friggin web page I go to. I only enable
it when absolutely necessary.

The future is here. Get 64 bit Vista now. Unless you have some ancient
parallel port scanner or something that has no driver (and likely has no 32
bit Vista driver either), then 64 bit is the way to go on Core 2 Duo and
Quad based systems. This Core 2 Quad system I have can take 8 GB RAM!
How am I going to use that with 32 bit Vista (or 32 bit anything for that
matter)?

some people play games.. how is your experience with 64 bit vista and games?


"Bob Campbell" <> wrote in message
news:...
> "On the Bridge! (An MVP upgrade)" <On@the,bridge> wrote in message
> news:47ded5ef$...
>> what you say about the ram is true..
>>
>> but here is my thoughts about this
>>
>> get 4 gigs of ram even though only the 3 will be visible from a 32 bit
>> OS.
>> You do this because in the future 64 bit will be mainstream. However
>> using 64 bit now is not advised since many hardware drivers do not come
>> in 64 bit and even simple programs like adobe flash dont come out in 64
>> bit.
>
> 64 bit driver support is vastly improved from a year ago. Even my 10
> year old HP LaserJet 4+ has a 64 bit driver. Lack of 64 bit Adobe Flash
> is not an issue because 32 bit IE runs fine (and Firefox and others),
> along with all existing 32 bit plugins. Besides, I normally disable
> Flash anyways - I don't need animated ads on every friggin web page I go
> to. I only enable it when absolutely necessary.
>
> The future is here. Get 64 bit Vista now. Unless you have some ancient
> parallel port scanner or something that has no driver (and likely has no
> 32 bit Vista driver either), then 64 bit is the way to go on Core 2 Duo
> and Quad based systems. This Core 2 Quad system I have can take 8 GB
> RAM! How am I going to use that with 32 bit Vista (or 32 bit anything for
> that matter)?

If you are building a new PC with Vista in mind then I would strongly
suggest that you take your parts list and head over to the Vista
Hardware Compatibility site before making any purchases
(https://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/). There you can find out whether or
not the drivers you will need are available for the various components
you are considering.

I'm in agreement with those suggesting a 64-bit version of Vista, but
you will definitely want to check that drivers are available if you
intend on recycling older components or peripherals in your new system
(anyone want to buy an old Canon flatbed scanner, works fine with Vista
x86, but forget about using it with x64).


--
mkprilliman

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