32bit Vista Ultimate or XP pro?

[abu_has_the_power]

I just bought a Dell XPS M1330 (http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-hardware-24/t-just-bought-dell-xps-m1330-questions-272063)
and it comes with 32bit vista home prem. I can get Vista Ultimate upgrade (5 installations) from my school for $15.

Should I go Vista Ultimate or back to XP pro?

the only reason why I would go XP is because protowall and peerguardian don't support vista.

I don't plan on gaming that heavily on this laptop, so a few lost frames isn't a big deal for me.

I'd just like to know if Vista is stable enough to use right now. :mellow: :noes::yup: :blink:

[SCR]

I would go with Vista Ultimate ...i have it for about 5 months now without a crash and verry stable . But you should wait different opinions as well.

[Broken]

Vista is a write off operating system that'll only have a life span of maybe another year.
Go with Xp.

[x34]

God i hate vista!

[clocker]

For $15 what do you have to lose?
Buy Vista and try it out...just don't activate it.

You can always revert back to XP if you want.

[abu_has_the_power]

that's what i was thinking.

i am also looking at all the software on my laptop now, and a good half to quarter of them are 3rd party stuff. many don't have vista support.

most importantly, pg and protowall.
so now i'm stuck in the middle. leaning slightly more towards xp.

[lodi]

i heard that a second edition of Vista is coming out soon! how true is that?

[tesco]

i heard that a second edition of Vista is coming out soon! how true is that?service pack 1.
Not much is new in it.;)

[panoli]

Xp is better now.

[lostdemon]

I don't like that Vista still isn't compatible with some software so my choise is XP.

[kayvanblue]

xp at least till Q3

[S!X]

I would go with vista, I went from xp media center edition to 32bit vista ultimate and really like it. My comp could use another gig of ram though.

[peat moss]

Xp for sure .

[kaiweiler]

I say give Vista a try, it has improved significantly in the last few months and is very stable. Also compatibility has improved a lot.
What have you got to lose really? Might as well try it.
I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit and I have yet to come across any compatibility problems. 32bit is even more compatible.

[~ATB~]

vista is better

[100%]

http://filesharingtalk.com/vb3/f-hardware-24/t-xp-v-vista-262071

[athenaesword]

xp 4eva
=)

just wait till the nxt OS comes out to kick vista out of the way.

[C-mos]

vista :>:>

[svr]

If you game even a little bit, then XP is better. Some games dont just work in vista. Im not talking about few lost fps, they wont even start.

If you already own XP, no need to waste money on vista.

[SenorBubbz]

XP Pro, wait another year for Microsoft to work out the "several" kinks in Vista

[d1sc0nt3nt]

Vista Ultimate, can't wait for SP1 :)

[abu_has_the_power]

i may have to go w/ vista now.

dell is stupid and isn't releasing a bluetooth driver for 32bit xp for this laptop. the one i'm using now is for another laptop and it conflicts with my sound drivers. sigh

[Ubuntuburningm]

let vista rot on your compute and get xp!!

[cheruba1]

Go XP there are so many problems with Vista.

[mr. nails]

the only reason why I would go XP is because protowall and peerguardian don't support vista.

i don't know anything about that eWALL, but as for peerguardian it works like a champ on vista. also, eWALL hasn't been updated in 1.5 years. peerguardian has in the last 6 months.

vista is VERY stable and works fine as long as u have a decent system to push it.

all the ppl in this thread stating that vista is buggy and horrible plz explain why u say this. even when i was running vista on my 3 year old amd 64 system it worked very well.

i used vista64 for 1 year and no problems. i'm using vista32 right now and the performance is the same imo. i'll be going back to vista64 whenever i upgrade my ram 2 more gig. basically i'm running vista32 to see the diff between it and it's 64bit brother.

i vote VISTA, but XP pro is fine as well. either way, both are fine. i chose vista cuz i like it acutally and i game so i need the dx10. u gain cool shades and effects from dx10 and the performance hit isn't bad at all.

u could also just stay with xp for another 1-2 years while windows 7 cums out. i'm thinking vista was the pre-windows 7 anyway. ms will be finished with vista after sp1 and will turn it's focus to windows 7. vista will die off like ME did and u'll have xp and windows 7 to choose from then and all these software hate crimes will start all over.

[GinzuNinja]

vote goes to xp.
my system has 1024mb ram and e2180 cpu, but run slowly with vista.

[ignisfatuus]

I'm not going to give a vote, but rather an assessment. I ran Vista Ultimate for about 6 months on my mechanical design (turned primary PC) shuttle style system:

Core 2 Duo E6600
Intel DG965OT (Only micro ATX board that supported Core 2 at the time)
2GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500


Pros:

Many very useful perks in Vista. A Lot of the management, hardware, and networking tools that should have been added into Windows years ago have finally been integrated into Vista.

Lots of eye candy. As everyone knows.

Faster in some respects. Many of the lower level hardware interface and networking elements of the OS have been re-written to be faster and more efficient.

Improved network capabilities/performance.

Improved modern hardware based technologies support.


Cons:

COMPATIBILITY. Many older apps simply refuse to run on Vista. By bypassing DEP and setting compatibility modes for the executables I was able to get about 80% of the apps I wanted to run. However doing so is in no way recommended and can create major decreases to the already lacking stability of Vista... Which leads me to...

STABILITY. After running Vista for about 6 months the OS had developed many unwanted... querks. I am usually someone who has no issue resolving any OS related problems that may arise via research and tinkering, but there were some strange behaviors that developed that seemed to be entirely unheard of on the web with no solutions available such as:
Newly installed programs not being added to my start menu. (randomly resolved itself
after about a month)
Increasingly slow performance in many aspects.
Features and functions that simply stopped working.
i.e. You click button; Nothing happens, no error, no explanation.

BLOATWARE 2000.0. Vista is a MASSIVE resource hog. RAM, CPU, disk access. Vista tops them all for achieving the status of "epic fail" when it comes to any reasonable expectations for an OS's usage of these resources. Even after disabling many of Vista's unnecessary "features" the OS still uses resources at unparalleled rate/level. After my Vista adventure, it wasn't until I reinstalled XP that I realized just how much faster and efficiently my system was able to perform.


Conclusion:

If you have modern Vista compliant hardware; RAM, CPU, and disk bandwidth to spare, plan on sticking to only Vista certified apps, and aren't the type to do any sort of low level/OS related "tinkering". Vista is the way to go. It's pretty, and so long as you stick to the capabilities that are made outwardly available to you (i.e. don't plan on doing anything that goes beyond the UIs of software and/or the OS.) it is a very functional OS with a lot of nice features. If this isn't the case however, I would in no way recommend Vista. If you do recall XP was a terribly unstable and unreliable OS until at least the release of SP2 (which created about 1/2 many problems as it solved). It is only recently (slightly prior to the release of Vista) that XP has, in my opinion, achieved a reasonably adequate level of stability, reliability, compatibility, and performance. The choice is obviously yours, but I would spend a bit of time thinking about what your intentions are for this system, and perhaps consider waiting until some major patches and updates are released before you choose to take the Vista route.

Another thing to take into consideration is whether or not the manufacturer provides driver support for XP. Many of the newer systems being sold by the major computer manufacturers do not provide support for XP at all. When it comes to laptops this especially matters.


FYI:

I am a computer enthusiast (hardware, software, networking, programming, support). I've worked as a network administrator, hardware/software maintenance/repair technician, support application programmer, and software integration analyst. I rarely deem the cost of the "newest, latest, greatest" setup to be reasonable or necessary, but I have had an extensive amount of exposure to many different environments. After giving Vista a whirl, and having XP not meet my standards either I ended up switching to Arch Linux. My current setup consists of the same hardware with 5 randomly assorted hard drives plus software based RAID and LVM out the wazzoo.

Peace Love Linux baby! ;-]


- IgnisFatuus

[clocker]

all the ppl in this thread stating that vista is buggy and horrible plz explain why u say this. even when i was running vista on my 3 year old amd 64 system it worked very well.


I'm not going to give a vote, but rather an assessment...
IMO Abu, these are the two most pertinent responses to your query but I'm still mystified why you even asked the question to begin with.

You already have XP and for minimal cost ($15) you can get Vista Ultimate, so for the cost of a few days work you could try them both and make a decision based on your impressions rather than ours.

You'll never know unless you try.

[fish-strike]

GO with Linux, it's free and better then anything microsoft ever made!

[nsap]

I'd stick with XP for a little while longer if I were you.

[Acid_death69]

I have Vista at the moment im using 32bit home premium. It works fine with no problems but then i have a decent system running it, 4 gigs of ram and a AMD 3.2 ghz dual core CPU. so i got plenty of stuff to run to its full capability. A word of warning though, if you get more than 3 gigs of ram it will only the three and no more.

[Ronnie Coleman]

My vote went to WindowsXP Pro. I will not comment way. It was commented like zillion times over whole Internet. :)

[abu_has_the_power]

thx for the replies.

i ended up having to go vista. unfortunately, dell has not released a functional bluetooth driver for 32bit xp for my m1330. so the only way i could get it to work properly would be to use vista. the older drivers don't work, and screw up my sound drivers

i've been using vista ultimate the past week or so, and it's not as bad as people say it is. i disabled most of the annoying slow shit. you can have it auto disable aero when running resource intensive progs (games, modeling, etc)

my system specs run vista fin. i get no lost fps in games at all. company of heroes got just as many fps in xp as it does in vista. i like it so far.

[Adama]

xp all the way