32bit Vista Ultimate or XP pro?

[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.