XP or Vista

[Macky46]

I've used XP for several years on a Dell notebook, and am satisfied with it. Now I am looking at a new Dell notebook and have the choice of XP or Vista. Problem with Vista is that some of my specific softwares (I'm a writer/filmmaker) do not work with Vista, I can upgrade at the cost of $200 for each software.

Question is, do I really need Vista, will it change my life. Besides industry standard software, I mainly use Word, some CD burning software, basic stuff. Maybe 1000 songs. Right now I have a 30G HD and with 17G free. CAn't imagine what I'll do with a 250G HD. I edit video on FCP on a Mac tower, so that's not an issue with my pc.

Any comments greatly appreciated

[BertImmenschuh]

You probably don't need to upgrade to Vista just yet. Big problem is if you have 4 or more programs the cost you quoted will be the same as buying a Vista Notebook. I'd go with WinXP for now and take a wait-and-see attitude for updates of your programs.

[Macky46]

Yes, that's what I thought, but how long can I continue to use XP before I'm hauled off to the dinosaur farm... will new programs created in the future, say 5 years, not run on XP. I seem to talk to some people who still are on ME.

[BertImmenschuh]

There's been a few announcements from Microsoft and seems full support of WinXP will last into 2010 and end of life has been extended to 2014. But don't hold me to those numbers, working from memory.

I would anticipate more programs will be getting updated before then. A big issue will be whether things like banks will be updating and the older systems won't be able to log in.

[Robin Springall]

Macky, stay well away from Vista until your software supports it. Vista is fine for general PC use (though you'll need 2GB RAM at the very least, and a really fast processor) but it will take months before graphics programs and stuff like Adobe programs and Avid are properly Vista-compatible.

[jdharm]

FYI

Microsoft says XP "mainstream" support goes through April 2009 and "extended" support goes through April 2014.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&x=16&y=12&C2=1173



My take on Vista:

It is a needlessly bloated piece of eyecandy. The Toshiba laptops that I support in my company came out of the box booting up in pristine factory-fresh condition to a memory load of 860MB. That is insane. I took the one that I got (which the hard drive failed on 2 days later and thankfully forced me back to my old XP Thinkpad) and stripped out all the fluff and bloatware. By the time I was done I had it down to 300MB and you know what? It looked, felt, and ran like XP.

The only fundamental change from XP that I could see without digging too deep was the new security feature that doesn't allow anyone, even logged in Admins, to run executables with full unlimited permissions without expressly using the "Run as Administrator" function. Kind of a version of 2K3's Data Execution Protection. A bit of an annoyance at first, I came to appreciate the layer of safety that added.

All things being equal I would have a hard time finding a reason to go with Vista. But if it was going to cost me money beyond the cost of the OS, there is no bleeping way I would go with Vista.

For what its worth: Microsoft is already talking about their new operating system, code named "7". That they are looking to the next OS and anecdotal evidence suggests that the corporate world is turning its back on Vista says to me that I'd be more worried about programs not working with Vista in 5 or 10 years.

[Robin Springall]

By the time I was done I had it down to 300MB and you know what? It looked, felt, and ran like XP.Now that's clever: how did you do it?

[jdharm]

Maybe I should have been a little more specific. It looked and felt like XP after I had stripped it down too, i.e. ugly and utilitarian. Still interested?

[tom.tdw]

i recommend you stick with XP for the foreseeable future

frankly the new security features in Vista are a bit lame, the admin prompt is copied from Linux but microsoft have clearly failed to see the reason why it was put there in the first place. Linux has a much more powerful command line than Windows (so powerful that you can clobber an mounted filesystem into nothing with just one command (echo hello >> /dev/sda1)) so Linux encouraged users to use a separate account for admin tasks or the sudo command for run as admin, Windows users generally don't know what they are doing so they will just say yes to every prompt and login as admin. Anyway, 1/2 of viruses in a resent test were able to avoid the prompt.

i don't see why the eye candy has to make Vista so slow, both OSX and Linux (with compiz fusion) look better but run faster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Fbk52Mk1w

[kris]

Stay with XP. Toghether with the incompatibilities you already are aware Vista will bring slowness to your computer. Is there a thing you need and cannot do in XP but can do in Vista?

[Macky46]

I stayed with XP, too much neg stuff on Vista and all my programs still work and even some new things, as I never did install SP2.

[kris]

Yes, that's what I thought, but how long can I continue to use XP before I'm hauled off to the dinosaur farm... will new programs created in the future, say 5 years, not run on XP. I seem to talk to some people who still are on ME.
Most likely, after another 5 years he will want to change this pc, too.