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The Advantages of Vista?
Zine
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
OK folks I need some help here with Windows OSs' and the system requirements they demand. I just financed a Del XPS M1730 and I wanted to know if there is a big difference of running Vista or XP Home editions on the machine (Laptop).
These are the specs as I remember them
Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz
4 GB of Ram
160 GB HDD (I think)
NVIDIA SLI Dual GeForce 8800M GTX with 1GB GDDR3 Memory
and I think thats all the important stuff but all I really need to know is if Vista is really worth it, and if anyone knows if I can change a Dell order after I order it but before it actually ships out to me? I am thinking I might want to add the Blu-Ray option after all.
Thanks for the help
These are the specs as I remember them
Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz
4 GB of Ram
160 GB HDD (I think)
NVIDIA SLI Dual GeForce 8800M GTX with 1GB GDDR3 Memory
and I think thats all the important stuff but all I really need to know is if Vista is really worth it, and if anyone knows if I can change a Dell order after I order it but before it actually ships out to me? I am thinking I might want to add the Blu-Ray option after all.
Thanks for the help
Zine on
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Posts
Personally, I like Vista. It crashes a lot less on me than XP ever did, and even when it does the vast majority of the time I've been able to safely exist out of the offending app without incident and continue using the PC. That's the main reason I'd recommend it.
Most of the other stuff is fluff, DX10 is nice but unless you're playing Crysis you're not even likely to get much use out of it (and even there, it's not as if you can't get a similar experience playing the DX9 version. You can emulate some of the DX10 versions features as well in DX9, though not necessarily as seamlessly. Personally, I just stick with DX10.
Windows Defender seems to play nice with my other apps and my virus scanner (Avast!).
Some people complain about the UAC, but frankly I've had no issues with it. I also think Flip-3D is quite good, provided you can bind it to a mouse button (the MX518 I'm using has a button for that by default, so I use it pretty much all the time).
All in all, if you've got XP, and it's stable for you, then there's probably no major advantage in upgrading. But if I were buying a new copy of an OS now I'd probably go for Vista.
Go with XP. I have Vista at home and I see no benefit to using it over XP except that you get to feel like you're always using an os from the future, albeit one that is full of bugs.
Edit: I'm a network admin and support a school. We use XP mostly, but recently some teachers have bought Vista laptops and I find them to be a pain to integrate with out environment.
This is true. I don't know many people that opt to use the 64 bit versions though.
Are there real advantages to using it? Other than getting that extra ram?
Get a good registry mechanic or something along those lines to keep Vista from cluttering itself up to where it can no longer run properly... I was having issues with it slowing down horribly over time.
More secure, worse drivers, can run 64bit programs.
I'd go with Vista, it's like XP but pretty. And your GUI doesn't fuckup trying to redraw itself that often.
I think peoples Vista-experience is much informed by how much vetting was done by the manufacturer on the specific system running Vista.
I'm running 32-bit XP now, flawless. Vista is just pretty windowing as far as I'm concerned.
I played with getting XP 64 bit running, noticeably snappier response opening stuff, but I couldn't find a lot of the drivers, and some of the thinkvantage apps did not have XP64 support (hard drive protection app for example).
64 bit cost me the same as 32 bit would and the only game I've had trouble with so far is Neverwinter Nights - doesn't install. I don't care either, since I don't really like that game - my buddy was demanding I play it with him. Anyway, the oldest game I've tried is Diablo 2, which I've been playing like crazy the last few days and it works without a hitch. Anything modern is fine (WoW, PotBS, Orange Box, Civ4, C&C3, FEAR, etc)
EDIT: I've been using Windows Vista Premium 64 bit since August and have almost 0 issues. It's stable, drivers are plentiful, runs most stuff people were saying it wouldn't. Bioshock is glorious in DX10. In fact, it's about 100x more stable than XP was at the same point in its life cycle.
Since I was weary about Vista, I decided to dual-boot with XP just to be safe. I telecommute and some of the programs I use are not supported with Vista. I didn't want to be up a creek when a major project demanded use of those programs. These fears have been unwarranted. Vista can run programs in XP compatibility mode and, from my experience, not have any issues. All of my programs run smoothly. I haven't booted up XP since.
As a point of reference, I'm running Vista Enterprise with XP Pro as my fallback.
I like Vista. As others have stated above, it's very easy on the eyes. It definitely looks like a modern OS. Aero looks sharp, etc. It meshes well with my networks, both for work and my personal home network. Connects to XP machines without issue. It took a bit of time to find Control Panel settings that I've been used to since Win98, but now the new scheme makes sense to me. I don't mind the UAC one bit, as it's very similar to Spyware Guard and other stuff I've already used before. The Search function at times seems a bit too thorough (if it were a human, I'd call it overeager to please), but this can be changed via settings.
I'm curious to see how the OS improves with SP1 later this month. Your Dell will most likely come with SP1 preloaded.
And finally, I must admit that I lied above. I have booted XP on this machine recently. It was last night to see if TF2 runs better on Vista or XP. I seem to in the minority, but it runs better in Vista than XP for me. Same settings on everything, same updated nVidia drivers, etc. XP was choppy while Vista has always been smooth as silk for me.
Thanks for all the help though, if I ever have the cash to spend I might switch up to Vista just for the fact that XP will soon lose support for it's self.