XP vs Vista on new box (NOT upgrade)

Here's our story:

Quote:

---

My wife purchased the one year accidental protection plan on her laptop, which is a good thing, because she managed to dent the cover, and in turn, the screen, when she was reaching to turn off her lamp when going to bed and put a solid elbow into the top of the laptop (I'm not sure how, but she's got this amazing clumsy-like luck, so I attribute it to that).

We sent the computer into the shop and they're supposed to return the fixed computer in 3-5 business days or update us of the status if it will take longer than that. I called because it's been almost two weeks, and they apologized profusely, offering to send us a new computer to replace the old one because it could take a couple of weeks to replace our old computer.

The kicker: They don't have any new computers anymore with XP, only Vista.

---

So our delima is: Do we wait two weeks to get the machine with XP back, or do we take the new one that has Vista installed on it?

I wanted to see what other people's experiences with using Vista have been. Again, it's a new computer so we're not worried about problems encountered during upgrading, only any issues that a fully installed Vista seems to have with your computer. Our main concern is program compatibility, mainly Microsoft Office and a photo organizing program my wife uses (We'll check their website to see what they say about Vista compatibility).

I'm not a Vista user myself, but imo it's worth getting Vista rather than XP now. All the new drivers, games, etc will put their focus on the new OS which will leave XP a little bit behind. Of course, the older games and hardware have a huge number of competibility issues, but I guess that the others will tell you about that.:p

The other important point is that you actually get a totally new laptop. I don't know how old your last one was, but new laptops have a couple of advantes, such as clean ventilation system, new drives and a new battery. That is providing the laptop they give you is the same or a higher model then you older one.

Use XP for another year or so, imo. So that MS can sort out the biggest problems.

I'd go for the new machine and then just pirate/find a way to legally aquire XP if you don't like Vista/use Linux. :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grinenshire

II don't know how old your last one was...

---

Our laptop is about 4 months old.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yamaneko

I'd go for the new machine and then just pirate/find a way to legally aquire XP if you don't like Vista/use Linux. :p

---

It's not very legal, but you can just burn a copy of XP that was given to you with your last laptop and get a new key from the net/use the old one. That would do for a year or so, as Mirage said, before Vista becomes fully functional. A friend of mine uses Vista though and had no problems so far. He doesn't play much though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flying Mullet

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grinenshire

II don't know how old your last one was...

---

Our laptop is about 4 months old.

---

Well, after 4 month your battery usually goes down the drain (providing you always run the comp on external power), so that's a reason enough. The drives should be still topnoch. The cooling really depends on how often you vacuum clean the room you're using and the laptop construction (My dad's laptop overheats easily and has to be cleaned every month or so, mine runs alright.).

So, yes, I'd go for the new one really. I guess it's the same model, eh?

Yeah, it'll be the same model. And this won't be for gaming. The most gaming my wife does is the occasional Diablo II or Sims. It's mostly for her work and photo storage/organizing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flying Mullet

Yeah, it'll be the same model. And this won't be for gaming. The most gaming my wife does is the occasional Diablo II or Sims. It's mostly for her work and photo storage/organizing.

---

Then I'd suggest Vista. As I said, I don't own it myself, but I know quite a few people who do and had no problems with it other then the usual (drivers, games). I'm really not sure if Diablo II will run on it though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flying Mullet

Yeah, it'll be the same model. And this won't be for gaming. The most gaming my wife does is the occasional Diablo II or Sims. It's mostly for her work and photo storage/organizing.

---

Get the new laptop and install Windows XP on it is the best way forward.

You can see if they'll give you a deal on the copy of XP that came with your last laptop. They might even let you keep it for free if you're really nice, since they don't sell it with their new computers any more. :p

The thing about laptops though is that you'll loose all the utilities and tools after the reinstall of the OS. I.e. battery controls (not the BIOS ones), special sound software for the loudspeakers, tuneups, etc will be lost.

I have Vista Ultimate. I tried it for a couple of months and frankly, it's nothing special to me. It's decidedly more annoying than XP, in that there are niggly little things like asking for admin permission that occur all too frequently for my taste.
I don't like that the system requirements have skyrocketed since XP. You're likely to see a decrease in performance on Vista relative to the power of the machine, especially if it doesn't have a reasonably powerful GPU.
In my experience it's not as stable as XP yet, the operative word being yet. I think that as time passes, were going to see a decrease in the number of driver-related crashes as developers get to know the system more thoroughly.

However, it is the way of the future for Windows users, and support for XP can only decrease from here. Most software functions similarly in Vista to how it did in XP, but it's rare to see a program that hasn't been affected in some way by the difference in OS.

If I were you, I'd (begrudgingly) accept Vista, and install Linux on another partition. :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grinenshire

The thing about laptops though is that you'll loose all the utilities and tools after the reinstall of the OS. I.e. battery controls (not the BIOS ones), special sound software for the loudspeakers, tuneups, etc will be lost.

---

You can download all that again from the manufacturers site.

I would wait. Vista's buggy as hell. My laptop came pre-installed. It keeps losing its CD-Rom and I have to restart. IE's started to lock up a lot. Its very quirky. And they don't put fixes online for anything yet everytime something stops responding you have the option of checking online for a solution. XP was stable and had almost all its quirks worked out. Very reliable. I'm with Mirage. I'd wait on Vista. Unless you do like others are suggesting and replace the OS I'd wait for your old computer. I've spent two months with Vista and I'm not computer illiterate. Its just annoying. I personally can't wait for Service Pack 1. And there are compatibility issues currently. Zone Alarm won't install right now, for example. And as stated, it is a needlessly huge resource hog for some reason. My XP desktop has a standard 40-50 applications running in the background. Vista has upwards of 70. And usage is impossible to actually judge. CPU usage goes 100% and you try and figure out what's eating it and see that the only thing using it in the process list is only using 50%. Retarded OS...

I would take the new one just because I know how to put whatever I want on it. And getting to try Vista for free would be good(though a friend of mine already has a pirated version apparently and has been offering everyone a crack at it).

Experiences:

-Networking professor just laughs at it(he majorly dislikes it and doesn't feel that currently it is as productive as XP)
-My friend with the pirated version likes it on desktops but on laptops is more iffy on it since Vista can really drain the resources much more visibly on a laptop than a desktop.
-Various other people I know who have tried it dislike it because of how much it slows down the system.
-Another note; I have heard that the boot loader is not as safe in Vista as it has been in previous versions. This could be a very dangerous issue, though I'll admit that I have yet to try the OS myself and thus can't be sure how easy it is to mess stuff up like that(before I install vista I need a major processor upgrade, which means I need a major motherboard upgrade, which in turn could cause me to acquire all new hardware(except hard-drives) due to older hardware in my system).

Err.... anyways I would just go for the new one, it wouldn't be to hard or long of a process to do a wipe and re-install of XP. And it wouldn't require a lot of waiting(I hate waiting for a computer to be fixed). In addition for what you want to do with it Vista may be just fine.

However, if you do go with XP do remember that up until 2006 Win98 had still been supported. So I doubt they will just drop XP. They'll wait at least a couple years after the release of Vista to discontinue with XP, and if Win98 is any hint it may be more than just a couple years :p.(and yes I still have a '98 system and it runs much better(quicker, smoother) than my XP system(and my xp system is on a computer far more powerful than my 98 system), trouble is nothing supports it anymore *cries*, that and 98 can really do some funky stuff with you lol).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yamaneko

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grinenshire

The thing about laptops though is that you'll loose all the utilities and tools after the reinstall of the OS. I.e. battery controls (not the BIOS ones), special sound software for the loudspeakers, tuneups, etc will be lost.

---

You can download all that again from the manufacturers site.

---

You don't really have to. They usually toss a CD in with laptop that has all those nifties. The question is, will they also work properly? Believe it or not, but for some reason the hardware button controls and sound augmentations get buggy on foreign OSes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grinenshire

You don't really have to. They usually toss a CD in with laptop that has all those nifties. The question is, will they also work properly? Believe it or not, but for some reason the hardware button controls and sound augmentations get buggy on foreign OSes.

---

A) They don't always give a CD or the CD doesn't work or else they give you CD but it only came with a DVD player[not a combo] on the laptop, etc. As you can probably guess I haven't had much luck with laptops.

B) You are semi-right on that buggy bit. At least with HP you are. My old dell has no issues with any of it, no matter if I am using Win95,win98,winME, or winXP. Though I don't know how new dells handle it. Hmm.. My freind's Compaq Presario also doesn't care about the OS as long as it is a newer OS. My Dad's compaq(also a presario if I recall) also works regardless of OS(he has used 3 different OS's). I have also been told IBM(Lenova now?) laptops don't mind OS changes much.

The biggest issue with getting the utilities working is, in my experience, that they use slightly more resources then they do factory installed. However, the difference is much less than the resource difference between 98 and XP or XP and Vista.

I would reccomend Vista, as it is the next thing, and you will have to learn its innards sooner or later. I would also say get it only if you plan on getting the 64 bit version on a 64 bit laptop so that you can gain the extra MMU addressing that will allow you to put more than 4 gigs of ram and run higher end applicatsions, especially since vista alon can take up 2-3 gigs with little effort.

Quote:

---

If I were you, I'd (begrudgingly) accept Vista, and install Linux on another partition.

---

In sum, I second this so as long as you make the processor upgrade (they will likely do it for free while under your thumb).

Otherwise:

SLACKWARE

they actually make dvd players that can't read CD? I've never ran into one

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShunNakamura

A) They don't always give a CD or the CD doesn't work or else they give you CD but it only came with a DVD player[not a combo] on the laptop, etc. As you can probably guess I haven't had much luck with laptops.

---

Hmm... it was my assuption that they did. We've had 4 laptops in the past 5 years in the household, one of which broke, but they've all had a utility and a backup CD with them.

Quote:

---

they give you CD but it only came with a DVD player[not a combo]

---

There are DVD players which don't play CDs?:confused: Any chance of you meaning it the other way around? If yes, I don't know how many laptops still -do- have CD players in them.

[q=ShunNakamura]-Another note; I have heard that the boot loader is not as safe in Vista as it has been in previous versions. This could be a very dangerous issue, though I'll admit that I have yet to try the OS myself and thus can't be sure how easy it is to mess stuff up like that(before I install vista I need a major processor upgrade, which means I need a major motherboard upgrade, which in turn could cause me to acquire all new hardware(except hard-drives) due to older hardware in my system).[/q]

This isn't entirely accurate. The bootloader in Vista is no longer NTLDR, but called Winloader, and no longer has directly editable configuration files. By that I mean you can't just open up boot.ini and chuck in a few new entries or change existing ones. In my opinion, this makes it a safer bootloader than NTLDR.

Don't get me wrong, I still think any Windows bootloader is one of the worst features of the operating system. It's quite difficult to sort out a multi-boot environment as a direct result of not being able to easily edit boot configuration files, but there are programs that "will" do it for you. I say "will" because at no stage did any of these programs successfully change the bootloader for my quad-boot environment (XP, Vista, Gentoo and Arch, with XP and Vista installed last).

It's definitely no GRUB. :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rubah

they actually make dvd players that can't read CD? I've never ran into one

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grinenshire

There are DVD players which don't play CDs? Any chance of you meaning it the other way around? If yes, I don't know how many laptops still -do- have CD players in them.

---

Smacks head several times. It was that the stupid thing didn't come with a CD or a DVD player so I used my Dell Latitude's DVD player to try and use the CD which by the way doesn't read CD's[we are not sure why it won't but it just really don't like them, sometimes you may get something from trying to play it, but generally you don't, and that is how it was when I got it new].

I totally f'ed that up that story of an experience. As for it happening the other way around I have seen that as well. Or else they give you a driver floppy(not anymore, but several years ago) and it doesn't come with a floppy drive. I have had SOO many bad experiences with them.



As for the boot loader as I said, I have only *heard* that... I think

Meh, never had a Dell. But thumbs up for Sony and Toshiba. Never had a problem with them. I've only got bad experiences with Samsung notebooks. While Samsung does make great vacuum cleaners, their graphical card burned out within 2 weeks of use. In two different models. Not sure where the chip came from though, might have been an Intel Graphics.

My new laptop is an HP that came preloaded with Vista. I had to fuss with a lot of my old programs to get them to run, but I do a lot of video editing and such. She might be ok for regular use.

PS: Vista is complete crap for sound recording.

Our laptop was just shipped back to us, fixed up all nice with XP still on it. Turns out, when you get the higher-ups involved in the repair process, things move a lot faster for some reason...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flying Mullet

Outrlaptop was just shipped back to us, fixed up all nice with XP still on it. Turns out, when you get the higher-ups involved in the repair process, things move a lot faster for some reason...

---

They've actually upgraded the components? This is very, very unusual for a laptop.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renmiri

My new laptop is an HP that came preloaded with Vista. I had to fuss with a lot of my old programs to get them to run, but I do a lot of video editing and such. She might be ok for regular use.

PS: Vista is complete crap for sound recording.

---

Hi, Renmiri. How are you? How is your new Windows Vista operating system working?

I am thinking about buying a new computer and I do a lot of sound recording. Would I want to avoid Windows Vista? Is it because of problems that Windows Vista has with hardware?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renmiri

PS: Vista is complete crap for sound recording.

---

No, it's not. I have worked with Mac's, XP and Vista for my audio engineering and I see no differences whatsoever. I blame it on the (probably) crappy software and hardware you are using.

If you really wanted proper sound recording, you'd use a mixer (I use Mbox2) and proper microphones (I just use a normal cardiod and dynamic), and something like Protools, Cubase or Logic for software.

Anyways, that's just ramblings.

Edit: Roogle, it's no problems, what hardware and software do you use? Because most of the better sofware (such as Protools) is compatible with Vista now, as well as most small home mixers.

I am not a professional in the sound industry.

I use a simple microphone for the purpose of recording my voice to create funny sound clips to send to friends. I use Adobe Audition 2.0. That would work on Windows Vista, wouldn't it?

Whether professional or not, it is still useful information. I haven't tested that piece of software on Vista yet, but every other Adobe product I've used on Vista has worked just the same. So I don't see why it wouldn't.

Edit: And as long as the sound card's drivers have Vista support -- most would but you never know. If that's the case, it won't be long until they would bring out drivers for Vista.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roogle

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renmiri

My new laptop is an HP that came preloaded with Vista. I had to fuss with a lot of my old programs to get them to run, but I do a lot of video editing and such. She might be ok for regular use.

PS: Vista is complete crap for sound recording.

---

Hi, Renmiri. How are you? How is your new Windows Vista operating system working?

I am thinking about buying a new computer and I do a lot of sound recording. Would I want to avoid Windows Vista? Is it because of problems that Windows Vista has with hardware?

---

Vista changed the way windows handles sounds and so far I found that most manufacturers are having a tough time making good drivers for it. - i.e. drivers with lots of features for us to control -

The sound driver I have mixes the mike input with the stereo output, which means that I can't get a good clear sound out of wavepad or any other PC sound recorder. Read: No more ripping songs from youtube. You either download the OST or you are in for crappy handheld tape recorder sound.

EDIT: Read the Adobe support entries about Vista. You will see the problems I got :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omecle

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Renmiri

PS: Vista is complete crap for sound recording.

---

No, it's not. ..

---

If you like your recordings with "snap, crackle and pop"...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Omecle

I blame it on the (probably) crappy software and hardware you are using.

If you really wanted proper sound recording, you'd use a mixer...

---

Precisely. It will force me to buy new hardware, and new software, which with my old laptop wasn't needed.

Forcing everyone to shell out cash for amatuer professional equipment instead of just the tinkering hobbyist funtime stuff pre-equipped that used to work fine

Another strike against Vista. If it wasn't such a hassle I'd almost be tempted to wipe it off my laptop and put XP on it :[