Windows XP SP3

[warz]

I don't see what's so bad about Vista. Everything works like a charm. I've never had anything crash, or hang on me. It automatically detects my xbox 360 on the network for media sharing, because of media center. It has sexy aero glass effects. The cool aero windows key + tab makes it 100% worth it as it is. I mean, c'mon...

[Barabajagal]

Vista Home Basic uses almost 5 gigs of hard drive space, and requires more RAM to run the default explorer system than XP to run Luna. Those two factors alone make me despise it.

As for your comment about 2000: The only reason I'm not using Win2KPro right now is because my Motherboard's AGP slot doesn't seem to like it, and all graphics run terribly slow on it. I still think it's the greatest OS to come out of Redmond.

And don't say "2K can't even handle your motherboard, so how is it good?" because this motherboard is shit, and I can't run a Direct3D app for longer than 10 minutes without the entire computer crashing. (And yes, I've replaced my video card to no avail.)

[Warrior]

Vista Home Basic uses almost 5 gigs of hard drive space, and requires more RAM to run the default explorer system than XP to run Luna. Those two factors alone make me despise it.

Vista's memory manager is radically different than Windows XP's memory manager. Unused memory is wasted memory.

In Windows XP, it just let unused cache memory sit there and didn't reap the benefits of this faster, and unused memory.

Under Windows Vista, this is the exact opposite. SuperFetch is the intelligent portion of Vista's memory manager which manages cache memory and allocates it to processes which need it on a demand basis.

In other words, the less processes you have running the more memory will be split between those individual processes.

This is all factored in with usage statistics collected by SuperFetch (Which is why Vista will be up to full speed about a day after it is installed, or a day after a Service Pack is installed)

As for your comment about 2000: The only reason I'm not using Win2KPro right now is because my Motherboard's AGP slot doesn't seem to like it, and all graphics run terribly slow on it. I still think it's the greatest OS to come out of Redmond.

And don't say "2K can't even handle your motherboard, so how is it good?" because this motherboard is shit, and I can't run a Direct3D app for longer than 10 minutes without the entire computer crashing. (And yes, I've replaced my video card to no avail.)

Lol, I'm not going to dig you on that man. I'll take your word for it, I'm just stating what I've noticed in general from the ex-diehard Win2K fans.

[Explicit]

Under Windows Vista, this is the exact opposite. SuperFetch is the intelligent portion of Vista's memory manager which manages cache memory and allocates it to processes which need it on a demand basis.

In other words, the less processes you have running the more memory will be split between those individual processes.

Sounds a lot like how linux manages memory.

[Newby]

Under Windows Vista, this is the exact opposite. SuperFetch is the intelligent portion of Vista's memory manager which manages cache memory and allocates it to processes which need it on a demand basis.

In other words, the less processes you have running the more memory will be split between those individual processes.

Sounds a lot like how linux manages memory.

Basically. In Linux, I'd always have ~10MB free, no matter how many processes ran.

In XP, I wouldn't be using all my memory. And in Vista, I always use only ~60% of it.

[Spht]

As someone who's used win2kpro for over 6 years, and 3 months ago purchased a new laptop that came shipped with vista, i have to say i have no complaints about vista and even prefer it over win2k.  i also haven't upgraded with sp1 yet

[MrRaza]

As someone who's used win2kpro for over 6 years, and 3 months ago purchased a new laptop that came shipped with vista, i have to say i have no complaints about vista and even prefer it over win2k.  i also haven't upgraded with sp1 yet

Yeah, I agreed completely.

I've used w2kpro and WinXP for ages and I use Vista (Business) at work, and I can't really complain at all about it, it did take like 20mins of getting used to. I could see people hating it though, say for instance, if they had a crappy computer with a gig of ram and a mediocure processor that took forever to load things. But at work with an Intel dual core X6800 Extreme processor @ 2.93 GHz and a dual GPU 512MB GDDR3 video card setup and two gigs of RAM, Vista runs like no other, I think the only thing Vista recommended that I get was more ram becuase I got a score of 5.6 everything else was topped out.

But I'll always love WinXP, and I still use it on my laptop

[Newby]

I have a 4.3 rating (1GB RAM, 3.4 GHz processor, ATi Radeon X800 XT PE) and Vista runs swell.

So I'm not sure what people are talking about. Aero runs fine. Vista runs fine.

[Kp]

It's true... Linux needs a lot of work still... Almost every time I use it, something hangs or crashes, and needing to go into konsole to do menial tasks isn't very idiot-friendly.

You're either cursed, running bad hardware, staying too close to the bleeding edge, or doing something wrong.  I've never had a kernel panic on me (excepting bootup when it's missing the driver for the root fs, but without a root fs, what good is the system?).  If you meant userland apps crash, then (1) that's not Linux, that's a buggy userland app (which can show up on any OS if you find a bad enough author) and (2) you should say what app crashed, not just call it "Linux."  Or do you say "my Windows crashed" when Outlook GPFs?

I could see people hating it though, say for instance, if they had a crappy computer with a gig of ram and a mediocure processor that took forever to load things. But at work with an Intel dual core X6800 Extreme processor @ 2.93 GHz and a dual GPU 512MB GDDR3 video card setup and two gigs of RAM, Vista runs like no other, I think the only thing Vista recommended that I get was more ram becuase I got a score of 5.6 everything else was topped out.

I run a Linux system with 1 GB of RAM and a "mediocre" (i.e. not particularly new) processor and it runs quite nicely.  Even my Windows XP systems run reasonably well with that hardware.  If Vista can't match their performance when it's configured to match their features (I'll give up Aero in favor of classic if it'll make Vista as efficient as Win2k in classic mode), that sounds like a problem in Vista.

[Warrior]

I run a Linux system with 1 GB of RAM and a "mediocre" (i.e. not particularly new) processor and it runs quite nicely.  Even my Windows XP systems run reasonably well with that hardware.  If Vista can't match their performance when it's configured to match their features (I'll give up Aero in favor of classic if it'll make Vista as efficient as Win2k in classic mode), that sounds like a problem in Vista.

People take the performance hit with Vista out of proportion, it was bad back in January but it's negligible now if at all. It's something to be expected though, Vista included a lot of "1.0" platforms which needed to be refined.

I've also noticed a decrease in performance when using Classic. Maybe I'm just so used to flicker free drawing, but the redraw is absolutely horrible. I don't remember it being quite as horrendous in Windows XP.

I think the major issues at first were some flaws in the caching mechanism SuperFetch in Vista which caused sluggish reactions but that's since been remedied via Patches.

Overall, it's improved greatly since it was released and I think the trade off between a host of enhancements and a now negligible speed difference is worth it.

[Barabajagal]

You mean classic as in what's referred to in Linux as the "Redmond" interface? If that's the case, I'm even more pissed... I can't deal with the stupid bubbly designs all the companies have been using these last 'few' years, and if they're taking support away from the squared off UI's, I just have another reason to despise Vista.

Here's a problem I have with Vista: I have a 100% legitimate copy of Vista Home Basic. This copy came on a Dell DVD that came with my father's laptop (which I promptly reformatted and installed XP Pro SP2 on). However, the only way to get my copy to be registered as Genuine is to call the number, talk to a thickly accented Indian man, who will ask for my key and give me numbers to enter into the OS, which then validate my copy. Why?

[Explicit]

Shouldn't you be happy that Microsoft is even offering to validate the XP copy rather than leaving you with Vista?

They could easily have opted not to offer this service at all seeing as how they are moving forward in the industry. It's much like how Windows 95 and 98 became obsolete and no longer supported.

[Barabajagal]

No, I meant the copy of Vista, not XP. Sorry if that was phrased oddly. I used the same CD to install onto a Virtual Machine, and that's when I ran into the above problem.

[warz]

I was just about to point out what Warrior pointed out, about Vista's 'original windows theme' and the redawing rate. I have a brand new computer and Vista runs amazingly well, except for the rate at which windows maximize/minimize in the classic theme. It's very sluggish. I never noticed anything like it on XP, but immedietly noticed it when I tried the theme out on Vista. It's not a huge deal, to me, because I like the Aero enabled theme better, but still... WTFX0R.

[Newby]

No, I meant the copy of Vista, not XP. Sorry if that was phrased oddly. I used the same CD to install onto a Virtual Machine, and that's when I ran into the above problem.

Um, you're note even supposed to be allowed to run Home Basic in a VM.