Is anybody really surprised? "In other news today, experts say that psychopaths are unpredictable..."

Seriously, though, it's just like the migration to XP from 2k. Enterprise users will make their move eventually, but not at least until SP1.

"The past is the key to the present."

...I've used XP Pro on my desktop for years and I recently purchased a notebook with Vista Home Premium and it sucks. Sure, it's supposedly better at the kernel level and whatnot, but it's a resource hog and has way too much crap turned right out of the box. IMO, it seems like it's geared toward PC noobs / myspace crowd type of people.

Not really new news. This has always been the case. I worked at a world wide company that just started migration to xp last year from w2k installs.

I run Vista at home, it’s GREAT. However, as the IT manager of a regional company, we still roll out XP and will probably do so for some time. Vista SP1 *might* start the migration but that would only be on newly purchased PC's.

Vista has no problems on any of our systems. Its just to hard core, we would wait until good hardware that can actually run it good comes out at a medium level cost.

It's certainly easier to use - that was a lot of Microsoft's goal. But all of that functionality you grew to love in XP is still there, and more. It just takes time to adjust and find it all.

What upsets me is that tons of things were renamed for seemingly no reason at all. For example, "Programs and Features???" WHY did they feel they had to change that from "Add/Remove programs," as it was in all previous versions of Windows clear back to 9x? I think the marketing department had too much to do with Vista's development, if you ask me.

As for being a resource hog, though, why does it matter?
When you're browsing the web or using a word processor, as 90% of computer users are, you wouldn't notice the difference if it was 100x more resource hungry than XP. In fact, it probably actually makes your experience smoother, since that "wasted" memory is actually prefetched applications using your memory for what it was meant for - keeping stuff in a quickly-accessible location to speed your computer up vs using its permanent storage medium.
When you actually use a resource-hungry app, Vista *gasp* lets go of those resources! What a concept!

If you installed Vista or purchased Vista on a machine with 1GB or less of memory, that was your mistake. Do yourself a favor and pay the extra $40 to have the extra 1GB installed and then be happy - don't buy a Yugo and then wonder why it can't tow your fifth-wheel.

it's common for businesses to wait a long time. Only time a company will switch operating systems is when the software they use requires that operating system.

I can bet a large number of companies are still using nt4/2000 and just now upgrading to xp because their accounting software or w/e requires xp.

It takes time for businesses to change. Businesses are like people they hate change.

Opie, I hate to break it to you, but many of Vista's resources, as it relates to gaming, is very much a hog. I don't know what you refer to when you say it releases them, but the latest Maximum PC article from this month rates games fps with XP and then with Vista. With Vista, there is a 60-80 percent drop. This has been blamed on many things including insufficient video card drivers, but some of the blame is the bloat that is created from the OS itself. Don't be so naive to think that vista isn't a hulking and huge resource hog. Even WITH 2 GB of RAM, it will cause games to suffer in performance. Performance-wise, there are zero advantages for having Vista. Asthetic-wise, it's beautiful. So, I guess people will have to decide what's more important--looks or performance.

There IS a big fat option in Vista to turn the fancy stuff off. You would be suprised how much that helps, and then you turn off all the crap that is automatically running in the background, then, and only then, Vista runs like a purring cat...

In the Corporate World... IT is the NORM to use the OS, u have installed, until there is a REASON to upgrade. I use Vista on my laptop, and i have to say, i am much more productive with Vista than XP. It urks me to some of the changes, but that just takes time to get used to it.
Someone ask Why get used to it.. WELLLL back not that long ago, the same argument was made when win3.x rulled the desktop, then Win95, Then NT 4.0 Workstation, Win98.. Win2000 Pro, Win XP. and now Vista. I run xp at home for only 1 REASON,, The games.. That is where Vista Lacks. BUT that lacking isnt from Microsoft, but more so the Hardware Vendors.. Speed, Well of course XP will be faster with todays Quad core cpu;s versus Vista.. DUHHH.. Same argument with the win95 ers, as well as the Win98ers...

I predict Vista in much wider deployments, withn 12-18 Months..(From TOday) Typical time in the Corporate World

Most EVERYTHING I try and do in Vista takes longer than it does in XP. Many features and functions that were up front in XP now take 2 or 3 more clicks to do the SAME THING. How is that an improvement? The networking sucks because Vista searches the network EVERY TIME I open up the browser. XP Caches the network and is much more responsive. The Vista User Access Control is so obtrusive I have to turn it off. I got tired of it asking every time I wanted to copy files to or from an external drive. The OS does't remember what it just asked 5 seconds ago and keeps asking "Gee, Do you really want to copy that file?". I could go on, but let's just say I haven't found Vista to be better than XP at anything.

If I need to bring up performance of Vista to the same level as XP by disabling most of the new goodies, than what was the point of deploying Visa in the first place? I run Vista ultimate right now and let me tell you, I see no benefits from it vs. XP pro. Yes it looks different, but XP is as stable as Vista, cost less, and do not require hardware upgrades. At the end of the day it cost less to deploy XP vs. Vista. That’s why corporations will not adopt Vista any time soon.

If I need to bring up performance of Vista to the same level as XP by disabling most of the new goodies, than what was the point of deploying Visa in the first place? I run Vista ultimate right now and let me tell you, I see no benefits from it vs. XP pro. Yes it looks different, but XP is as stable as Vista, cost less, and do not require hardware upgrades. At the end of the day it cost less to deploy XP vs. Vista. That’s why corporations will not adopt Vista any time soon.

Well, then I guess the fact that my current system runs at the same framerates /- 5% (easily within statistical error) with Vista x64 as it did with XP 32 means nothing (same games and same system config).

I guess the fact that _none_ of my company's customers have complained about poor performance or difficulty of use (in the gaming area) means nothing (business customers have had other specific complaints).

As with any review, it really needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I very much dislike most review site reviews, because they test on one "representative" system in one "standard" configuration, which is often quite different from a real-world system. For example, how many times a day do you reimage, defragment, kill all background tasks, and then proceed to play your favorite game or create Word documents at 10,000 pages per second?
All of our testing is done across a range of configurations on a range of system images, resulting in about 30 different combinations we actually end up testing for each software package (this takes a long time, let me tell you), so I tend to think it's a lot more accurate than what's available on the 'net.

My own personal benchmarks are based on just my system and what software I use, so those need a whole bag of salt, as well.

However, my company's conclusions thus far? There are very few games where it makes a noticeable difference when you move from Vista to XP, even if they do exhibit a difference (which they do in BOTH directions, with no discernable pattern).
Most modern systems (as in new computers, which are the important statistic in the market) achieve well over 60FPS average in the "mainstream" games, anything over which is irrelevant.

I find it funny that people don't complain that the 2.6 linux kernel is slower than the 2.4 kernel. OF COURSE it uses more resources - the thing is that, in the grand scheme of things, it makes little to no difference in your usage of the machine, and any performance changes you notice are generally due to drivers and software optimization.

Games previously were optimized to run on XP... For some of those to perform better on Vista than XP should say something to you. Once everything is Vista-optimized, you'll see HUGE gains in performance over what you're seeing now.

I feel like I'm rambling, now.
Basically, the point is don't just repeat what some review site said. Test it yourself before you assume Max PC is god.

I guess they are reluctant to upgrade to Vista is compatibility. I have read that alot of business software either does not run well or at all on Vista. It also includes having to upgrade all the computers which can be expensive for large corporations. Why fool with what works to try that which might not and hurt ones business?

When I leased an IBM PC/512k in 1988 loading Lotus 123 to enter stuff into a spreadsheet took a couple of seconds. WordPerfect was similar. Nowadays on my admitted older AMD 2200 with 512 Mb Excel takes 10's of seconds to load after an obligatory AVG Free virus scan.

I do the same stuff pretty much with Excel now as I did back then with 123, but 20 years later it takes so much longer to set up?? Would be really nice to be able to strip out features that are never used and have it load up instantly.

It's very hard to see what's happening now as progress.

First of all, Maximum PC is a magazine, not a site. They've been doing gaming-related benchmarking since you were probably in diapers. If you had read the article that I did, it would leave you with little doubt as to the validity of their article. They went to painstaking detail to assure the public of the testing completed on the two operating systems. It was done on a fairly mature AMD FX-60 rig by the way, which is almost what I run (I run an X2 4800).

Opie, I want to see some actual numbers from you, not just something like "my company has no problems whatsoever with any benchmarks". If you don't provide real numbers for me, then you will come off as a fanboy. Run a mythodical test and give me the results and show it on your website. I'm curious to see what drivers and games you use to reach these results. In addition, I'm curious to see what resolution settings, AA, AF, dynamic lighting, post-processing effects you have enabled.

Again, your reply seems a feeble attempt to defend Vista unless you prove what you say with real numbers and facts.

want numbers? go here: http://www.firingsquad.com/har...ce_update/
not much of a performance diffrance now when the drivers have caught up a bit eh? so were are your numbers that indicate the previous slowdown was due to os bloat; and not due to driver problems as i am sure the max pc article concluded.. (if they have a clue as to wha they are taling about..) genreally i find magazines to be far less informed than sites on the net.. and the fact that they have done benchmarks for a long time is completely irrelevant as this in no way applies to new hardware or os'es..

Your doubt is certainly warranted without numbers, and you have no idea how badly I would like to post those results on every site like this I frequent. As I said, any "results" need to be taken with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, due not only to corporate policy but also legal reasons, the best I can do for you is simply this:
Using "leading benchmark applications" on "leading hardware" from "multiple vendors" (referring to core system components), with system images ranging from "new install" to "old, spyware-infested install," three times over, in every case, is how the benchmarks are performed. The results generally appear as you would expect, with regards to the "quality" of the system image and the hardware configuration, but there is surprisingly little correlation between operating system and end-of-story performance.

AA and other graphics settings also had results as you would expect them to be, except in the case of a certain manufacturer's display adapters, which consistently showed poor performance on BOTH operating systems (moreso, however, on Vista x64) at the most intense of settings, with some benchmarks even failing in certain cases. This is attributable entirely to drivers, as behavior was completely different with different versions of those drivers on the same operating system.

I'm sorry I can't do more for you. Believe me, it sucks coming from my position where I know I have the results but can't prove my own credibility to you. Tends to be why I don't make those statements that often.

Anyway, for the record:
I read Max PC, PC World, and a host of other MAGAZINES as well as WEBSITES. It's quite an important requirement in the industry to keep on top of things. Arguing semantics is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
And, age is pretty irrelevant to the issue at hand, as well, but I thought I'd point out that, were I in diapers when MaximumPC's first issue was published, I'd be an early teenager and would have also missed its name change back in like '97 or '98. Just ask Future US about that one (the publisher).
Don't try to make it personal or attempt insulting my intelligence, especially when you're probably younger than I, sir.
If, however, I was as young as you attempted to imply, I'd be pretty flattered that I got someone so much wiser than I to actually engage in intelligent debate with me. ;)

Anyway, as I said, sorry I can't give you more. I want to so badly, if for no other reason than to prove my point. I mainly just want people to have the whole story and am incapable of providing it.

Just remember to take everything you read on the 'net and in magazines (basically anywhere) with a grain of salt and let your own experience do the talking, and you'll be a much happier consumer. :)

Cheers.

Thanks for the support. I completely forgot to go get some links from other reviewers like that.
I had read that article, among others, and it does paint a pretty decent picture of the current situation.

Strange how things like that don't come to mind when one is defending one's honor. ;)

Quoting Demotivators: It could be that the purpose of your *New OS* is only to serve as a warning to others. On a serious note though, speed issues aside (everyone remember how slow XP seemed?) My main gripe is with the GUI. If I wanted to be coddled and protected from myself, I would have installed OSX. I understand the need to shield the average user, but as an admin, I sure wish there was "admin default view" of sorts that popped the hood on Vista. Kind of like moving from Gnome to KDE in Linux. (I'm not knocking the Gnomers out there!)

ROFL ! OSX ... what a joke.

admin ? you ? talk about OSX ... your company fails, cuz they hired you.

Vista is the fools gold of the OS's. Looks pretty and shiny only to find it is fake.

Business will probably take 2-3 years to finally take up Vista in my opinion. This is enough time frame for them to replace all thier existing hardware including printers etc unlike the XP upgrade, the roll out was probably 18 months becuase in most cases XP is faster than 2000 as long as you have 512MB RAM.

At the end of the day it would be hard to justify Vista in a busineess sense because their is not to many compelling arguments on how it is going to generate more money for a business considering using VISTA takes longer to get something done than XP on the same hardware.

Also Vista still has major issue with older hardware including HP colour printers and most scanners.

I think you guys are missing something...

First the performance difference was there and was huge. The other articles didn't lie, nor did the other sites.

"not much of a performance diffrance now when the drivers have caught up a bit eh?"

"genreally i find magazines to be far less informed than sites on the net.."

Again these were valid test. What you are missing is the fact microfluff had to back track on their OS. Basically making it XP in order to boost the performance.

If you take those same machines and remove the recently added DX 9.0L you find the performance difference a lot higher. The whole point of vista was to be running DX10 and dropping the DX9 era.

And if you are getting vista turning off the eye candy and running games using the DX9.0L then WTF was the point of paying upwards of 399 for the new OS.

I'll ask the same thing I asked in another post. Please do two things. First fully read keeping in mind XP64 is a re-write and was created along side of vista;

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/top10.mspx
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/benefit.mspx

Now please post 10 things better in vista than XP64 that you honestly feel make it worth up to $399 to have.

even with the drivers changed and micro fluff buckling and releasing DX9.0L

XP still ran faster in most of the test. No matter how small the number turns out to be.

Without the possibility of DX10 future eyecandy and microfluff trying to force gamers to vista. You would simply be forced to admit it is slower and would be complaining why did things get worse?

The true test would be microfluff releasing DX10 on XP64 and then testing the two. Because it could turn out that DX10 would score much lower.

The test isn't really comparing apples to apples.

I mean think about it, the more you fight to say things are almost as good as XP. The weaker your argument becomes that vista is an absolute must have.

And when you ad in the fact that vista has a current shelf life of three years before the next OS. The reason to move becomes even weaker.

Your applications should aalways be your resting point not your OS. The OS is and should be back ground to what you're trying to do.

And also realize that the price of that OS include applications that microfluff force you to buy. That's right IE isn't really free, they unfairly bundle it into the OS to wipe other browsers off the map. netscape and mozilla can't charge a fair price for their effort and work because micro fluff has under-handedly killed competition.

"Coming back to the topic at hand, we stayed with Windows XP for this article. Most of you are using it, and frankly, performance is still better under XP. We have much more in store for this topic in subsequent articles. In fact, there are two articles in progress and a third in development."

www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/24/hd_2600_and_geforce_8600/page4.html

So you blame the gap was on drivers... look at things not driver related.
"We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP"

WOW... check this out...
"Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space?"

www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page11.html#conclusion_ko_for_windows_vista

Two key trend are important here; (i) the OS is becoming ever more unimportant today with an increas in web based apps and (ii) Vista does not add enough compared with the competition (Apple, Ubuntu/Linux, XP)

[I switched to Ubuntu at the beginning of June and have not looked back. It's also the Linux distro that Intel will be using with their upcoming MIDs and UMPCs. -Rick]

This leads to a lack of interest in Vista and in time it will prove to be the last of the "great OS" (great = large sw project and investment by MS, not same as good ;-)

Happy to see the world dominance of of MS OS go away - but still afraid about where MS will go in light of this....

XP is crap compared to Vista, Ubuntu, and OS X.

[XP is a well proven technology. I'm curious how you rate it below Vista? For my money, I would place Ubuntu at the top (it's free and runs on anything), then OS X (requires specialized hardware, but is not Microsoft), and then XP and finally Vista. -Rick]

I've done my own tests and the 2-3 FPS that I lose playing games is well offset by the added features that I enjoy on a regular basis.

Vista is somewhat bloated and that does bother me, but when all the good is stacked with all the bad, Vista is so clearly better then XP that I have a hard time understand why you can't see it.

[Vista's security policy is what gets me. In order to do most everything the system constantly pops up messages saying "Vista needs your permission to continue." What's that about? -Rick]

XP lacks features common to current generation OS's. Its performance steadily degrades with use. It boots slow. The suspend/restore mode is unreliable and almost destroyed my notebook. And lastly, the shell is very unstable and is prone to lockups.


All current generation OS's employ some form of user elevation mode as a security measure including Vista. XP does not because its a last gen OS and very poorly designed from a security point of view.

What makes Vista better is that unlike other current gen OS's, you don't have to type your password everytime you need to elevate your privledges. Ubuntu and OS X require you to type out your full password.

When you have to type out your full password so much, you stop thinking about the act and become more likely to mistakenly type it in the wrong place. (Like an IM chat window or something)

[For my money, I would place Ubuntu at the top (it's free and runs on anything), then OS X (requires specialized hardware, but is not Microsoft), and then XP and finally Vista. -Rick]

Ubuntu is really good, Vista is better still for me. The fact that I can't full screen the Linux RDP client to a single monitor is frustrating to no end. Also, the lack of ability to browse Samba URLs from things like the File/Open dialog makes it alot hard for me to do my job under Ubuntu. Mounting/mapping them is not the same thing by a long shot.

OS X is decent OS, but Apple need to stop trying to force their hardware down my throat. Additionally, I find myself to be the least productive under OS X.

If you take points away from a OS simply because its made by Microsoft, I think your being unfair.

We can bitch about MS all day, but when Apple is cool for its anti-competative practices and Microsoft is evil for its anti competative practices, then the debate has turned to zealotry.

10 Things better about Vista x64 then XP64

1) More driver support for Vista x64 then XP64
2) Shell doesn't lockup
3) The breadcrumbs feature.
4) SMB file sharing works better.
5) Higher network throughput.
6) More secure.
7) Better thread scheduling.
8) Boots faster
9) Power management actually works.
10) Superfetch speeds application launch greatly.

I think eComStation is better than any version of Windows. :) http://www.ecomstation.com

I am hoping that ReactOS will one day suplant Windows. http://www.reactos.org

I'm glad you pointed a few things out... Kamujin

First off I am begging you and other to take the test. You claim it's loaded with extra features and so very much better.

Then please first fully read keeping in mind XP64 is a re-write and was created along side of vista;

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/top10.mspx
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/benefit.mspx

Now please post 10 things better in vista than XP64 that you honestly feel make it worth up to $399 to have.

Response:
#1 - Most of the things that you named as different does not exist with XP64.

#2 - Then things that you did mention that happen in XP shouldn't happen. So why don't you tell your buddies to fix and complete the application they made million and millions off of. And that's pure BS that XP was a bad design, if you know anything about programming you know in a modular design things can be corrected, fixed and changed with a service pack. If the design was bad then why create XP64 and list all of those feature that XP64 has over the old XP?

#3 - XP64 was a rewrite and created along side of the development of vista. So if I believe you not only did XP (32) have a bad design, your buddies decided to rewrite the same bad design, but also lie to collect more money and take a stance that 'you're stuck and we're not fixing it'. And from this you deem the trust worthy to give up to another 399 of hard earned cash.

Hey and while you're at it please post us where microfluff admits XP was a bad design... magazine or web interview would even do. I mean surely you have a source to back up those words right? otherwise you'd just be posting non-sense presented as facts...

If you lose only 2-3 fps, you must have a pretty low-end video card. That, or your resolution is bottlenecked at the CPU and therefore not affected by GPU OS difficulties. Tell me, what system do you run? I need more info to understand why you're only suffering a minor drop in fps. It's just that your report drastically differs from almost every other source, both in the media, as well as anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

I will agree that Vista has some really snazzy new features. It's just that if games is 90% of the reason for getting on your PC everyday, you'd probably agree with me more. But, it seems like you maybe don't play many games. That could be it right there. For the average consumer, Vista works. But not for gamers.

Dell M90 with 4 gigs of RAM and an nVidia Quadro FX 2500 with 512MB Ram.

I get 50-60 FPS with all of my games which is fine for me. Anything beyond that is not really noticable by a human.

The articles you are referencing are old and mostly related to driver issues. This has been pointed out to you a number of times, but you seem to want to ignore it. Not my problem.

@Enlighten. Your arguement is not really coherent and you just seem to be on a MS bash. Feel free to hate MS. It seems to be really popular ATM. I don't hate MS and you not going to convince me to. MS does some things I like and some things I hate. So does EVERY company I have EVER dealt with. All in all, MS has given me great products and great tools are a very reasonable price. Disagree? Fine.

before we discuss your 10, I need you to clear up something that seems very fishy in your story...

First off it's highly unlikely that you had XP64 loaded onto your notebook. So please answer the following

1) How long did you use XP64? because I haven't experienced those problems.

2) Are comparing a cheap notebook and better desktop and blaming it on XP64?

3) Who manufactured the notebook?

4) Are you saying you did a vista upgrade to your notebook and now you have no problems?

Okay now for the 10 you listed...

1) More driver support for Vista x64 then XP64
what drivers might this be... please post the drivers that are missing for XP and abundant for vista. If you call companies changing like nvidia and ati constantly need to change driver as "More support" then I would ask why were they bad to begin with. There will be less change in things that ::gulp:: actually work. But please post facts...
2) Shell doesn't lockup - Sounds to me like your microfluff buddies didn't finish/fix a product. And the funny thing is you have no consumer fight in you. If someone flat out lied and refused to correct something I paid good money for then I would be more cautious than gung-ho on shelling out more money. It's sad to see a cattle or sheep mentality from you guys.
3) The breadcrumbs feature. - You are not going to believe this newbie... but people have been doing this on XP for awhile. As with other things microfluff copied it and forced everyone to pay for it.
www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/vista-breadcrumbs-for-windows-xp
See you could have saved up to 399 and did the same thing long ago. I give it to you for free.

4) SMB file sharing works better.
5) Higher network throughput. - WTF??? post facts on this. Throughput is in your network card. Are you saying that microfluff lied last year read #3 "Optimized platform and improved collaboration". Show us where the network throughput was measured and XP tested worse than vista. Because in most test either XP was much faster or XP was minimally ahead.
6) More secure.- Sounds to me like your microfluff buddies didn't finish/fix a product. Please read #4 "Increased reliability and security for your most important data"
7) Better thread scheduling. - Horse spit pal read #7 "Multiprocessing and multicore processor support" post facts about the difference in threading between the two. Again if you have information that microfluff lied please post it.
8) Boots faster - this may be true and should be true because of superfetch and readydrive on average. People have stated that, but then I see webshot and other crap in their start menu. But let me say this I wouldn't pay up to 399 to get to windows 30 sec faster.
9) Power management actually works. - Sounds to me like your microfluff buddies didn't finish/fix a product.
10) Superfetch speeds application launch greatly. - Do you have a raptor as your root hard drive? If not then you never cared about HD performance because no way do you pay $399 to get this feature and wont even spend $109 for one of the fastest hard drive out there for the past few years.

And to make absolutely sure that I understand your if I convinced you and say 10,000 others to purchase a car made by me. And all of you report to me that the air condition doesn't work, there is knocking in the engine, the windows don't roll up fully cause a car security issue and every so often while driving it cuts off. I then don't fully fix the known problems but instead release a new design in which I charge a premium for.

Are you saying you'd be all in and trying to convince others to forget about that money lost and my many lies and fork over more? that my friend is asinine...

"@Enlighten. Your arguement is not really coherent"

LOL my argue ment wasn't coherent... really what part do you need help with?

I'm not MS hater... I state facts something you seem to have a hard problem with obviously. The fact that you would say that when I am not pointing to linux, os X or anything else. I mean dude last time I checked XP64 was made by ::gulp:: microfluff

Wow! truly mind numbing... See how foolish you sound?

If you state XP was a bad design then show where that comes from surely you can post facts regarding the design.

I posted links from your buddies on a product redesigned and released last year. Since you're posting microfluff is lying which you'd have to agree it's a lie.

Please explain how that is not under-handed in your scenerio. They redesigned XP64, then posted all of these difference, improvements and effort taken by them and then collected more money selling XP64.

And then you have information that it was known as a bad design, and obviously they couldn't fix power management even though they worked on vista and XP64 at the same time. Just imagine the vista team yelled out "Yes! we fixed it!! and we are not sharing the solutions with you losers of the XP64 team".

What would that mean if as you state a product was released last year supposedly tested and still has all of those problems that you claim exist.

Glad to see you learned a new 'big' word. But next time try making 'coherent' fit where it belongs.

Don't use it to cover your lack of ability to post actual FACTS which you failed to do in 4 of your post.

And P. Freaking. S. asking a company to fish, fix and correct a product to what was promised is not "Feel free to hate MS.". At some point you need a back bone and value your dollar more instead of being led like cattle and sheep to the slaughter house.

I run a triple boot with XPx64 as my preferred OS. Why 3boot ? I work in a support role. XP (both 32 & 64 bit) is a lot like Win98. It's fast and capable with everything right where you need it when you need it. It has a clean look that is somewhat customizable. It has good support for all peripherals and is reasonably stable.
That said ...
Vista is the foundation for Microsoft's new technologies which will probably not be backward compatible much longer. Most people are tired of spending time repairing corrupted OS'es or dealing with configuration issues. They (both the public and the OEM's) simply want a Plug 'n Play computer that the EU can't screw up. A computer with an Admin built in as it were. I don't particularly agree with this opinion but having worked in support for a while I can understand it. What the public fails to understand is exactly how complicated computer hardware, OS and communications really is. It's unreasonable to expect it all to work seamlessly for those that have absolutely no technical knowledge or understanding. People equate computers with other expenditures such as cars when in fact they are thousands of times more complicated and it follows that they are thousands of times more like to fail to function as expected. Frankly I'm amazed at how well they do work !

So my personal caveats in Vista are :
1) Less GUI configurabiltiy
2) Overall poorer user interface
3) Unnecessary user disorientation
4) Still in beta

They could have solved much of this by just using a significant portion of XP's interface and working with vendors like Roxio to assure their applications are 100% compatible. I still have one sound card (M-Audio 2496) that has no driver support and I doubt it will be available soon as MS is still making significant updates to the OS that can impact driver design.

Yep, XP x64 is good to me !

Your link is to a 3rd part add on.

This is not an XP64 feature "newbie".

Using your non-logic, I could install Oracle on a computer and claim its an OS feature? Wrong.

ok enlighten bad example on car manufacturers because yes they do it all the time. If they knew how to make everything perfect the first time, trust me they would. Sometimes entire engine layouts were designed incorrectly and cause serious issues that they have to put band aids on until they do a complete overhaul of the design (depending on how bad of a design this can take 5-10 years.) Ford Taurus and Nissian Maximum are great examples of bad designs but not bad enough to lose millions of dollars to rework everything.

Also vista IS the next step MS didn't spend literally billions of dollars to develop and market it just to say oh well we tried... It doesn't work like that and the people that refuse to update get left behind. So all this talk about how much it sucks and is a rip off reminds of when win95 came out and all the 3.1.1 users were so mad.

"Get out of the way grandpa, here comes the future!"

Kamujin, the article (singular) that I referred to was in THIS month's issue. There's only been one Nvidia GPU driver release since that article was written. Are you saying that driver release fixed the entire problem? Show me what site you read that shows this. I gotta see this. By the way, what games are you playing that you are getting 60 fps in Vista with? And, you never answered about what resolution you are running those games in. If it's 1440x900 that your M90 runs natively, that might explain why you get those high numbers in Vista. So, for you, no, it wouldn't be an issue. It would be an issue if you ran at high resolutions I bet. Like, say, 1920x1600 or higher. The Vista gaming problem manifests itself when the settings are really cranked up, using the latest games--most of them being DirectX 10 games, but some older ones too run slower in Vista.

Another one of your post themes.I noticed a lack of facts and answers being posted. Did you possibly lose them?

Can't answer how long you have been using XP64? or anything else?

I guess you stating "I've done my own tests" should mean something to us here eh?

Looks a bit weak to me... try answering and posting FACTS...

And as I pointed out in previous post. Weather it's a so called feature of the OS is beyond the point.

This obviously went over your head which may be the reason why things don't seem coherent to you. You are suppose to point out 10 things different in vista from MS posted redesign of XP64 that justifies up to $399 in value. That's USA dollars, not rubbles, peco's or denero pal...

Kind of mind numbing, but I'll help YOU with the math $0 plus something free equals a grand total of 0. No matter how amazing you find that math to be it's true, you can try it yourself using a calculator. Hey post the results if you your math keeps returning numbers higher than zero.

Unlike you I don't give microfluff credit for copying and forcing their version of :::gulp:: existing ideas. Next you'll be telling me tabbed browsing was invented by MS in IE 7 hahahahaha

You say the breadcrumb is a great feature over XP. I say people have been doing it for quite sometime for free.

I guess you're new to the PC field. So let me let you in on a little secret MS has been copying and stealing ideas for a very long time. Try looking at some of the court cases and settlements made to other developer in the past. Hell look at them now
www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34090/118/

And while a guy like you would give MS credit for the innovation of windows. Their was a true multitasking computer & os called amiga. And your buddy bill gates called it a game machine, stating asinine things as 'there will never be a need for more than 8 colors on a pc'. And many many other hard-lined statements that are now some how back tracked. There was also Apple that was a steps behind amiga.

So fast forward to today... is DOS the primary os of microfluff? Why is that when they wanted nothing to do with games and thought games had no business on a PC. Which is why it wasn't til win 95 MS made a portal back to dos so that games cold still be played.

Do research for yourself instead of posting nonsense and not knowing history. windows is where it is today because of copy catting NOT innovation. Stop giving created where it isn't due. duh !!! taking an idea, building on it and adding a dollar amount that is then forced down the consumers throat doesn't call for cudo's as if they were the originator.

P.S. post facts please... and your lone "supposedly" two system test wont cut it here among the educated.

blessman... Any chance of substance and fact posting?

You stated "Vista is better then XP at every step of the way" but you have yet to read those two links and pick out 10 things better in vista that would justify up to a $399 value.

So since you FAILED to post substance and answers lets examine what you did post:

"ok enlighten bad example on car manufacturers"

Ummm no... It was to point out that if I screwed you, a consumer with heart and back bone would want answers and vote with their dollar.

Some american car companies have lost customers for a very long time by selling bad products and not putting every effort to first make a great product but also refusing to fix/correct them.

And further proof that you're off base is the fact that a considerable amount of americans as well as people around the world have voted with their dollar and purchased foreign cars in record number over the past. So when people have had a choice the majority don't lay down and take it.

"Ford Taurus and Nissian Maximum are great examples of bad designs but not bad enough to lose millions of dollars to rework everything"

But as stated before they ended up losing more than millions because they feel off being a reliable trustworthy manufacturer. Go look at the number compared to honda and other foreign companies. Look at the record number of layoff and the pleading to the public campaigns to buy american no matter what the quality is.

"So all this talk about how much it sucks and is a rip off" Please point out where I said it sucked? and if it's not a ripoff then you should have posted 10 difference from XP64 that justifies 399 instead of posting non sense.

vista was released with a 3 year shelf life one of which is almost gone. Think about it 3 year shelf life and you'll spend half of that being an MS testing guinea pig.

"Also vista IS the next step MS didn't spend literally billions of dollars to develop and market it just to say oh well we tried..."

Please explain what win ME was. What step did it play?

And what the hell does MS spending billions have to do with vista being worth upward of $399.

Also I never stated that I wont get the OS eventually. My only reason would be for DX10 which is an MS ploy to make vista not be win ME.

But no way do I play the sucker and be the guinea pig at a top dollar cost. Go look at the cost of prior OS'S never before has the ratio been this high. And equally has there a lack of feature to justify that price by the users.

And P. Freaking. S. in order to leave someone you have to be actually going somewhere. Here come the future when vista will be dead right after XP64. See how foolish you sound?

Hypothetical... It's Feb of 2008 and microfluff pulls an AMD and pops vista 2 on the OS road map would you buy the new OS? If not why? Your stupid stance seems to be, buy it all because it was released and is the future.

Stop posting foolishness and try reading those two links and posting 10...

This argument has reached the point of being pointless. You asked for details, I gave them. Now you doubt them.

I play a bunch of games on my M90 including WoW and EQ2. I play them at 1920x1200 resolution. I use Vista x64. I get 50-60 FPS.

If you don't want to belive me, then don't. I don't really expect to convince you because you don't seem to want to be convinced. I am living with Vista as my main OS. I've lived with XP, Linux, and OS X. (as well as many of these OS's predecessors) I am not basing my opinions on some article I read. I am basing it on a lot of first hand experience.

@silverfrog Thank you for at least being civil in the discussion. This is the reason, I choose to answer your questions.

@Enlighten Just keep hating MS, its clear your not interested in learning anything. You just want to rant.

You think I would put 4 gigs RAM and a 512mb Quadro in my notebook and NOT get the upgraded screen?

It also has a T7600 Core Duo 2 proc in it.

Honestly, we all know that a high end desktop will outperform a high end notebook. The fact I have so little problems with my notebook makes it harder for me to understand these complaints.

@Elighten BTW, the fastest notebook hard drive is made by Hitachi, its not a Raptor. Learn2Notebook.

I never stated a raptor in your lap top. I asked for your systems that you used. And was saying if HD performance was an issue you'd have the top performer over the past few years.

You should know that you have to be comparing apples to apples. If you compare a laptop vs a shabby desk top or vice versa then it is not an equal comparison.

So my point about your test is fair comparison.

As an example power management is controlled by the OS and the MB. If the laptop MB has no problem and your desktop does then you've incorrectly attributed a problem to XP64.

When you state network throughout is faster, why can't you prove it? what test did you run with the same system set up.

You are knocking articles such as the ones performed by this site. "I am not basing my opinions on some article I read".

You notice in those articles they use ::gulp:: the same system setup... and not laptop on one de3sk top on the other. Or a new quad core vs an AMD x2 4400 or DDR3 and DDR2 533mhz on the other.

You gave no details...

I asked questions and you provide a few things that MS should have corrected.

Youo claim network throughput is more then provide your test results from two identical machines.

Again the reason you test mean nothing as compared with reliable sources is you FAIL to post the system and any other information regarding the results etc.

I've asked politely several times.

No you cop out and run when you and I both know your test and logic was faulty. stating "@silverfrog Thank you for at least being civil in the discussion. This is the reason, I choose to answer your questions." is a posting cop out...

Where was I not civil ?

I tell you the throughput is higher on Vista x64 and you make some rant that shows you don't even know what a TCP stack is. I have tested these things and there is a lot of information on the topic available. If you knew anything you might counter with concerns about the latency of the new stack, but you did know about that did you?

There is a base level of knowledge required to participate in a meaningful discussion, you clearly lack it.

Your using "shout down" techniques that peg you as immature. Just keep ranting. Or better yet, get some first hand info. It would do you a lot of good.

Where did I say I know about network stack of vista? I haven't fully used vista, my experience is friends who do like a lot of others turn off everything to make it similar to XP.

I read the vista feature list and still don't see $399 worth of added features. And by your weak responses I guess you don't either.

I didn't use shut down anything. I asked you to post facts. One you've lacked doing for about 6 to 7 post now.

This site is supposed to be a discussion site. If you know something and can teach other then post the facts and links so others here can read and learn.

Instead of posting b!ow boy MS statements.

Why can't you post the throughput difference that was tested. You pointed out to silver frog about the sites that show FPS test. That's same system and equal testing comparison.

You are the one mis-informed because vista is a stripped down of what was talked about and promised in "Longhon" read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

See the difference between you and I is I will point you to the information and facts. Now lets see you give it a try...

Post the link talking about the vista TCP stack vs XP64's. Post the test results... TRY POSTING anything of substance and worth learning instead of your styled unfounded ranting.

LOL I'm immature and using ""shout down" techniques". But what do you call your pulling the so-called expert card "There is a base level of knowledge required to participate in a meaningful discussion"...

LOL I can't discuss this with the forum because only I know TCP stacking... hahaha very weak...

Mr Expert...
"I am living with Vista as my main OS. I've lived with XP, Linux, and OS X"

I guess you're saying that you're also running a 10 gigabit network?

Please post the testing you performed with two machines on your 10 gig network.

Since you posted an network enhancement only utilized in high bandwidth connection. I think we'd both agree that 15 meg down and 2 meg up users aren't 'high bandwidth'.

First IPv6 can be manually installed on XP. And the TCP IP stack issue is for high bandwidth connection.

"another problem with TCP/IP in existing Windows platforms is their poor performance over high bandwidth links that have a high latency (delay of about 50 msec or higher). This is caused by the way the stack adjusts the TCP send window using slow start and congestion avoidance, two standard TCP/IP algorithms that are showing their age since they were designed before gigabyte networking speeds became the norm. And the combination of high bandwidth and large latency is not an unusual one in today's branch office environment."

"Looking at the issues and limitations of TCP/IP networking on existing Windows platform, Vista's enhancements in this area add another compelling reason to why upgrading XP desktops to Vista can be a desirable goal for large enterprises that ..."

www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/TCP-IP-Networking-Windows-Vista.html

I have other information that I wont post because I don't know how reliable the source is. But supposedly if an XP user buys windows server 2008 will upgrade the TCP IP stack that is at the core of XP.

I couldn't confirm this in any microsoft documentation. So until I can, I wont state it's a fact that businesses that purchase server 2008 will have the new tech. MS does state the next gen tcp ip stack is in both vista and server.

I was originally talking about home/home business users. And I'll stand by my earlier thought that I don't see up to $399 differences there to justify the jump to vista for only 2 more years.

Vista had a 3 year shelf life when released, 1 of them is almost gone. The same way win ME was released with XP coming in the near horizon. Vista is win ME 2, it's launched with a very near death.

If I'm wrong then educate me, it's welcomed.

In reviewing your 10 new features it is quickly reduced to four max

1) More driver support for Vista x64 then XP64 – sorry but this is not a feature drivers are created by the manufacturer last time I checked
2) Shell doesn't lockup – sorry but this is not a feature, could be an issue on your machine. But something not working can’t be a feature, they should fix/complete the XP product.
3) The breadcrumbs feature – people have been doing this for quite some time for free.
www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/vista-breadcrumbs-for-windows-xp
XP users can do this much cheaper $0

4) SMB file sharing works better – We’ll hold off on this because according to the speculation SMB 2.0 will be included in the windows XP SP3 being release very soon.
5) Higher network throughput. – Only comes into play on high bandwidth networks. 15 meg down/ 2 meg up aren’t high bandwidth.
6) More secure – In what way? IPv6 can be manually installed. There is other software options and things that can be done to add security. Viruses will always be created and pose problems because it’s the nature of the game.
7) Better thread scheduling. - read #7 "Multiprocessing and multicore processor support" post facts about the difference in threading between the two. Again if you have information that microfluff lied please post it. Post how thread scheduling improved between the two and test results.
8) Boots faster – this is because of #10 superfetch/ready drive
9) Power management actually works. – sorry but this is not a new feature. 1) I don’t have any problems with power management and I have an ASUS MB. 2) If you are encountering problems then try getting you MB flashed, or a better MB or even better you buddies at MS to fix remaining errors in XP as advertised
10) Superfetch speeds application launch greatly – This one and #8 are the same… But here is the thing you add 1 for this feature and then subtract 1 because it runs the speedy launched application slower

#8 and 10 is the same thing
#2, 6, 9 aren’t features over what MS promised XP64 would offer.
#5 is high bandwidth network related – and doesn’t benefit home or med to small businesses
#3 is a copy cat of what some XP users have been doing for free
#1 isn’t a feature, drivers are created primarily by manufacturers and there will be an SP3 for XP
#6 and 7 need information and specifics to be provided. As to what is better and testing results to show difference. As you provided with the FPS on games. If the difference tested out to being only minimally better then it's the equiv to some game results.