I had to stick with the thing with around 2 years and fucking hated the thing. Now that I'm back with Windows XP again, I'm much happier. I couldn't see myself running 7, though; I need whatever RAM I can get for the music stuff I do, as well as the fact I'm practically stuck with XP if I want to use the Yamaha XG softsynth, which I commonly do.
Windows Vista is obviously inferior to Windows 7 but it is also obviously superior to Windows XP overall. As long as you have 2GB or more RAM you should do just fine running Vista and there's solutions if you have less than that to reduce memory footprint. People who appeal for XP should appeal for Windows 2000 instead as there's programs that can offer it compatibility with Windows XP in virtually everything while still using less memory. Note that the 'Vista sucks 7 is awesome' opinion is the factor of the initial backlash against Vista for various reasons, probably driver related I assume. XP to Vista was a huge leap, so there was obviously going to be incompatibilities. Now the driver hassles are mostly resolved for moderately mainstream hardware. Do remember that Microsoft done a study where they found that people thought Windows Vista being disguised as a successor to Vista was better than Windows Vista, this really shows the mass ignorance of people in this.
Agreed. In fact, my main computer (the one that I play PC games and stuff on) is a Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4. It runs really well and quite possibly better than the XP computer I'm typing on right now.
It depends on what your main concerns are. Vista has better security (it's strongest point). XP will run better on a low-end machine. Vista will ensure compatability with future programs (example: DirectX 10/11, IE9) XP will ensure better compatability with older programs. Vista is optimized for higher-end machines, so it may actually run better than XP on newer computers. If XP does everything you need it to do and you're happy with it, stick with it. If you are concerned about security or being able to run future programs that drop support for XP, then Vista is probably for you (assuming your computer can handle it).
Borrowing disc means nothing, its the license that matters :P I would say either stick to XP or go for 7. 7 does all Vista can, but does it better as stated before. XP has its plug pulled and M$ is not going to show it any more love and hardware manufacturers are doing same, especially for laptops. I only ever install Vista because the client has the license, but whenever possible, it gets skipped for 7.
Stick with XP, or upgrade to 7. Vista I have to deal with at work on various different computers connected to about a thousand client servers worldwide (not all machines on each network are Vista, obviously, but the ones that are are always annoying), and I fail to see why anyone would choose it over either of the other 2 options nowadays: * Vista takes more memory than XP does. * Vista runs slower than XP AND 7. * The UAC setup is far more annoying on Vista than it is on 7 (like 2 or 3 times the number of prompts). On XP this isn't an issue at all. * The driver support isn't as bad now admittedly, for Vista, but most new drivers are being targeted at 7 rather than Vista, making new hardware run slightly better on 7 than Vista. Old hardware drivers tend to work only on XP though. I fail to see why anyone would run Vista when for low-end hardware XP runs faster, and for higher-end 7 is a superior choice that isn't as annoying and will be patched for longer. Vista is being EOL'd fairly soon: According to Microsoft themselves you can no longer buy it on shelves and in 7 months it won't be on any pre-loaded PCs, either. End of mainstream support (ie free patches) is only a year off. Note the "extended support" figure on that page is for businesses only, and they pay for it.
Well, how about the obvious: upgrade to Vista, then upgrade to 7? It's the only path to go from XP to 7 without formatting and reinstalling.
Honestly, I think upgrading your way to 7 is a very bad idea. In my experience, clean installs almost always end up with having less growing pains and are far more stable. It shouldn't take too long to reinstall everything, assuming you have a few hours to spare on a good weekend day.
Plus there are means of backing up all your data and then loading it into the fresh install, which still manages to keep most of your stability (you'd have to install the programs manually, of course, but the data they use would stay safe).
If you are not a total computer illiterate and you know how to configure Windows, install service packs, etc., then Vista will work beautifully for you. I've used it back before SP1 with a machine that only had 1gb ram, and it worked perfectly fine. There was one major bug with file copying, but that got a hotfix pretty fast, so if you start it out with SP1 and then SP2, you won't even see that. The RAM hogging was never a problem, people just tried installing it on their 512mb ram pentium 4 too often. Vista scales its RAM usage depending on how much RAM you actually have, so with 2gb ram you'll see it use something like 800mb on boot, with 1gb you'll see it use around 400mb, etc etc. But it dynamically unloads ram as other apps need it, so you don't have to worry much.
Updating from XP to 7 requires a fresh install. 7 will save everything in a windows.old folder so you still have access to your old stuff, its just that nothing will be installed on 7.
There's one teeny tiny aspect you guys are missing on. As much as I'd recommend 7 (despite not using it!), the guy doesn't have the choice. I say stick with XP.
I've used xp since about when it was first released. Ever since service pack 2 was released I haven't had any problems at all. My brother bought a computer a few years ago and it was preloaded with Vista. We had so many problems that we couldn't stand it. I actually convinced him to try the release candidate versions of 7. It ran so much better for us than Vista ever did. + - Thats right, the prerelease versions of windows 7 were more stable for us than the FINAL version of Vista. When Microsoft offered a college student discount ($50 for Windows 7 pro 64-bit) he decided to pounce on that immediately. He hasn't had a single os related problem since. But since 7 isn't an option I'd stick with xp. It's smaller and more dependable than Vista. And in the case of hardware support it beats both Vista and 7.
