Vista versus XP

My daughter has recently purchased a laptop and would like to know if she is best to leave Vista (home Basic) on her laptop, or if she is better off reverting it to XP? She needs to be able to run CAD on the laptop, and has heard from numerous sources that running it with vista will slow the system dramatically. The laptop has a 2Ghz duel core processor, 3GB DDR 2 RAM, and 300G h/d.

Find out from the CAD vendor if their program is certified to run on Vista.

I would strongly reccomend keeping Vista. Assuming your CAD software is ready for Vista. I have a very similar laptop and I am very happy with the performance. Most of the Vista performance issues are with the Aero interface. I'm almost sure Vista Basic doesn't include it anyways. If it does you can always turn it off if performace suffers.

I know saying tihs is a sure way to get flamed but,,, XP is dead.. Learn to love Vista..

Gary

garygaboury said:

I know saying tihs is a sure way to get flamed but,,, XP is dead.. Learn to love Vista.

Click to expand...

Make no mistake, Xp lives and it's got a lot more life left in it. In fact it is no accident that Xp is the most durable of all the versions of Windows that have come about.

Windows 95 came in several different revisions till it was superseded by Windows 98.

OSR 1 (AKA Windows 95 A)
OSR 2 (AKA Windows 95 B)
OSR 2.1 (AKA Windows 97)
OSR 2.2 (AKA Windows 95 C)

Three years.

Windows 98

First Edition
Second Edition

Lasted three years.

Windows Me Millenium Edition

Flash in the pan. Worst ever OS in the Win 9x family.

Windows 2000

Had a fair bit of durability. Mainly restricted to the industrial side of computing.

Came in four flavours:

Windows 2000 Professional
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Windows 2000 Data Centre Server

At last! Windows Xp!!

Not much take off at first, but with various updates and the like, became the best of the lot. And computer manufacturers still have an Xp downgrade option for most of their Vista machines.

Try telling that to the shops that sell Vista machines. Their machines run Vista only if they are for sale. Otherwise they run Xp. I still run Xp and I'm sticking with it.

Sorry mate. Xp is still going strong!

So far I'm happy with Vista Home Premium. Seems to work well for me. I have no idea if it would work with CAD programs that Vin's daughter needs to use.

richfolkes said:

Windows Me Millenium Edition

Flash in the pan. Worst ever OS in the Win 9x family.

Click to expand...

I still have a ME machine over in the corner that never gave me any trouble. I bought new just for the Processor speed and storage.

Think back to when XP was released. I worked in a shop when it was brand new.. The complaints about Vista now are no different than talking about XP back then.

Vista isn't perfect, nothing ever will be. I would not reccomend upgrading from xp to Vista due to issues with old hardware. Most of these issues can be solved with driver updates but it is still a pain. If you're buying a new PC you are getting Vista and it is a good OS. Since everyone is switching you can hold out and be the last one to switch, miss all the benifits of Vista but know that you were one of the "guys who know about computers" and held on to the old software as long as you could. Post back here when you switch, I'm interested to see when it happens.

I'll say it again, XP is dead...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-xp/future.aspx

Gary

garygaboury said:

I would strongly reccomend keeping Vista. Assuming your CAD software is ready for Vista. I have a very similar laptop and I am very happy with the performance. Most of the Vista performance issues are with the Aero interface. I'm almost sure Vista Basic doesn't include it anyways. If it does you can always turn it off if performace suffers.

I know saying tihs is a sure way to get flamed but,,, XP is dead.. Learn to love Vista..

Gary

Click to expand...

I agree and use Vista Home Premium. When I loaded Vista I had a few bugs. Went to test-write a DVD and it said it would take a week.
When I went to register Vista and Word2007 all I got was I was a software pirate. I called MS to turn myself in (kidding). MS helped me straighten out the mix-up and bugged me for weeks asking if everything’s is ok. They charged me nothing.
Vista is very fast and I have had no crashes or any other problems. Make sure you let MS install the patches in your machine.
I use Windows live and kind of like that. I can’t back up my e-mail. Hope my ISP (Quest) is backing it up?
Darroll

I agree with Gary (and others), remember how many people hated XP? Lots!!!! Heck, even remember when SP2 came out for XP how much that was hated. It took a year or so before it was even accepted. I've had Vista Home Premium on my laptop since April '07. I like it a lot. The one thing that helped it, I recently upgraded it from 1 gig of RAM to 2 gig. Almost doubled the speed. I just built a new desktop. I installed Vista Home Premium 64-bit on it. With 4 gig of RAM it flies, now wishing I would've sprung for the 8 gig of RAM to start with. We are running several applications including Photoshop CS2.

I bought a Vista Business??? for my daughter at school. This was about a year ago. We have had nothing but problems with it until the 1st Service Pak came out. Now it is ok but slow. It does only have 1 gig (gig Dave gig) so I think I just need to buy her more Memory.

I bought a second laptop for my other daughter that has 4 Gig on it and and that machine flies.

I have XP Pro on mine but will not upgrade because one program that runs on my computer will not work with Vista and the company has no plans of making Vista Compatible for some time. So I will stay with XP

murph

I'll say this, not one company cares to switch to Vista. They were all asking for the "downgrade" to XP Pro which cost them money to do. Thats how much they like Vista. XP is just more effecient. Hell even one of the Engineers was complaining he had problems with Vista.

XP is NOT dead. You just roll Vista back to XP. Thank God for THAT feature! I think my next OS will be Linux Ubuntu.

I have never run Vista. I've heard of so many issues with it that I'll stay away. Nothing new for me, I ran Windows 2000 professional as long as I could. Once they upgraded our workstations at work to XP, I followed suit and upgraded my home puters. XP works fine for what I need to do.
But, for someone wanting to run CAD/CAM type of programs I would check to see what the vendor of the CAD/CAM product recommends, plus I would check with others running the CAD/CAM software. With that info you'll know for sure what OS to jump on.

For Linux .....CentOS and Fedora put Ubuntu to shame. I tried Ubuntu for a bit and the way it tries to keep root access from you is annoying. It tries to give you a windows like experience and I thought it succeeded in so much that I'll never load it again.

I have heard so many complaints about Vista that when I bought my laptop (believe it is called something else these days) I had no choice, there was only one still running XP, so I bought that one. I have no complaints about XP, when Vista is 'sorted out' perhaps I will change, but till then, I am staying with what I have.

Deadly Sushi said:

I'll say this, not one company cares to switch to Vista. They were all asking for the "downgrade" to XP Pro which cost them money to do. Thats how much they like Vista. XP is just more effecient. Hell even one of the Engineers was complaining he had problems with Vista.

XP is NOT dead. You just roll Vista back to XP. Thank God for THAT feature! I think my next OS will be Linux Ubuntu.

Click to expand...

I have a PC that never gets on the net: Security reasons.
I purchased Word 2007 to use on it.
I had to register it by calling MS.
That program kept nagging me about getting on the net for updates, etc..
Each time it would tear a hole in my operating system.
Finally it knocked down my PC. I had to format the hard drive and do a dead-load. I threw Word 2007 in a drawer.
Vista will not run a lot of the “old” software out there and this is the reason that people stay with XP.
Darroll