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O/T Vista v XP -


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I design desktop platforms for large corporations and governments. As a home/small business user you might have slightly different requirements but here's a quick run down of my experience so far.

Vista has some very nice touches and clear security improvements over Windows XP. However it also brings with it a staggering array of issues and problems. The system requirements are pretty horrific for a start. It will run on a basic P4 single core machine with 512mb RAM, but it'll run like a 3 legged dog. As a minimum I'd suggest Pentium Core2 Duo with 2gb RAM, plus a 256mb 3D graphics card. Once into the OS there a few important things that have issues, not least of which is copying, moving and deleting files, which is a fairly fundamental thing for an operating system and several patches down the road Microsoft still haven't got right. Top of my personal niggles list is that Vista and Office 2007 assume too much. It's constantly trying to think ahead of you and push you down the road it thinks you want to go down. The result of this is that you spend twice as much time trying to figure out how to make it do what you want it to do rather than what it thinks you want to do.

XP SP2 I would say is finally at a point where it works well and is stable and is pretty secure. Stick XP SP2 on the machine spec above and it will absolutely fly along. Keep in mind that Microsoft are proposing to cut support for XP SP1 in October this year, simply put this means they'll stop producing patches for it. SP2 will continue for the foreseeable future.

My advice would be go with Windows XP service pack 2 on a new machine unless you have a specific need for Vista, ie: business critical software that will only run on Vista. Save money on the OS and spend it on the best hardware you can afford and a few more beer tokens instead.

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Its not that easy though when all new PCs seem to come bundled with Vista these days is it? I guess you'd need to buy a copy of XP to load and then find that half the features on the new PC wouldn't work properly.

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Depends where you buy your PC from really. Dell and HP are both happy to provide new PC's with XP preinstalled. If you buy from a local shop or PC World they should also be happy to provide you with XP pre-installed. Most PC sellers take the view that if the customer wants it then Microsoft can bugger off, hence the big u-turn some months ago when MS had to start supplying new OEM licences again.

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I've got an old machine (PIII @ 933mhz) running a pirate version of XP Pro SP1, now I'm not recommending pirate software. But this computer has not been able to receive any XP updates from Microsoft (which is fair enough), and I've had no problems with this machine, and it has McAfee Viruscan etc. installed so it seems pretty much fine.

However I also built a computer with an AMD 3200+ etc. and with a legit version of XP Home SP2, with all the updates, and a lot more RAM that the old machine.

Now then, with all the updates installed on the new machine and none on the old; the old machine boots up significantly faster than the new computer (although it can't run the latest games). My view now is that Microsoft tend to put loads of gunk into new software and updates, to solve problems which aren't really there, and performance suffers hugely as a result.

I haven't used Vista myself so I can't comment hugely on that, but newer versions of windows will want more hardware to do more stuff (stuff you might never use). Or if you really want performance you can install Win 98 and watch that fly!!

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Don't rule out Linux either, it's not just for expert geeks. Ubuntu is very easy to use if you're familiar with Windows, it's completely free and comes pre-installed with 99% of the software the average user will ever need. If you've ever been tempted to give it a go now is the time. In terms of speed it beats any version of Windows by a country mile.

Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/ download a copy for free (approx 700mb) and burn it to a CD. Boot off the CD and you can try out most stuff without touching your existing installation of windows. If you decide to give it a go there's a desktop shortcut that will install it, and you can install it whilst leaving your windows installation in place and choose which OS to boot from.

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Don't rule out Linux either, it's not just for expert geeks. Ubuntu is very easy to use if you're familiar with Windows, it's completely free and comes pre-installed with 99% of the software the average user will ever need. If you've ever been tempted to give it a go now is the time. In terms of speed it beats any version of Windows by a country mile.

Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/ download a copy for free (approx 700mb) and burn it to a CD. Boot off the CD and you can try out most stuff without touching your existing installation of windows. If you decide to give it a go there's a desktop shortcut that will install it, and you can install it whilst leaving your windows installation in place and choose which OS to boot from.

Sounds very interesting!

Since I'm running two harddrives, I can afford to give this a try and see where it leads to.

Thanks for the tips.

Todd.

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