XP vs Vista

[UnderOpenSky]

Thank to everyone who has responded, if I didn't want to play games, I wouldnt consider vista, just stick to xp or install linux. I dont have any games at the moment, having not played PC games for about 5 years, but wouldnt mind catching up with some older titles like Doom 3, Fear, Dawn of War and Civ 4 as well as newer titles. Do games take a performance hit under vista as its taking up resources in the background or that the drivers aren't as good?

I'd rather stick to xp if I can as I can find an "evaluation" copy and spend the money on a better graphics card/extra hard drive. Reason I asked about 32bit vs 64bit is they seemed to be about the same price, seems daft that the 64bit version is harder to get drivers for, surley most people running vista have a 64bit machine? Out of intrest how long till xp becomes obselete for games? I've heard crysis will be better under direct x 10, but what will that mean for those of use who wont be running sli rigs?

 

[UnderOpenSky]

or a shorter question, how long till you wont be able to play new releases under xp?

 

[Sunray]

or a shorter question, how long till you wont be able to play new releases under xp?

Gonna be a while, Vista has achived 1% of the market if the Inquire article is to be believed.

 

[skyscraper101]

Out of interest, can one 'aquire' acopy of vista and will it work fine?

Seems not to be a problem with XP just wondered what the security was like on Vista in this respect.

 

[Radar]

Thank to everyone who has responded, if I didn't want to play games, I wouldnt consider vista, just stick to xp or install linux.

wine under linux is remarkably hassle-free, has shitloads of users and user support and doesn't seem that much of a resource hog.

I play wow quite a bit and its almost impossible to see the difference between running it natively under XP Pro and under gentoo linux/wine. This is on a 3.4 gig P4 about 2 year old, 2 Gb RAM and a crappy nvidia OEM geforce 6800

I haven't tried anything DX10 specific yet I might be singing a different tune once I do

 

[ChrisFilter]

Out of interest, can one 'aquire' acopy of vista and will it work fine?

Seems not to be a problem with XP just wondered what the security was like on Vista in this respect.

You can indeed.. fully working, and updates fine.

 

[pinkmonkey]

I really really tried to get a new laptop with xp on it, when we bought a new one recently. But there don't seem to be any left (not in Tottenham Court Road, anwyay) and I didn't fancy paying £90 to get XP put on there. So we have Vista. I like it. I work alot with graphics and photos. The thumbnails are really clear on Vista, I can see my fles really easy before I open them. I also like the way you can tag and sort photos - that's perfect for me, because I sometimes use the photos I've taken for more than one client, so I can sort photos by both the clients name and also the type of shoe it is (I'm a shoe designer). I couldn't do that before. It is very very useful indeed.

As for games; we have some very old games and El Jugs reports problems.

 

[Chz]

My intention is to stay on XP until 64-bit Vista gets all its drivers and such sorted.

For a new build, it makes no real difference either way. However, there's no compelling reason to upgrade to 32-bit Vista.

 

[ChrisFilter]

I really really tried to get a new laptop with xp on it, when we bought a new one recently. But there don't seem to be any left (not in Tottenham Court Road, anwyay) and I didn't fancy paying £90 to get XP put on there. So we have Vista. I like it. I work alot with graphics and photos. The thumbnails are really clear on Vista, I can see my fles really easy before I open them. I also like the way you can tag and sort photos - that's perfect for me, because I sometimes use the photos I've taken for more than one client, so I can sort photos by both the clients name and also the type of shoe it is (I'm a shoe designer). I couldn't do that before. It is very very useful indeed.

As for games; we have some very old games and El Jugs reports problems.

See this is what I don't get... people are desperate to stick to XP without any real reason (not aimed to be offensive to you pm, everyone slags Vista off so it's no surprise) when Vista is perfectly capable if not better, with the right hardware.

 

[jæd]

See this is what I don't get... people are desperate to stick to XP without any real reason (not aimed to be offensive to you pm, everyone slags Vista off so it's no surprise) when Vista is perfectly capable if not better, with the right hardware.

Problem is that there doesn't seem much reason to upgrade. And when you realise XP SP3 is going to be Vista features back-ported, there's even less reason.

Vista on new hardware is quite good. Its just that there's some people out-there (eg PCWorld) flogging Vista on Xp hardware...

And then there's all the people who were "bitten" by pre-SP1 Xp and aren't going to do the same...

 

[pinkmonkey]

I am doing El Jugs head in going on about how much better it is, the file sorting, the massive thumbnails and all that, its really saving me time, before I was scrabbling round all my dozens and dozens of ilustrator files - not now though.
The only problemette we had was with the 3g modem. I called boaters phone (a company which sells stuff so that people on boats can get t'internet etc) - the man went 'aargh! don't get Vista!' But it was fine - we just downloaded a patch. It works.