Windows Vista or Windows XP for 8510p?

Which OS should I choose for the 8510p? I will be using the laptop for Office and gaming.

 

I had vista on mine, then I decided I liked XP more, so I went with XP. XP is better for gaming than Vista, but you can have it installed with vista and they ship you the XP CDs if you don't like it.

 

Just use Vista.

 

Really good question! I have asked the same question and have the same dilemma as well. Actually, I was just about to start that thread.

For my HP 8510p laptop, I have received both XP + Vista. I tried with Vista, played a bit with it (games, checked the fancy display etc) and I did the same like Crimsonman, installed XP there. Vista is not my cup of tee.

However, spending my previous couple of days to go through on the relevant threads in notebookreview and on other sites on the net, now I am thinking to use both. Dual boot (XP primary, Vista for games ), actually maybe Triple(?) - XP for normal use, XP lited version for DX9 games, Vista slimed for DX10 games.

I have one question regarding it:

1. Is this a big different between DX9 (XP) and DX10 (Vista) in games? (Or does it worth to install Vista for DX10 games for better game experience?)
2. Is XP able to handle DX10 somehow as well?

I would have Vista just because of DX10 games. If Vista the only one that can handle DX10 games, well, I think I have to make a new partition for that.

I saw many member on XP with that laptop. I wonder if they have a vista as well... (schoko, crimsonman). Ask Ackeron, he has Vista on it...

Guys, what do you suggests us?

 

Kain: check this thread, there are some perf. result for both Vista and XP (basically, OC results after the new Bios):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=200563

 

Get XP, no doubt about it. You will come to despise Vista, as I did. I quickly replaced it with XP.

 

I got HP to send it with XP and XP disks so I could clean install it. Hopefully Ackeron comes by here since he has Vista on his (though I think I remember him wanting to switch to XP, but not having the time).

I don't think there's been a big difference between DX9 and DX10. You should run a search on it to make sure.

 

Ehhh... I really wanted to switch back to XP at first as Jin said, but time kind constraints meant I've been using Vista since about September.

To be honest, I haven't had any real 'problems' with it. I get the occasional crash on load, something to do with Vista + wireless (once every few weeks), but other than that...stability wise it's just like XP for me.

I suppose it's the speed I miss, or at least I think I miss it. See, my old laptop was, well, VERY old, so XP ran ok, but nothing special. But as I changed machines when moving from XP to Vista, I can't really compare how the two compete speed wise. People cry that Vista is stone-age slow compared to XP, but to me it's faster because of the machine

I will say however that Vista takes literally 2 minutes to completely boot up, whereas my old XP was at most 45 seconds. Shut down times are about the same. To offset this I simply hibernate all the time, which cuts start up to 30 seconds but increases shut down to about a minute (not that I care, I'm shutting down!).

My only other qualm is of course having 500mb of memory used just at idle, as compared to my old XP using about 200 at most. But as someone pointed out, XP was designed in 2001 to run on a 700MHz processor with 512mb of RAM; Vista was designed in 2005/6 to run on the latest hardware.

In that sense, I've never had problems running anything, never run out of RAM, never had any "terrible" problems with Vista. I guess I came in expecting Windows ME 2.0 but was pleasantly surprised. I do like the interface updates they've done though--tweaking is much easier in Vista.

My last complaints (and biggest ones) would be software incompatibilities, and useless/annoying Vista features. Ok this boils down to one example really: burning software. My old Nero install didn't work with Vista, so I had to find a new program. Only Vista was being stupid and kept wanting to use the built in program. It was so bad that the OS wouldn't read CDRWs unless they were formatted using Vista's burning program. In the end I disabled the POS program and lo and behold the new burning programs I tried worked! So yeah, just little things like that can be annoying.

On the whole I would recommend Vista based on the following:
a) your machine can run it at max possible settings w/o issue
b) you don't game 24/7, because well it's pretty much proven XP > Vista for gaming
c) you don't mind taking time to learn the new OS. MS seems to think Vista is user friendly but damn, you really have to tweak it to get a good installation going.

 

I've also noticed that sometimes my laptop will crash upon booting up/coming out of stand-by. It doesn't usually happen, but when it does, I just turn off my laptop for about 30 mins. It's very weird, won't work for awhile, then I do nothing and bam it's up and running. Definitely something with the internet since safe mode works, while safe mode + networking doesn't. Ackeron do you have the newest internet related drivers?

 

Does the HD 2600 work equally as well under both OSes? At the moment, I'm leaning towards Windows XP due to better gaming performance.

 

the graphics card will perform a little better under xp, but thats the usual gap between vista and xp, for now...

with the upcoming service pack3 for xp, it will gain some overall performance again.. , but the future is definitly for vista, thats out of question.

there are a lot of posts here concering the advantage / disadvantage of the os´s.

 

I'm expecting Windows 7 to replace Vista even before Vista becomes the "standard." Anyone agree? If so, then there is no real reason to get Vista now since all it is, is slower than Windows XP.

 

One more thing. I know that if I order the laptop with Vista, I'll have the option of selecting either the 32-bit or 64-bit versions of the OS. My question is that if I order the laptop with XP, will I also have the choice of 32-bit or 64-bit at first boot-up?

 

You can't select the 32 or 64-bit at bootup with Vista. You'd have to buy a Vista Anytime Upgrade DVD to change to 64-bit.

 

Actually the business models let you select 32 or 64 bit for Vista at first boot, and come with both versions of the OS in case you want to switch later.

Not sure about XP though.

 

When I first booted up my XP machine it did not have any option for 32 or 64 bit. Neither did the XP clean install disk from HP. I think HP only supports the 32 XP Pro.

 

Lame Oh well.

Did you end up installing the wireless update Jin? I grabbed it but won't be able to deal with it until the weekend probably.

 

Yeah I got it. Easy to install too. Just ran the update and done, no reboot even. The problem is, I won't really know if it worked or not unless the issue shows up again. Considering it usually showed up once every few months, it might be awhile. Even after a few months without the wireless issue popping up I still won't know if the update fixed it. I never found a way to reproduce what goes on. All I know is that it was definitely the wireless driver. I'm not too disappointed that HP doesn't support 64 bit XP Pro because barely anyone does. I'd heard it wasn't that good.

I think you mentioned that you could reproduce it. If tell me what to do I'll try it. I have a foggy idea what it was, but am too lazy to search for it right now

 

I kind of alluded to it in that PM. By turning off/on the wireless during boot I meant hitting the touchbar button. And the LAN cable of course Then again, this all happened months ago, so I don't even know if I can reproduce it now...haven't tested since I updated to the LAST wireless drivers in November!

 

I searched on the net a bit:
Crysis: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/28989.html / http://www.gametrailers.com/player/19966.html

Generally: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/directx-9-vs-directx-10-worth-upgrading-to-vista-for-243099.php

And for Radeon HD specially: http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd/demos/radeonhd-dx9_vs_dx10.html

Well, based on these, DX10 looks much better...

Maybe it is a stupid one, but I will ask it Isnt there any way at which we can implement DX10 to XP?

 

the plain and simple answer: no.

 

Once you install Vista SP1 you will be able to use all 4 gigs if you have it installed Performance with SP1 is great to.

 

Only with the 64bit versions which allows the system to use all 4GB of RAM. The only change SP1 brings about in 32bit versions of Vista is that it displays the total amount of memory installed not what is available, your system will still be limited to ~3GB of usable RAM.

 

Your right. I was having a pipe dream

 

Just got my 8510p, and really aren't that impressed by the performance of this machine. Hopefully this is just because the install priovided by HP is full of crap.

Currently have Vista business 32 bit, but want to do a clean install. There are no cd's provided with my computer, just the restore partition. Can I just download vista business 32 bit or windows anytime upgrade online and use the serial provided with my computer?

 

Check out http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=120228