After a month of Vista, I switched back to XP Pro

Preface
I have a ThinkPad X61s that came installed with Vista Basic. The laptop has the following hardware: 1.6Ghz LV C2D, 2GB of DDR2 Memory, and a 120GB Hard Disk.

Upon receiving my laptop, I quickly formatted the hard disk and installed Vista Business x64. The main reason why I chose the 64-bit edition was because of the full 4GB availability. The first thing I noticed about my laptop is that the Vista kept thrashing the hard disk after booting up. This would last for about 2-4 minutes. It was a little bit annoying because I could hear my hard drive clicking for that 2-4 minutes duration. Overall, my experience on Vista was mediocre. Programs definitely opened faster thanks to Superfetch Technology, but boot times were slow and it kept crashing every once in a while. After running Vista for about 1 month, I was curious about the performance of XP Pro.

After installing XP, I quickly noticed how much faster it booted up compared to Vista. The time was literally night and day. I haven't taken a stopwatch yet to measure the difference, but from my butt-dyno, the difference was definitely there. Furthermore, XP just feels more stable overall.

I don't believe Vista is ready to take over XP just yet. There's a benefit using older technology; all the bugs and quirks have been worked out. On Vista you're basically a guinea pig for Microsoft. Moreover, Lenovo has decided to stick to XP for the backbone computers in the 2008 Olympics because they feel Vista just isn't ready .( http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/15/lenovo-says-no-thanks-to-vista-for-2008-olympics/

So here's my Vista vs. XP rant.

 

My opinion for what it's worth is that you should run what you want to run. WinXP is still plenty good for most peoples needs.

 

That clicking is really odd. I didn't hear anything like that on my laptop.

 

eventually, however, vista will take over.

 

Your fan is probably louder than the hard disk clicking noise. Put your ear close to the hard disk and see if you can hear it.

 

Large corporations won't be switching anytime soon. Usually they won't switch until there's a _need_ to, such as losing support from Microsoft.

 

i fixed that quote for you.

 

It is refreshing for a old man like me to see such reticence to change in the young. At least I know I'll be employable much longer than I will need to be.

 

For being less than a year old, Vista is wonderful

 

I like vista much more than XP. cleaner, simpler, but also slower.
You need some serious computer power to appreciate it.

I've run Vista since January, always had at least T7200, 2Gb ram, and a 7200rpm hard drive and I really enjoyed it.
I could not find much compatibility issues, at least nothing that would bother me.

Now I am using a T61 T7500 with 4Gb Ram and 200Gb 7200rpm drive and I would never go back to XP. My Vista just flies and makes my life so much simpler than XP did.

It was the same rant when XP came out, same when Windows 2000 came out...people have hard time to change.

companies can't be compared to personal users.

 

POWER TO XP! YEAH!!

/streaks across the thread hallways...


So yah... basically I had Vista Ultimate on my desktop for (I kid you not) 30 minutes before I couldn't take it anymore and went back to XP Pro. I will only *consider* Vista again when SP1 comes out *and* they can (if they do currently I apologize) disable all the massive caching that occurs during initial logon.

 

Vista has run fine for me when I've run it, perhaps a tick slower, but nothing major. I had no compatability issues with it. My printers, scanners, iTod, etc. all worked fine.

I don't really see a compelling reason to upgrade. Yeah sure Aero looks nice, but that's not enough for me.

 

Vista is mediocre at the moment. I am going to wait until Vista SP2 before I use it again (if ever). XP is much more stable right now than Vista. Vista has some odd bugs that occur ever so often. Vista just feels so weird to use than OS X or Gnome.

 

I do like vista, though I'm going to see what I can do with Ubuntu this time around.

So far what I hate in vista is Avast wants to be a POS and screw everything up on boot.. Don't know what it's doing, but none of the Thinkvantage programs will start up until I halt real time scanning or kill the app. For now I'll just uninstall it and try a different solution.

 

I agree that power is what vista needs right now. My T61 Vista Ultimate with T7500, 5400RPM HDD, and 1GB RAM was barely functional out of the box. It was slower than my 4 yr old Toshiba laptop.

After I upgraded to a 7500RPM HDD and 4GB RAM (clean install of Vista 64-bit) I couldn't be happier. The performance now approaches my desktop dual-core system with AMD 4800+, 2GB RAM, 10000RPM HDD and XP. Stability is no longer an issue either.

Vista should increase the minimum specs to include nothing less than a T7300, 2GB RAM (maybe 3GB), and a 7500RPM HDD. I also think Aero should probably be disabled unless you have discrete graphics.

 

After two month of Vista, I have decided to stay with Vista. I have no compatability problems with Vista on my computer. Everything runs just fine. I have Aero and BitLocker on. It is not bad at all.

 

My vista has run smooth, ZERO problems except last night something got fudged up and the computer pretty much slowed to a halt and I couldn't even pop up the task manager. Besides that one problem I have had zero compatibility issues, it runs great, looks good, I'm happy.

 

I'm also a satisfied Vista user. After first boot with my T61, I backed up all the important files and installed Vista64.

Vista has never hung or crashed and I only reboot the machine when a software installation forces me to do so. It's not perfect and it took a little tweaking to get it to work how I like it (eg. the focus-follow-mouse registry hack) but I know I would have been tweaking XP as well. The integrated DVD burning software alone is worth the switch!

No performance problems either with my T7300 and 2G RAM. There are plenty of tweaking guides for Vista that can make it much faster than the default setup that comes with a Thinkpad! I run aero with no problems and I have "only" the X3100 - I think few people really need discrete graphics on a laptop (maybe they would be better off buying and Xbox or PS3 for gaming...)

 

you must have a new type of hard drive running at 7500rpm!

I think you mean to say dedicated graphics. discrete graphics is onboard video.

 

That is a constant typo that I make, but you know perfectly well what I meant.

It's just a forum entry, not a research article.

 

And that was just a bit of humor, not a personal insult, you knew what he meant!

 

After using Vista, I never want to switch back to XP.

But I am forced to use XP pro at work, which is fast but dull.

Maybe I will bring my laptop and install Autodesk Civil 3D 2008 and work on it.

 

Well, most of the difference that people notice in speed with Vista is due to the fact that it LOVES RAM, not unlike OS X. 1 GB runs pretty well, but not quite as well as XP with 1 GB. This is due partly I'm sure to the changes in how Vista manages memory. With 2GB or more Vista does very well; although some people will still say slower because of the small delay that the Aero window fade in/out animation introduces while it's doing the fading. When that is turned off, Vista does in fact seem snappier to me than XP did.

For such a young OS, Vista is actually in very good shape; however I agree that it still has a little way to go (and needs to shake off the stigma that people give it) before it will be widely accepted and liked by the more educated side of the tech community.

 

My brother first impression of Vista was not too positive. Billions of dollars invested and the only tangible difference is the minor update to the GUI. Everything else went a step backwards in terms of usability but possibly the GUI. I guess a glossy exterior is all consumers care about today. Not much has changed from XP to Vista. The glossy GUI is bubblegum: after a few weeks, it gets old quickly.

 

What are some of the important things that Vista offers that XP doesn't?

One advantage I see with Vista is for people who want high resolution screens, but also want the ability to conveniently scale up the text without breaking the desktop composition, or without sacrificing clarity (since can stay with native resolution).

But, my T60 (with T5500, only 1GB DDR2, 5400rpm HD, and Vista Business) is agonizingly slow, especially at boot-up. Arguably I bougth the wrong system for running Vista, and I need to at least add another 1GB RAM stick asap, and might invest in a 7200rpm HD someday.

When I jump onto our 2 year old desktop with XP, it seems amazingly fast, and makes me wonder why I'm running Vista.

But unless I can find the same scaling options with XP, I'll probably keep Vista on the T60. If nothing else, it's an opportunity to get familiar with it early, and I do kind of like it now except for the sluggishness.

 

t7300 with 2gb ram with integrated graphics and vista ultimate

I could not be happier...it renders DPI's so much better, I love the aero feature....I love the instant search..I love how explorer works...I love the fact that you can do a constant disk defrag...overall it is a much better system..

yea it takes a little bit longer to load...but I always use the sleep mode when transporting my notebook and restart once every 4-5 days...

I haven't had any problems with it..no freezes..glitches...sometimes the HD kicks up a little bit..but I don't mind


I just think people are afraid of change...just give it some time and you'll learn to love it

 

let me guess...you only test drive cars in the dealers parking lot before judging a car too

 

No offense, but that comment lacks any detailed understanding of the OS.

 

No.

ALOT has changed in Vista. Google will show you the answer!!

 

What irks me with Vista is Microsoft released all of these tiers, and with that they released a bunch of different requirements. This includes 2 different options for each tier a 'can run it, but may not be usable', and 'can run it and should be useable'.

The tiered system really annoys me, XP pro vs Home annoyed me. Vista just takes it one step further. They use the tiers to mask the fact that for vista to run in a usable state, it needs a monster machine. They are getting sued over this because it is very confusing for non techies.

They also have some stiff competition OS X and Linux have arguably better features, cost less and have a smaller footprint.

IMO Operating systems should be seen, but not heard. You really shouldn't notice your OS. The tools and features built on top of the OS you notice, but the OS should just be a core that runs quietly and efficiently. Vista strays from this, and if you look at history, Vista is mirroring Windows ME almost exactly. It does not have the finished feeling, and the name feels dirty. If I was in microsofts shoes I would be taking vista, correcting as many flaws as possible, and then reselling it under a new name. I just don't see the Vista branding going anywhere people have a preconceived mindset that it is bad, even if they do make it good, it will still be bad in most IT workers minds.

 

For those of you considering a move to Windows Vista, there are a number of things you can do to reduce the performance impact to your system. If your machine is fairly modern and runs WinXP well, then it will likely run Windows Vista nicely.

Keep in mind that the fancy glass effects require a decent GPU but at the same time, there's nothing that requires Aero Glass at the moment. If you have a notebook or desktop that won't run Aero Glass, that does not mean it won't run Windows Vista nicely.

I see some positives mentioned in this thread. Some of you like the search, new shell, etc. In my case, I want the bare minimum working set so that I can give the RAM, disk and CPU power over to the apps and VMs. With that in mind, I usually disable Windows Search, Offline files, and Superfetch services. This dramatically reduces the I/O to the hard drive, but I give up search and pre-fetch snappiness. So be it.

There are all sorts of tweaks that can be made to make Windows Vista run in a highly performant fashion. Although I have some state-of-the-art machines, I also have some older clunkers. You would be surprised how well Vista runs on a laptop or desktop with a decent amount of memory (more than 1GB) and a good hard drive (7200rpm).

Consider how WinXP ran the day it was made available... In order to fully understand the WinXP evolution, you need to look back to the hardware and prices at the time it shipped, then the improvements made over its life.

Windows Vista was just born from a release perspective. It isn't yet a year old. It's just a baby and hasn't yet learned to run. SP1 is coming soon and it will get better. It appears Microsoft is very focused on performance, reliability and security improvements in SP1. I'm glad they are focused on that instead of adding a new theme or other eye candy... thankfully.

 

Me too. I would like to see one, and only one SKU.

 

I think you make some great points. So many versions to choose from, and options on how to configure based on resources. It will keep things confusing for years to come. Maybe better to have made a clean break and have Vista only run on stronger systems, and only offer one flavor (or two at most).

With Baisc, Premier, Business, and Ultimate available, I was already fretting over which version was right for me. When I ended up choosing a machine that happened to be pre-configured with Business, I was sort of relieved to not have to choose.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad Microsoft exists, because I don't think we'd be anywhere close to where we are today if they didn't (I mean that in a good way). But even after all the lawsuits, it still seems like I can feel Microsoft's arrogance coming through in the product offering, which drives some people away. Or maybe others don't share that same view.

 

Yeah I will be sticking to XP for another two years maybe. I don't move to new incarnations of MS's OSs until they have at least two years and a service pack or two under their belt. Hell i used Win 2000 up until Dec 2005 and i only upgraded then because i was doing a major system overhaul.

 

Perhaps you remember the days of windows 98>>ME>>2000>>XP

Rapid fire released of windows. The reason XP was able to mature was because there has not been a new version of windows in like 4-5 years.

The next version of windows was in the works when vista was released. I fear we are returning to rapid fire days again and a lot of instability from lack of maturity.

 

I think Vista will have about a 4 year run. Vista was in the works shortly after XP was released. MS is always working on the next OS.

 

Not much for the user. Just a lot of headaches for tech support. DRM built into the OS does not give more user experiences; it prohibits it. Performance bugs that occurred during beta testing still present in the retail version. Slower network filesharing bugs, network printing issues, problems with older hardware. Increased ram usage and hard disk thrashing. Sluggish performance. Is Vista forward or backwards? The GUI is something you see that may have improved, but that is not the end all be all.

 

Some of those are bugs. XP and every previous version of Windows had problems in their first years. XP has had many years to work out bugs.

Increased RAM usage and hard drive use is a silly complaint. Vista uses unused resources to do stuff... I honestly don't see why people keep complaining about that.

Vista is forwards. Like I said, read what actually happened before you bash it. There are alot of good underlying code changes.

 

I am tired of vista running my sytem very slow , i have 3 gb memory and slow system , i just ordered my free sets of xp pro downgrade from lenovo and can't wait to install it

 

It is kind of like the opposite of software engineering where you make the software as optimal and efficient as possible. Microsoft's strategy goes against this fundamental where they use as much resources as possible. There is a reason why computer developers were against Microsoft's .NET way of programming things. .NET is resource intensive and has very poor performance. It is only good to do patch jobs where performance does not matter. In operating systems, performance does matter!

Defend Microsoft all you want. I don't see these issues with OS X. OS X is pretty bloated but still faster than Vista. Vista boots up slower than SuSE Linux, and that is slow. You can have your computer cache everything until it brings your computer to its knees. Vista can also cache your lunch. Personally, I don't like to need 12 GB of memory to just run some virtual machines, office, and an internet browser.

 

Not to mention Vista does not natively support OpenGL anymore like in XP. OpenGL is now emulated because Microsoft made improvements to the underlying driver architecture. Conveniently, Microsoft got rid of native OpenGL support to push their own proprietary DX10 format. As a result, OpenGL performance is much poorer in Vista. The graphic card companies are now scrambling to some how hack performance into OpenGL.

It is official: VISTA SP0 is WINDOWS ME PART 2.

 

That makes no sense.

They are utilizing unused resources to improve things when the computer IS being used.

Also... there are plenty of people who like .NET. There's a reason it's gaining so much traction. It may not be optimal for everything, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

And after looking around for a good link... here it is:


There's much more than just GUI changes.

The only bad thing about Vista is the DRM stuff and higher system requirements. The system requirements thing comes with every new OS version (except Linux etc. of course). The other "bad" thing about Vista is that everyone complains about it just because it's "popular" to complain about it. Same reason people say Macs are "better" even if they have absolutely no clue about any technical reason for that... it's just the popular thing to say (not to say it isn't better, but many people say that yet have no clue about why)

 

Yes, improve things. The caching of data into "unused resources" may sound good, but if that is the case, then 1 GB would be okay to use for Vista. People are now recommended 2 GB of memory just to do mundane, basic office tasks in Vista versus using just 512 MB (or 256 MB) in XP. The amount of ram usage in Vista is not necessary.

Why are things generally much faster in XP than Vista? Vista's performance improvement makes sub 1 GB systems sluggish. This intelligent caching system in Vista is not as intelligent as Microsoft wants you to believe.

*/sarcasm*
In the next Microsoft operating system, you will need 100 GB of ram. It will cache your entire hard drive into memory! There will be constant disk thrashing because Windows will intelligently cache everything on your computer for quick retrieval and application startup! It will be the best Windows ever!
*end sarcasm/*

Vista has so many program and driver incompatibilities and issues that I might take my chances with an alpha build of Fedora Core. XP was not even as bad at launch as Vista was. Vista's issues at launch is only unrivaled by ... you guessed it ... Windows ME. Vista (a.k.a. ME Part 2).

Drinking Microsoft Kool-Aid and not realizing it is myopic.