Xp or Vista on my T61p - pros/cons. NO likes/dislikes!

I've read a lot of threads asking the same question, but they're all very emotional! I've read houndreds of likes and dislikes, and what everyone prefers, so we don't need more of that.
I want to know what is the best in combination with the T61.
Will I get an hour more battery time with XP over Vista? Vista uses more memory, but has the Turbo memory to compensate (?). On the other hand, the turbo uses power when its enabled, and it's not in XP. Is it even possible to remove it to save some 50-100 grams weight?
I also read somewhere about some OS's accesses the hdd to the extend where it will shorten the hdd lifetime significantly. Is the one better/worse than the other?

Perhaps you can think of other facts that might be interesting when choosing.

I can get used to vista, as can many of us. But I won't choose it if there aren't any 'real' reasons to.

 

Vista Con: Not all applications are compatible, especially if you use some custom or specialized stuff.

 

vista: pro- super fetch on start up will reduce hdd thrashing.
vista: pro- DX10
and for the most part the rest of my reasons for choosing vista are personal so I won't write them.

 

That's a difficult question for me to answer for you since in the end it's a personal preference and quite frankly we just met. There are many users here who really like Vista and others who hate it. My own personal experience with Vista tells me it looks better, but XP offers better performance though hopefully that will change. I think you should just pick one and stop over analyzing it. Honestly, either one will probably work fine.

Some manufacturers like Lenovo and Fujtsu are sending out XP restore discs with machines ordered with Vista Business or Ultimate since they include the right to downgrade. I think I saw posted somewhere Lenovo is set to end the this at the end of the month so you may wish to check into it. Then you could just pick which ever works better for you.

 

Vista Pro:

Some eyecandies, but I think XP with Royale is just fine.

Vista Con:

(1) Shorten battery life by 30min-1hr. Lenovo even made this official in the X300 spec sheet.

(2) Turbo memory almost certainly doesn't work as it claims, so don't waste money on it.

(3) Indexing service access HDD alot more than XP, which might be a bad thing for HDD life.

(4) File copying is slow. Even with SP1, it's not up to XP level.

(5) Too much bloatware.

In the end it all boils down to personal preference, even pros/cons sometime are personal feeling. I think to maximise performance I will skip 32bit Vista all together. When I get more than 4GB of memory I will move to 64bit Vista

 

Tnx for great info. To be honest, your con #1 is a huge reason to choose XP over vista.

 

Latest tests by PC World Magazine show that XP is faster in nearly all applications.

 

Vista Pro:

I has a much more advanced infrastructure and is a much more mature operating system.

It disk image backup and sophisticated boot recovery options.

 

What exactly does "much more advanced infrastructure and is a much more mature operating system" mean?

There are lots of image backup and boot recovery products out there. Adding more features to an OS does not necessarily make it better, especially when the features are available through third party software.

 

My own experience: you get the same battery life in XP and VISTA, but you have to tweak it a lot. Same for startup performance: equal with XP and Vista (actually Vista a bit better, but I tweaked it more). By tweaks I mean setting services, clearing startup keys, and above all CLEAN all the stuff in the taskeng!

Vista PRO:
1) indexing and search. Once you have tried it, you can never go back. Actually, this is the main reason I keep Vista.

2) UAC. I run my computer as a normal user, so UAC is great for me. To do sensitive ops I just type the admin password and .. done! With XP you have to use runas or logoff/logon

Vista CON:

1) speed. XP is still faster (and will ever be) like 2000 was faster than XP etc..

2) Wi-fi and network in general. XP was better, Vista have problems sometimes with my wi-fi. I have to turn the radio off and back again, or refresh the list a couple of time

3) App compat: some application do not run well. But here really depends on what apps you have. If the one you have is on the black list, well.. you can only run XP

 

It means that SP1 has the same kernel as windows server 2008, which went through all the hardening processes used for server kernels. Plus new primitives for synchronization and so on, which are a bit technical but that basically would make the OS better with massively parallel code.

Ah, I forgot another PRO: "Previous Version". It is a great feature!

 

I have been using XP for many years and recently bought this T61 with Vista on it. Migrating from XP to Vista requires some patience as it definitely has a learning curve associated to it. I went Vista mainly to try new technology and be future proof. I had heard positive and negative reports about it but overall, not bad enough to decide to stay with the older XP.

After a few weeks of use, I can say I’m gradually starting to like Vista a bit more each day. It does have its share of problems. I would say that it is more a transition problem for users that are used to XP than real problems of the new OS itself. I.e., for a new user than never used XP, it would sound like the best OS on earth probably.

The problem with Vista, when migrating from XP, is that it adds quite a bit more security levels. This is the good and the bad of Vista at the same time. It is probably more secure and will comfort novice users. For experienced users, this represents quite some pain. So far, all the compatibility issues I had installing older software were related to the new Vista security systems. You will have to activate a “run as administrator” switch for these applications crashing or showing strange behaviour.

About the battery life issue, I wouldn’t say it eats up that much more than XP. I run my T61 with a 9 cells battery and can do between 5 and 5:45 hours when doing light Word / PDF work. I even left Aero active as turning it off did not change much power consumption.

Overall, I don’t regret migrating. I’m confident that Vista will improve over time. This is a totally new architecture so it is normal it will need some patching. We will probably see an SP2 at some point as SP1 still seems to cause some problems (I’m holding on installing it until sufficient reports are made on SP1 stability).

To recap, Vista requires some getting used to. Vista runs smoother (at least from the user’s perspective). I’m keeping XP on my older machines but I wouldn’t go replace an OS for the other on any of these machines. I think both OS do what they have to but Vista is the one that will get more support in the future.

 

Battery life (major issue for me) and wifi would be my two main 'concerns', of the ones mentioned.

 

As I said, the battery "issue" is not something I could notice. I could never gain 1 hour of battery just by going XP. 13 Watts per hour of consumption is what I can achieve with Vista and it is pretty good (The T61 I have, with NVidia is quoted 22 Watts idle in specs.). Disabling the OS swap file and putting more RAM could buy you up to 45 minutes from what I read, no matter the OS you use. If you want battery life, get a big enough battery to start with. Trying to gain 30 minutes on a given battery is speculative at best as many factors will remove that gain. HDD running, screen backlight, etc. You cannot fully control all these factors.

I have more issues with WIFI on my XP laptop than this Vista one. It is not because a few people report a problem on a forum that it is generalised.

Go with the OS you think is best for you... but I used both and, imo, they are both usable.

 

XP runs faster
everything will just work
you don't get that annoying audio glitch (T61 on Vista has this ANNOYING problem...you can search for topics on this)

 

This probably qualifies for another thread, but how did you manage that?

 

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Not running at administrator permission by default is one of the best security precautions one can take. Malware would not be able to modify system files to embed themselves.

In my experience, novice and experienced users have little trouble, but the intermediate users have the most issues with Vista. Novice users don't do enough to find UAC's boundaries. Experienced users that practice safe computing habits understand the purpose of UAC and work within its limits. It is the intermediate users who know enough to be dangerous but don't have the proper safe computing mindset find UAC get in their way.

Coming from UNIX background, I have been limiting my own account's rights to regular user since NT 3.51. It meant some applications like Quicken would not run properly. I just ditched them and looked for alternatives that did work without elevated permissions. As a result, I had little to no trouble with applications when migrating to Vista.

 

I agree with that, and I want to second it. I run my machines as a regular user since windows 2000, and I never used an antivirus. Never got a virus or malaware: they simply cannot install because they don't have the privileges! If they try to install, you get the UAC dialog, and you only have to click cancel. And Vista made my life incredibly easier with UAC! I just have to input my password when I do sensitive operation (like starting/stopping services.

 

I have a t61p 15.4 with two hard drives one Vista and One XP (original Lenovo load)

For work purposes I have to use XP, but I keep going back to Vista for my own personal use. It is true that the battery life decreases somewhat, but in my opinion, not by too much.

I Like the look and feel of Vista and with 4 gb or RAM (3GB usable by Vista) it is really responsive. I have also installed Sp1 and did a couple of tweaks that really made a difference.

Add an extra ultrabay hard drive and use both I do

 

Nothing special in real. The 22 Watts they quote is for a normal use (i.e., they may add a safety margin to account for punctual occasions where power demand raises due to HDD access etc as you work). At 13 Watts, you are really quiet and do not heavily use the HDD, streaming a video movie for example. The battery information panel gives you the Watts consumption in real-time so it is easy to monitor.

Like another poster said above, XP may give a bit more battery time but it's really marginal... and could probably be tuned to a point both have the same battery life. One thing I turned off is the search indexing service. That service seems to run even when running off batteries, which represents quite some HDD seek and reads. Once you tune all these little details, I think vista will get pretty close to XP for battery usage.

 

I must be an intermediate user then ;-) What do you mean by work within its limits? When it is on, it is on alright. Note I indeed only used an admin level account so far so I don’t know how UAC behave in a normal account. In an admin account, it does nag you quite often, 90% of the time for things totally normal and safe.

I agree with you but unfortunately, for some, stop using given software because of the new Vista security is not an option.

Feel free to give your suggestions as I'd like to turn UAC back ON if I can but stop the associated annoyances. One thing bad about UAC is that you can't seem to tell Vista that some applications are safe so that it stop asking each time.

 

Contrary to popular belief...aero DOES NOT use more battery life. Other features such as indexed search and super fetch do use more battery life. The amount of time that ppl use flip 3d and features like that is minimal and makes a minimal strain on the gpu. I can't find it but I believe Anandtech had an article about it

 

I did the same observation. Aero didn't seem to change the power consumption much. Probably an average of 0.5 watt / hour or so. I couldn't tell as other factors were making the Watts consumption swing much faster than Aero could ever do.

Disabling indexing and cache (if you have 3 or more GB ram) may buy you close to an hour. That is probably the best optimization you can do. I would leave super fetch active at it really seems to smoothen the experience while running apps. It's probably one of the best features of Vista actually.

 

I meant not perform actions that require UAC approval. Well, it was a generalization, and there are ways exceptions to the case.

UAC for normal user account will prompt for administrator credential. The user would need to enter the username and password or swipe the finger to proceed. It can be configured to automatically deny through the group policy editor (gpedit.msc).

It would depend on your priorities. My policy for personal machines is not use any application that would not run without elevated privileges. If there is no alternative for a certain application, then I would consider an exception.

I make these changes to reduce the frequency of UAC prompts:

1. Turn off the "UAC: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation". It is in gpedit.msc under Computer Configurations\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options. The detection turns up too many false positives on installers/updaters, when they will run just fine at normal privileges. Use the Run as administrator menu option for the applications that need the privilege.
2. Train myself to not to mess with settings. Most of the settings will run just fine without tweaking all the time.
3. Prefer applications that will run without elevated privileges.

With these measures I don't trigger the UAC prompt in day to day use. Give it a try.