VISTA Reconsidered-X205

so I've had my X205 SLI3 since September, and almost immediately removed Vista. It was sluggish, full of bloatware, and would NOT play Bioshock at playable framerates (even with DirectX10 turned off). After spending a few days tracking down XP drivers, I've been happily running XP ever since.

Well, I've been due for a clean install, and with Vista SP1 out, I decided to give it a try. Well, it's running very well. I don't see any advantages to Vista, but it is working, Bioshock plays fine, and have only had minor incompatibility issues.

Bottom line, I still don't see Vista as an improvement, but at least it is working well as a clean install. I'll try and hold off on the Vista negativism from now on.

Dave

 

Well, and please understand, it took manufacturers a long time to get decent Vista drivers out the door.
It might not be SP1 per say, but newer drivers that fixed your issues.

 

I really don't know, and I probably should have tried a clean install months ago.

However, I still don't see Vista as much of an improvement. I have it set so that it looks pretty much the same as XP (except for the Aero translucent borders), and the only thing I see that I really DO LIKE is the Photo Gallery.

I still may go back to XP, since I do think you get better performance with given hardware, but at least I can stand to use Vista now.

 

so I've been living with Vista over a month now, and I miss XP. It is faster, all of my programs run without an special settings, and XP handles photos/video better for me. I think I'm going back to XP as soon as I have time to get everything properly backed up (saved games are the easiest to lose).

Maybe the "leaner" Windows 7 that's coming will be worth upgrading to.....as after a month or so, the Vista Photo gallery is the only thing I like better in Vista

 

First thing with any laptop should be to wipe the drive and install a clean generic copy of windows. You cant fully get rid of all the bloat just by un-installing all the useless crap manufacturers pile on.

When it comes to Vista, there is actually quite a bit you can trim up which can GREATLY increase speed and feel. Part of the problem with vista is not that it is slower by default, it's that there are a TON more services and what not running by default. Quick example is go to taskmanager on XP and note how many processes are running, and do the same on that untouched vista install, and compare the difference. If you trim it up to a similar level of services and resident software as XP, the performance is pretty comperable as well. Some things are worth the hit like aero and all, but otherwise, there is quite a bit you can turn off and/or disable and get it to a near identical load as XP.

There are some things which do get a bit of a hit, due to some things being more complex in look or function. Regardless how necessary or usefull the changes are, that's just progress. If all we really wanted was raw speed, we would all be running windows 3.1 still

But yeah, as long as the machine has good drivers for everything in Vista, most software has caught up with good for vista versions also. Tweaked up and cleaned up...as well as some time allowed for it to settle in a cache everything it wants to etc (a few good days of use), vista actually runs pretty well. Outdated hardware and outdated software is another case, but that has pretty much always been the case with any major OS change.

 

I have booth Vista and XP installed for a reason: I work with my laptop and I don't want my clients seeing that I play Games, rip DVDs, downloads, etc...

So I work with Vista, which is doing great specially after SP1, and play in the XP, though nowadays the Vista video drivers are better and faster than XP's ones.

After SP1, Vista's performance got better, less swap, faster networking, faster HD copies, etc. And as my X205 has 1GB of Robson TurboMemory, I feel it pretty much faster than XP to work, and I do work with Photoshop and Illustrator CS3 all the day on.

Vista is nice! Give it a try!

 

I agree - Vista is nice. I have XP on mine and Vista on my wife's. Had a lot of problems initially on Vista due to using Computer Associates security suite. It stinks. After uninstalling that, it has been smooth sailing with Vista and in comparison, XP is looking pretty bland. I don't think there are a ton of super-compelling features in Vista, but it looks nice, does a lot of things more intuitively and Media Center is pretty cool as is Windows Movie Maker 6. I'm not sure I'd install it on an old computer, but on a new machine, I'm liking it.