Do you prefer Windows XP or Vista or Mac OS or Linux?

This is a thread to discuss whether you like Windows XP or Windows Vista or Mac OS or Linux.

Leon

 

OS X for laptop
XP for gaming desktop
Vista for desktop

I guess I'll pick OS X because I'm on my laptop most of the time.

 

Right now Windows XP SP2 is great, but in the future I will most likely prefer Windows Vista SP1 (once the update is released).

 

Hmm... tough.

I've always been a Windows user, but recently, I've been very impressed with (Ubuntu) Linux.

In terms of compatibility and usability, I guess I'd have to say Windows XP SP2... but in terms of overall stability, I'd go with Linux.

 

when vista become more "gaming-friendly" i will prefer that, until then im stickin with xp sp2

 

Voted Vista. But doesnt mean i really like it that much. XP for the most part is the most functional in terms of backward software compatibility. Either way Vista is the most promising one. Online updates is a speedy one as i notice for Vista. Anytime sooner now, most people will utilize the power of Vista.

 

i use to be a big gamer, but not anymore now im just a relaxed chilled user i do alot of watching and downloading etc. so vista is perfect, mac os x i dont like much i installed it on my vaio laptop just to see how it works out, but they fixed so much stuff in vista, the internet and wireless networks work much faster than xp, in fact the wireless connects much faster and with less problems, in my university (concordia university) they use a eap wep secure wireless which you have to put in all these settings in xp, with vista it automatically picked them all up and just asked for the login details and works right away, also it supports different settings for different netoworks (eg ip, dns eg if you want to set them up manually) seriously vista is really nice as an os! and people say its like os x a bit, hey why not improve where you need it, and thats what they did in vista, with that said of course there are some bugs and what not, and "features" that i want removed like when you connect to a wireless network it adds a number to the ssid for no reason (eg linksys becomes linksys 2 on your laptop not changes the actuall ssid) but it confuses and gets really annoying.

 

@kushari:

yep i will agree with that. it's just many people were deceived to get along and use Vista. I too once rant on Vista but when i got hold of the OS, it's almost perfect. Stable. Never crashes. And boy, you gotta love the sleep feature too that werent working well in XP. There's a lot of enhancements like to network as you stated. And the security.

For those who are annoyed with the pop-up security alert elevation window. you can turn it off anytime. But I'm used to it. I turned off mine. After a couple of hours, turned it on again. It's like i'm used to clicking "Allow" or continue. haha. It's like when it's not displaying, I'm not secured. LOL.

EDIT:

who cares about XP on its first launch anyways? most people rant on it as well favoring Windows 98SE to be the best. But look at XP now and how people love it. The trend is happening all along. Game lovers will surely appreciate DirectX10 sooner now.

 

btw vista is more secure than mac osx but i turned off the security center because im not stupid anyways to install spyware etc. and i dont need to activatee because my laptop came with vista. what do u mean about the pop up security alert evaluation window? btw i had tried vista beta 2 and it was ****, they really came a long way in a year that they had to fix it up props microsoft!

 

@kushari:

It's security pop-up elevation.

Well when your security measures in Vista is in its default mode. When you install a software, access network or hardware properties, it will be displayed (much like of that of the Linux environment). It will dim your background and only that pop-up windows will be clearly visible. Even if you are the admin or logged in as an Admin, it will eventually fire during the stated operation.

Eventually it will ask you the permision:
Windows needs your permission to continue

you just click continue on it. If you are not the Admin, occassionaly it will ask for the Admin password. but you can disable it at the Local Security Policy at the Control Panel's Administrative tasks. You can also configure it to ask password anytime even if you are the Admin of the machine which is more secure but more annoying.

 

Vista is more secure than mac osx... lol

I mainly use windows but I know for a fact it's not as secure as OSX or Linux but it doesn't mean I don't like windows! I'm not a fanboy...

 

Perhaps Vista is more secure than OSX. Just a wild guess since i havent used Mac. LOL.

Well security is a virtue. It's about who will be hacked most and who will in any less don't. You know what i mean.

 

I have been a MS user for years. Just recently upgraded to vista. At first, wasnt impress with the speed. I did however love the new GUI. Upgraded to 2 gig ram. What a difference! Everyone complained when XP first came out about its hardware requirements, nothing changed.
As far as most secure? Since such a few percentage of people use OSX or Linux, their software flaws are less known. If ever the roles become reversed, so will the virus ratio.

 

I'd have to go with XP, as that is what I currently use the most.

 

This is my current opinion as well.

 

Linux. I use Linux because I don't have to pay an arm and a leg to run a full server, there's no artificial difference between versions, no artificial limitations on what I can do with my computer, and it's faster on the same hardware. I only have Windows XP on the smaller partition of my hard drive on my laptop, and that's only for LAN games and one 3D app that requires a hardware dongle. Besides, once you know how UNIX works, you become appalled at the horrible design of everything else, how it's a pale imitation of UNIXy goodness Even Windows, the system has a root, and the C:, D:, those are all mounted other points under the root. It won't tell you that though.

 

Linux. Self explanatory...see signature...

 

+1, it really is true freedom of computing.

 

I use Linux and enjoy it thoroughly, but Lysander and Pitabred; you guys act like you're part of a political or social movement. Relax. Give it a rest. It's just an OS. Phrases like "it's about choice" and "everything else is horribly designed" really doesn't convey much to the average potential Linux user and sounds like the words I would expect from a politician (or a Linux zealot).

 

How dare you say it's 'just an OS'! Blasphemy! Heretic, burn the witch!

Whilst it may just be an OS, I believe it to be the superior OS, and the way of the future. I try and educate potential users on it's ins and outs, advantages and disadvantages. Never is there any active recruitment of people. If someone is interested, all well and good, but I don't really care if Joe Bloggs uses Linux or not (Mind you, I'd love to get my family using it, it would make my life a lot easier).

And, btw, the first comments I usually make to someone who asks "Why should I use Linux?" have nothing to do choice, or "Windows sucks." I usually say "It's prettier."

When I do say it's about choice, I mean it goes both ways. If someone says "I hated Linux, and I'm using Windows again." I say "good for you, atleast you've tried the other options."

What I don't like is the people who sit on their one side of the fence and try and ridicule the other side, without ever having been there.

 

Ahhh, but it is a social movement. The GPL is all about freedom from having your data locked up behind inaccessible protocols and file formats, to be had for a fee. What would cars be like if Ford were the only maker of vehicles? There would be no reason for them to progress, and they would make it as profitable as possible for them by keeping you using their vehicles instead of the competition's, things like changing the roads so only their vehicles didn't rattle apart when driving on them. Linux is about freedom to do what you want with your computer, without industry-mandated controls on your personal property (cf. DRM, MS Office file formats). Heck, Microsoft even has an entire Knowledge Base entry about Excel document corruption. It happens often enough that they have to work around it by Auto-Saving and so on, with no actual recovery options available. I can go into it more, but it really is about freedom and better design. It's not "just an OS".

 

I agree on the principle of choice. Having many operating systems on the market invites good competition and this is where the best goes in. I’m happy how people debate on things. Microsoft, Apple and the others are so happy with these debate compositions. Eventually there will be protagonists and antagonists and this is where “balance” will come in. Speaking of balance, the equation is not fully balanced and therefore we have the riot. Imagine a 90 lbs. gorilla on the other side of the weighing device versus the other tiger and penguins at 10 lbs on the other side. ‘And this is really quite unfair’. Now in order to keep the balance, there should be those who must make the gorilla slimmer - making exercises and workouts to make that in progress and put into reality.

Then again, people will say and stay on both sides and time will tell who will fall in the end. Perhaps let there be no “fall”. Everything is functional – to keep the balance alive.

 

Definitely. This is a case where the grass is "greener" on your side of the fence, no matter what side you're on.

Matt

 

hmmm...youve really got me bugged now. ok, i want to give it a shot. never really bothered with trying out new stuff till i got my eqipment. now i do. what would be a good place to start?

 

www.ubuntu.com
www.ubuntuforums.org

 

Ubuntu ftw!

I still voted XP because i use it most and I know my way around it more than I do with Linux.

 

I prefer whatever works. Everyone can have a preferred OS since it's a personal preference. However, by bashing another does more harm to your preferred OS than good. I know quite a few people who did not buy a Mac for the only reason that they do not want to be associated with the apple fan boy image. "Mac is the best, M$ sucks, try to do this on a PC - 3 OS running side by side" <- Why do I want to be associated with people who post this kind of thing. That happens all the time and Linux is catching up on that trend. However I like Linux. Though not everything works in Linux but it's free. I do not think it's right to complain on things you get for free. Which brings up another point, just because there are free open source softwares out there, does not mean softwares should be free. Do you expect to drive out the latest model of a BMW for free? A few hates MS because they are a for profit organization, but since when, we as a society, expect things to be free, how sick is that?

Linux is a good alternative for those who does average computing, but it just does not work as well for apps developed for windows. Pros of Linux of being free is also it's downfall.

I am getting annoyed by those who says "this is more secure" which is just a load of crap. Whichever company says "we are more secure" is just full of it. How do you claim to be secure? Security is not claimed but earned. Even then, one is only as secure as what you do on the computer, by saying that one is better than another is only giving average users false sense of security. It's not a good argument for why you use this OS than another.

When recommending why one should use a particular OS, you'd take what the users need and want, instead of playing the bashing game, because when you do that, you become a "Fan Boy," and Fanatic is not a complimentary word. Remember, grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence, because they don't have a garden, instead they have a swimming pool. They have what they need and want.

 

Hey,
Thanks for voting and posting on my thread. This has really helped me make a more educated decision on which operating system I want. Maybe if people keep on voting and posting, Chaz can make this a sticky.

Leon

 

While I doubt he would make this poll a sticky, I do think that if you studied the popular operating systems and made an in-depth conclusion about advantages and disadvantages of each OS, he would at least consider it.

Matt

 

Vista all the way. Ultimate came with my laptop, thought it would suck, but it really is good. about a 2fps hit in games, but that is negigable, and haven't had any problems with it.

Vista FTW!!!!!

 

+1! Vista gets a bad rap, IMO. So far I've found it to be much more stable than XP. I haven't blue-screened once or needed to reboot because a program failed *knocks on wood*. And as the inevitable support grows for it the software/driver issues will slowly go away.

 

Xp for me all the way. Theres just tooo many things wrong with Vista. For me one main thing is Vista's incompatibility with my iPod. Even thou MS has already tried to bring out some patches to fix it i wont chance corrupting my iPod for Vista.
Whats even more embarrassing for MS is their own player, Zune doesnt work with Vista either

 

my iPod works very well with my Vista. iTunes 7.1.1.5 should do the trick. With Zune, havent tried the thing.

 

I use both windows XP and Ubuntu Linux, but I prefer Windows XP since I'm more productive on it. And I think Windows XP just has better programs out for it right now. I haven't really gotten a chance to use Vista as much, but I'll likely get it with my next laptop.

 

Hmm, that's interesting, seeing as I have my Zune connected to my Vista PC right now and it works flawlessly

BTW you might want to scroll down a little bit further when you do your next Google search.

 

It was in Jan that a good friend of mine bought a new desktop with vista. He had also bought the 30g Zune player. He spent 3 days trying to get it to work which he couldnt. So he returned it and bought the same iPod that i had. That also had issues so he kept his old xp desktop just to use iTunes.

So it nice you have it working 'flawlessly' now but it wasnt working 'flawlessly' before was it??

Im not gonna follow up on all the patches MS is gonna bring out for vista. Too many issues to want to even attempt to try figure out.

 

None and all of the above.

They all have their benefits and they all have issues.

Mostly XP and Linux, XP is my "easy" OS, I've worked with it for years (well it and 3.1 and 95 and 98 and ME prior to it). Linux is my "not so easy" OS, I like it, but it's not a totally intuitive switch from XP so I'm playing some...

 

Vista here.

I am still amazed how some people can get unfortunate experience with Vista. Mine is working as fast (on some scenario even faster) than XP for the same RAM.
Task switching in Vista is faster than XP.

But that just my opinion from experience using XP and Vista only.

I never tried OSX or Linux. I found them quite appealing though. But for productivity reason, i better stick with Vista. I am not kind of guy who like to install more than one OS in single PC.

If i am younger maybe i will try Linux. Who knows.

 

In setting up the new dv2000t I bought for one of my relatives, I noticed how absurdly slooooooooooow Vista Business was during boot and with general response time. She even asked me why a new computer would drag so much (after using it for the first day).

Hopefully it is just the initial indexing/superfetching stuff bringing it down. I don't remember performance being this bad in the beta and rc builds, and I was running with less ram and a weaker processor then. Go figure.

 

Hard to believe that many people voted for Vista. I have yet to find one thing that vista does better than XP. As for people saying that vista is faster, I find that very hard to believe since every major computer review site that has done a comparison of XP vs vista, XP outperforms vista hands down. Now that being said, I have vista on my new laptop, and I have had no stability issues and few software conflicts as of yet. However, I see absolutly no benefits to vista over XP, and I wish I had XP pro on my laptop instead.
Linux: blah. I have it on one of my older systems in a dual boot configuration with xp, and I can't find any reason to even run it. Some say its more secure, well whatever. I have been using windows machines for years (with the proper security software) and have never been infected with any virus or hacker or whatever.
OsX , LOL . Real men run PC's , not overpriced apple crap.

A very good, indepth comparison of XP vs Vista for gaming:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMzNCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA=

 

Any valid opinions you may have had in your post went out the backdoor with this gem.

 

i don't want to give any accurate conclusion about this. As i have posted before, I downgraded to XP and response time is slower in XP. Say in Vista, access to subsystems like opening control panels and explorer is more faster and responsive compared with XP. Opening applications such as Word or Excel is like pulling the application from the taskbar without sometimes displaying the splash screen.

I admit that other software are not well compatible with Vista in the current situation but most the tools i need for work works fine and well with Vista like DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, Bryce, Visual Studio (with update patch) and AutoCAD. With games, well i have only tested PoP WW and Two thrones but never had any problems. I don't know about games like the ones in your link. Probably it's true but we have different ways on how we use our toys. If you really feel XP is better then use it. If you like other stuffs like Ubuntu, Xandros or any sort of those, try it. There's no harm in trying.

P.S. About the real men using PC's... well how do explain that and what are the basis. don't tell those people who use Mac are gays. lol!

 

My mate is perfectly straight but he likes his pearly white apple macbook .

I am gay but i am using windows .

 

Are you sure this is the place for such a confession?!?!?!?!?!

Matt

 

Ups
just want to clear my point that it has nothing to do with sexual orientation... even though we can sense the symptoms some times

Let's back to topic

 

Lol. I know, I'm just messing with ya.

 

LOL! this is funny. but what about tomboys and lesbians. what OS are they using... haha.

anyway, he might mean that imacs look girly in design. i just find it like this. whereas most pc notebooks are manly looking.

 

I love Vista. It is pretty, and it runs quite smooth. I do not feel any sluggish at all. However, one applicaiton for my work has problem on Vista. And also, I could not find a third party firewall good enough on Vista at this time yet. So, I returned back to XP Pro.

I tried Linux one year ago. I do not like it at all. I used DOS for several years, and Unix for several years. I heard so many good things claimed about Linux. But when I tried it, I was totally disappointed. Yes, there are thousands of packages available free with Linux. However, free comes with a price. Those free packages come with significantly more bugs than those paid applications in Windows. Several applications I tried in Linux even got my computer into a deadlock. Well, is that the stability of Linux? Maybe, I am the only unlucky one. I know that I should not complain, as they are freeware. And I do appreciate those developers' effort and spirit. However, with so many other things in life, I just do not want to handle those headaches anymore. I pay for Windows applications, but I get fewer headaches. It is said that Windows is less secure. However, my computer has not been infected with virus, trojan, or whatever for several years due to easily available security applications.

 

I came from the generation in which the first OS we learn is MS DOS and Windows 95. We become familiar with those even though windows have been evolved ever since. In Vista we can still find our ways to do things without the need of manuals.

Most of my friends (including myself) have non-IT career so we are relying on base knowledge of doing things that is not our "core". One of it is PC's OS. Gradually we loose appetite to learn another one.

Unless there is appealing reason that force us to try, such as massive switching of office applications to Linux. Or if Linux suddenly buying out Microsoft.
I searched whether there is any killer apps to use in Linux environment that is not available in Windows, but i failed to find one, at least for my need.

Last year i am tempting to try Linux because suddenly i become bored to those blue bars of XP. 5 years, wow. And there is Vista.

My computer is totally used for productivity and entertainment. It is a tool. There is not enough justification for me (at least) to jump to Linux bandwagon, to learn the way they manage things, to learn the command text, etc. It is like moving to a new house.

We have become occupied in many things that makes us dont have sufficient time and energy to learn something new - in this context of course.

I expect my PC to work, and it is.

 

Here's my OS Novel:

My first OS was DOS too. MS DOS 6 something as far as I remember. Then was Windows 3.1 followed by Windows 3.11/Workgroups. During those time, I think apple has the most good looking OS around. until Windows 95 came (i was in 3rd year high school). Windows 95's release was a milestone that lead Microsoft to its fame followed by company suits and such. but they didnt stopped microsoft from being dominant.

It was when 2005 when Ubuntu and Xandros saved our country (a third world country) from the hands of Microsoft and the law partners they have. There was this nationwide software raid of Microsoft and the creator of AutoCad here in my place. many have been found guilty and thereby surrendering some of their investments by paying microsoft and the national police a bargain for the theft software. Others even made business with the news. They pretended to be software authorities and raid different places with Microsoft even knowing it.

My friend who has this computer gaming center having 90-pc running for his internet cafes with three branches was forced to use Ubuntu, afterwhich some of his friends suggested Xandros linux variant which closely resembles Windows XP and has the easy-way of using it just like windows XP. we found Xandros to be more user friendlier than Ubuntu during that time. It was also faster. Until recently, he upgraded all those PCs to Windows XP multiple lincences since he had earned so little with Linux variant installed since most of his customers play games that only Windows supports. e.g. Counter-Strike, Splinter Cell, Ragnarok, Diablo and many others. Speaking IMs, yahoo for Debian does not support web cam that is why most customers using yahoo did not come again. He said he will invest on Microsoft product since the payback is even larger for him and he earned a lot in the 2-year time with Windows XP pirated. And also his last line was "it's time to give Microsoft a favor since I already earned that much with their product". Bow.

Regarding the current windows evolution, well we can;t deny how valuable Windows is. Even if we complain about this and that, the blue-screen of death, unsecured, so and so forth, it is still Windows that provides and delivers. Maybe we can say Microsoft products are quite expensive but let us consider, they pay developers and engineers and they pay much TAX that US governments really appreciate.