So, Vista lasted 2.5 years, I told you it was ME2...

I'm not trying to "win" any argument here. A discussion board is for, like its name suggests, discussion. I attempted to point out some facts that a previous poster glazed over when he/she trashed Vista, and also to contribute some of my personal experience.

If you find this discussion trite, by all means skip it. However, funnily enough, there's no point to keep interjecting that the debate is pointless.

The reason behind this is this: newer operating systems do use more resources than older ones. It is undeniable that Vista uses more resources than XP, but manages to provide many more features and be more stable than its predecessor.

That is the same trend that was depicted from, Windows 2k to XP for example. 2k actually runs comfortably on 128MB of RAM (been there...), while XP will choke and freeze constantly with 128MB of RAM.

Games demand the most out of computers, and require the most raw resources - OS stablity and features is secondary/unimportant. Therefore, XP which does require much less resources to run than Vista, can consolidate its processes to a smaller percentage of, say, RAM, and let the games have more. That is why games will, almost no matter what happens, run better on XP machines. It's also why you see so many workstations running XP or Windows 2k with the bare essentials - more processing power for demanding applications, not necessarily because the OS is better.

 

I see, it'll be good to see how Win7 performs then.

But a lesson: Don't get the intermediate OS versions, and MS will stop making them.
My perfect world: Win95, Win98, WinXP, may be Win7. No need for ME or Vista (really). Independently that it ended being good, it wasn't a real improvement over XP. If you got it for free on your new PC, fine, but does it worth to buy it for 100-200 bugs?

 

Of course, I understand that, but the issue I see is:
XP is much much more stable than 98, but is Vista so much more stable than XP. So the question comes to, does it worth the investment. I don't see the same jump 98-XP respect XP-Vista, and therefore I consider it unnecessary.

And you have to consider Win7. I mean, Vista has the stability of XP (or may be better), from SP1. So they sold you an OS that really lasted only 1.5 years.
Of course Vista must be a bit better than XP, come on, it's 7 years newer. But so much better for the investment, instead of waiting other 2 years?

Really, as you can read in my posts, it bothers me MS attitude. They should take their time and sell only good stuff. And again, as consumers, we can force them to.

 

Please don't generalize us.

 

False, Black comb was supposed to be released in 2003. XP lasted 6 years because they decided to focus on security (and thus why XP SP2 exists) and canceled the current OS in development. I'm not defending Vista in this, I'm just saying people should stop giving more credit to XP than it deserves. I remember reading some years ago that XP's code had been entirely rewritten like 2 times during those 6 years.

 

What do you mean "intermediate OS versions"? Technology...whether it be hardware or software...constantly evolves, meaning that EVERYTHING is an "intermediate" version until the next upgrade or next best thing comes along.

 

Keep beating that dead horse, dude.

 

MS is not a dead horse, not just yet.

But we are getting there. Likely a lot because of Vista failures and critics, this was the first negative year in MS history.

 

The dead horse is your issue, not Microsoft's.

 

So was Toyota and Honda. Everyone is suffering in this economy.

 

A common misconception, that I've noticed so far, is that Windows 7 is Vista + eye candy. This simply isn't true. It's more accurate to say that Windows 7 is an OS built off the model started by Vista.

Engineering Windows 7 is an excellent place to start to see how much different 7 really is.

 

First of all, conejeitor, you've actually used Vista on a machine in your home, right?

If you had your perfect release cycle, Microsoft would be riled for becoming antiquated too quickly.

I can't think of any Operating Systems that fit your "only update every 5 years" philosophy. New versions of Apple's OSX come out every 2 years, new versions of Ubuntu (Linux) come out every 6 months, new versions of Windows come out every 2-3 years. There seems to be an equilibrium here, in terms of commercial output of an Operating System.

I would rather see rapid updates to computer hardware and technology accompanied by rapid updates in software and operating systems. I couldn't stand it if I were still using Windows XP at this point, it feels so ANCIENT. The Vista core was completely redone with the future in mind, it evolved. XP will die because it can't evolve, even if MS tried to keep supporting it, there will come a time in the next few years when nobody will make any drivers for it anymore, and that isn't just because they want to force you to shell out more cash, it's because XP is an ancient pile of code that can no longer support current technology.

If XP works for you, and if it does everything you want it to do, then accept it and be happy with it. Stop feeling paranoid because the rest of your community is riding off into the sunset chasing the next big thing (in this case, Windows Vista/Windows 7).

By the way, you keep talking about DEMANDING that Microsoft make a better operating system. You already got your wish, if you actually checked out some of the Microsoft Development Blogs (specifically the Windows 7 Engineering Blog linked in a few posts before this one) you'd see that they DID start listening to consumers, and they DID make an effort to implement what people wanted.

Game Over.

 

On contraire, everybody around (at least 50%) is still on XP. For an old system I say its fine.

About demands to MS, I'm glad they listened. But I bet you they wouldn't have if people hadn't criticized their new OSs.
So instead of getting so excited out of a conversation, be glad that we criticized Vista when it came out. Thanks to that, we have Win7 now.

I'm glad they are bringing us Win7, but so glad I didn't fall for the Vista trap.

 

You didn't answer my question.

You know that most government offices and hospitals use Windows 2000, right? They'll never touch XP, too bloated and slow for their equipment.

And many third world countries still use Windows 98, because they wont see computers capable of running XP for several years.

 

I've tried to, at the very least, accept your viewpoint as a matter of preference and give it respectful consideration, but it has been my experience that people who speak in such unsubstantiated, broad generalizations rarely have a handle on reality. Rather, you throw around hard-, or impossible-, to substantiate allegations, such as "everybody around (at least 50 %) is still on XP." How can you possibly make such a ridiculous statement?

No matter how many copies of XP have been sold, and how many copies of Vista, there would be no way of telling how many machines are running each, percentage-wise.

There are so many variables to your flawed figures that it is ridiculous to even argue it, much less say it in the first place.

As another poster said, "game over." You're out of gas.

 

Easy for you to say, but will there have been a Windows 7 without Vista? No. A huge amount of the advances we see in Windows 7 would not have been possible without Windows Vista. The same goes for Windows 2000 and Windows XP - 2000 contributed to XP a lot, so much in fact that many people called XP "2k with fancy graphics" (sound familiar?).

Ah, but was XP "so much more stable" than Windows 2k when 2k was mature and XP was just released? No.

 

That is a matter of opinion.

 

Well, there are studies and surveys and such.
According to Market Share by Net Applications, Windows XP is still the most-used operating system in the world at 62.21% penetration. Vista's second at 23.9%, Mac OS is next at 9.7%, Win2K at 1.15%, and Linux rounds out the Top 5 at 1.02%.

Now, one could point to this as proof of XP's superiority.
I disagree - I think it shows XP's seniority, how old it is, and how entrenched in the market it is.
XP's market share was 84.1% two years ago when Vista came out - how many personal computers get replaced in two years' time? How about businesses? Governments?

Does this mean Vista is a failure? An ME2, as the OP stated? On the contrary.
Going from 0.02% market share in Q3 2006 to almost 24% share in Q2 2009 to date, especially going up against the massive negative public reaction (some deserved, most not) and an entrenched and still functional predecessor, is no small task.
And let's not forget, even ME had one positive point - a little tool called System Restore.

Personally, I love the stability of Vista over XP, in the interest of full disclosure.

 

Statistics for April 2009 from my website:

 

Unfortunately that doesn't say too much about the OS: it's possible to run Safari on Windows, or Firefox on Macs, and XP can run IE6, 7, or 8.

As previous posters have said, market share comparisons between XP and Vista are not really fair, seeing as XP has been available for so much longer. Most people do not buy OS's, and just get it bundled with their computer - therefore, if they do not buy a new computer, they'll likely have XP still (as I did until recently).

 

Actually, it does say a lot.

I suspect that anyone running Safari, on Windows or anywhere else, is a statistical abberation. Or at the very least, a masochist.

Likewise, anyone still running IE6 can be discounted.

Does this make more sense?

 

What falls into that "other systems" category? Or is that the sort of thing where, if you told me, you'd have to kill me?

 

How did you compile the statistics? Are these statistics from a forum vote or something?

Statistics isn't all that useful. Depending on different point of view, the results will be different. One could say that IE has 100% market share because 99.999% of all windows based computer have Internet explorer.

 

Actually, and hopefully this doesn't get censored, but it's my impression by living in a third word country (which are the 70% of world population):

1) Hardware is not a limiting factor, China makes it cheap.
2) The only reason Windows is still popular here, is because you can get it pirated
3) Companies, which of course cannot "pirate" software, in general, use Linux.

This is what I have seen.

And about the last topic (which actually is getting way less interesting than this one), of course Vista must be better than XP (its newer), I just think MS should have gone directly to Win7, for a real improvement. And I think that criticizers did their part with Vista and thanks to that, Win7 is coming so soon.
Oh, and as for the question. I won a PC with Vista, tried it, sold it.

 

The statistics are collected in realtime at the domain level. I suppose that folks could skew them with UserAgentSwitcher or the like, but again, that would be a minority.

 

my perfect world: nothing below xp, and happily finally vista. no need for win7.

funny how simple my world is. xp the first real usable os. vista the first os that has no quirks for me.

 

Don't you think that when progress must be made, and that progress might be perceived negatively by the population, that putting forth a straw man followed by a subsequent release that includes all those progressive features but under under another name would allow the progress to proceed unimpeded?

 

I like the theory!

 

Just, be careful with progress that doesn't make sense (ie. SUVs). That is usually what causes wars and pollution.

 

True, but Windows Strawman doesn't sound that professional.

 

I'm not sure if that makes any sense.

 

Yeah, I'm just bored with the subject.

 

So let's find something that isn't quite so boring - maybe sock-drawer sorting - what's your favorite technique?

 

we're in a vista-bashing thread. they don't really want to have senseful posts in it, do they?

towards this offtopic topic: yes, change hurts sometimes. but that doesn't make the change bad by itself. a stupid person then just cries "it hurts". an intelligent person asks "why have you made something that hurts?" and if the intelligent person gets good reasons back, it doesn't hurt anymore. actually, he starts to love it that way. suddenly the old way hurts.

too bad most are the stupid person style: omg they changed something, it has to be bad. (and still all want the "perfect windows" as the next one, but it shouldn't allow any changes.. )

 

New topic - what's the best technique to use to sort your sock-drawer!

 

A maid...

 

(a) Her

or (b) "her"

?

 

both will do for the socks, the rest is personal preference.

we could now get ontopic again and vote which one is vista, which one is xp..

 

Annnnnd, they're off! Ok, so I labelled our two lovelies (a) and (b) so the voting could be done short-hand, and without any hanging chads (now, let's see who's the first to grab the low-hanging fruit of double entrendres there ).

 

(a) is vista, as vista is much more pretty.
(b) is xp, with all it's spyware and malware in (you know what i mean exactly.. )

 

I prefer a) Vista :yes:

 

By the way. Win7 has an option that makes it similar to XP (as XP was to 98), so switching will be easier. Not similarity with vista though.

Vista is meant to be forgotten.

Sorry, I know the subject is over. I just have fun seen how vista boys are so sensitive. I know it's because Vista haters bothered you for so long. Win7 worthed it though.

 

actually, it has the same similar-to-xp-thing as vista has. it's called compatibility mode. it as well has a full xp running optionally, called virtual xp mode, or so. that's just a full xp running in a second, virtual, pc.

but the rest is identical. it's not that vista boys are sensitive. it's just terrible to see how much ridiculous and WRONG vista hating exists. i like hating because of facts. i hate it when it's on stupid opinions that have no basings.

and your last statement shows how much you know about it. win7 worthed it. yeah, everyone who knows how vista really works knows win7 isn't worth a cent. it's just vista at the same state as vista is _right_now. and if you don't believe me, check the server version. it's server 2008 R2. not server 2009. it's just the same code as vista. updated and tweaked (which is a good thing, of course).

 

The only time I would upgrade to Windows 7 is when I get it for free. I get things for free so I'll be upgrading to windows 7 soon.

 

I see the tendency. It may be just about the generation:

XP lovers hate Vista, Vista lovers hate Win7.

I got Vista for free, but dumped it.

Off subject:
You guys are really good disqualifying people that you don't know, and tell how ignorant they are only based on a little post. Not right, that thing of seeing the little straw in other's eye. We are only having fun here, no reason for fighting.
I guess it might be the G. Bush's generation.

 

I have been running Vista since June 2007, no XP since March 2007.

I would upgrade to Windows 7 if the price were right.

 

I have your "dumped free Vista" for free if you don't mind.

 

what is the advantage of core2duo processor over dual core processor ?

 

Thanks for changing subject
Dual core is not really a twin nucleus, as I understand, but it does "virtually" work as if it would. Core 2 duo are physically two fussioned processors.

 

Gave it away, sorry.