Vista Home Premium Upgrade - Now or Later?

So, on a whim today, I purchased a copy of the Academic Version Upgrade of Vista Home Premium for $110 CDN. Seeing as how I've noticed local retail stores charge almost double that price for the same OS, I figured that I'd grab it while I was still a college student.

Now, I'm sitting here with Vista, wondering whether or not I should install the OS on my laptop. "Should I install it now or later?", I keep asking myself. And I'm torn right now. On one hand, I do know that Vista, in the future, will be the new XP while the new Windows 7 is getting bashed for numerous reasons, so it doesn't hurt to be prepared. On the other hand, I'm a hardcore PC gamer, and I've heard constantly that Vista is nowhere near as good for gaming as XP is, and neither are the Vista graphics drivers for both ATI and nVidia. Some benchmarks I've seen also seem to say the same thing. And my laptop does not have the ability, nor will ever manage to get the ability, to use DX10 graphics.

So, I ask you: Should I install Vista Home Premium now or later?

 

Well you could just dual-boot for now until you choose.

 

I thought dual-booting with Upgrades worked. Do they really?

On top of that, I don't know how much space I have available for dual-booting...

 

i say choose vista. the preformance difference is marginal if anything

 

100GB is plenty. plus if you install vista nd you hate it, you don't have to cry. You can just un-install it and keep xp.

 

I may have a 100GB hard drive, but I don't know if I have enough available space to make a dual-boot. How much is needed for Vista and everything it comes with?

 

Only about 10-20GB needed. Minimum 5-10GB.

 

i dont think you can keep the old os with an upgrade....

 

Quote MS: Windows Vista, which has DirectX 10, includes an updated DirectX runtime based on the runtime in Windows XP SP2 (DirectX 9.0c) with changes to work with the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) and the new audio driver stack, and with other updates in the operating system. In addition to Direct3D 9, Windows Vista supports two new interfaces when the correct video hardware and drivers are present: Direct3D9Ex and Direct3D10.

Since these new interfaces rely on the WDDM technology, they will never be available on earlier versions of Windows. All the other changes made to DirectX technologies for Windows Vista are also specific to the new version of Windows. The name DirectX 10 is misleading in that many technologies shipping in the DirectX SDK (XACT, XINPUT, D3DX) are not encompassed by this version number. So, referring to the version number of the DirectX runtime as a whole has lost much of its meaning, even for 9.0c. The DirectX Diagnostic Tool (DXdiag.exe) on Windows Vista does report DirectX 10, but this really only refers to Direct3D 10. End Quote.

Plus, Vista just plain looks better IMO

 

Now that would just suck. What happens if things turn out worse with Vista, or something bad happens during the transition? Even if I have the CDs from Dell with XP SP2 on them, I can't use them anymore?

 

Once you "upgrade" there is still a copy of windows xp on your HD. The only thing is that it will be in a folder called windows.old. so if you chose to "un-install" vista, it will just change windows.old to windows, and the vista will be deleted.

 

I'd say, choose vista.

I ran Bioshock , fifa 08, counterstrike on both XP and Vista.. There was no noticeable difference at all.

So, it makes absolutely no sense to buy Vista, but seeing that You have bought Vista, It wud probably make sense to do the upgrade.. (esp for the eye candy )

 

Funny, I remember hearing a lot of the same things about XP when it first came out....seems like some people are very resistant to change and new bugs