Vista Ultimate or XP Pro

Help me decide which one to choose.

I am currently using Vista Ultimate.
Programs that I use frequently or plan to use often:
- firefox
- winamp
- adobe cs3
- sonar 6 (music sequencer)
- maya, 3dsmax (plan to learn)
- office 2007
- starcraft
- winrar
- nod32

Reason for consider the switch:
- my dv6000t laptop's fan runs constantly (whereas before with xp, it's rarely on)
- resource hog (even tweaked a lot of the settings, services, etc.)
- a lot of unnecessary apps, tried to lighten it with vlite, but still unsuccessful
- sick of aero, i switched to classical view anyway

What should I do?

 

Go for XP. There isn't a benefit to Vista for your programs/purposes. XP is stable and works well with with older hardware/reduced resources.

 

Isn't adobe CS3 vista only?

 

XP is the way to go, especially when dealing with production apps.

 

XP Pro. Like you, I tried Vista Ultimate, and found it used more resources without giving any sort of speed increase. I went to XP pro, and all my programs opened at least as quickly as they had in Vista, file copying was faster, I rarely see the hourglass (compared to that swirling blue orb ever present in Vista), and the computer boots more quickly. Plus - and this was significant - my computer runs cooler, without the fan on. With V, my core duo was constantly at 54 degrees as a base temperature, and was always hot to the touch. In XP, the base temp is 49, which makes a big difference when typing on the comp for any amount of time.

Make the switch to a Windows OS that doesn't get in the way of your computing. Get XP.

 

Hmm, exact opposite for me w/Vista. No crashing, apps load and run fast, it boots faster than XP from my experience, and another plus over XP for me - no freezing or blue screens.

It's your call OP...

 

The OP has pretty decent specs, Vista should run pretty good, but I have always had problems doing heavy multitasking on Vista that XP is able to handle. SIG for specs.

Does this take 128MB from his 2GB RAM?

 

Although Vista reports it as 2046mb, actual system memory is 1.8GB. I forget where I found this value, but you are correct, my graphic card does borrow 128mb from my memory.

Thanks for all the replies. But before I decide, let me provide you guys some more detailed information about my computer.

Specs:
HP DV6000T
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0GHz
2GB 667mhz Ram (Vista reports 2046mb)
120GB Seagate
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 256MB

Temperatures:
CPU1: 25C
CPU2: 20C
GPU: 40C
Seagate HD: 46C

I'm not sure why vista reports 2046mb for my ram. Shouldn't it be 2048mb? What does your computers say if you have 2gb?

Anyways, not to stray away from the topic, Vista ain't horrible. But like I said before, I find too many of its default programs to be waste of space and memory. I heard SP1 beta should be coming out by the end of this month or close to that. I doubt M$ is going to slim down on anything, probably fix some compatibility issues, but if it can fix my laptop from having its fan running constantly, I might reconsider in keeping Vista.

 

Go for XP until vista is improved

 

Ok, the question I've got is geared to you guy's in this forum.

What Anti-Virus software do you guy's run? I'm about to purchase a C90S with Ultimate X64 and noticed my regular Anti-Virus guy's haven't caught up yet. That or I'm just stupid. I normally run with NOD32 but I couldn't find support on the website for Ultimate X64. They only offer up to Business X64 for what I've seen so far.

My specs will run as follows:
IC2D E6600 (2.4 GHz)
3 GB 667 RAM
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB
Western Digital Scorpio 250 GB HD 5400 rpm

What are your thoughts on this? Any help? Tips? Whatever?