Vista vs. WinXP(customized to look like vista)

If you were just after the looks of Vista, would there be any advantage to actually get Vista this early on? Or would it be better to just customize my WinXP pro to look like Vista?

follow up questions:

- If i just go for customization either by using the Win Vista transformation pack or Window Blinds, would i get exactly the look of Vista Aero ? or would vista aero still look better?

 

Fair warning: If you get Vista now, you should have at least 1.5-2 gigs ram. Otherwise, you're in for a painful experience.

I say stick with XP.

 

I agree, with the needed 1.5 - 2 gigs of RAM needed.

I use RC2 and have 2GB, My Ram has pushed over 1GB many times, but mostly stays in the 550MB - 600MB range.

 

i am using an HP 2000t duo core 2 (2.0ghz) with 2GB Ram. I know my video card (7200) is only low as this is the best option for my model but Im only concerned with running WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT and some photoshop and visual basic. Gaming are usually done with my desktop.

 

visual effects is NOT a reason to upgrade.

 

Yeah there are differences under the hood too...

Vista does look pretty neat, but so does BERYL which I just got installed and configured a few minutes ago.

 

What distro are you using it on? Is it working OK for you? It looks very cool but I haven't had the motivation to install and play with it yet.

BTW, on the original topic, I use a theme called Luna Element that's a fantastic mix of Vista and XP.

 

can you expound on your comment. Do you mean that having winXP and just customizing my desktop to look like vista would be just as good as getting vista? The major advantage of just customizing winXP is the stability of the OS.

.. on the other hand, i dont know if Vista offers a better resolution with respect to icons/cursors/etc as ive seen good looking icons which says that it would only work for vista. Why is this is? Is it because vista has a higher resolution rating or such?

thanks

 

im actually only interested in Vista for its looks. im not interested as of now with the things under its hood until a service pack from vista is released. So for now, i just like to use my notebook as a playing ground to see how i can make things as visually appealing as i can.

BERYL? hmmm can you point me to the URL of this. what is this? sorry im not really updated as ive been busy and its only now which i had a bit of time to tinker again with my computer.

By the way, is there anyway in windowsXP or vista to make an icon bar much like MAC wherein when you hover your mouse to the icon, it becomes big ? It is the one found at the bottom of the MAC OS. The icons are lined up and when you hover your mouse from left to right, the icon gets big then it gets small again once the mouse leaves the icon's area.

look at the bar below with the cursor pointed at "itunes"

 

Here ya go: Link

 

A customized ObjectDock would probably do well for a Mac OS dock clone.

 

oh yeah. will check the link right away! id sure like to try a windows vista / MAC look wherein the desktop will look like Vista Aero while ill put the scrollbar on the upper or right part of the screen... or wherever

 

Beryl is a thing for Linux that is really sweet--it changes how windows minimize/maximize, are dragged around, switching between work spaces...etc. I have 6.10 installed on my t60.

I followed this tutorial, and it worked fine: http://lhansen.blogspot.com/2006/10/3d-desktop-beryl-and-xgl-on-ubuntu-edgy.html

 

Cool, thanks for the link. I'm running Ubuntu on a partition on my lappy as well. I'll give it a shot when I have more time.

 

by the way, can winXP handle the same icons as those made for win vista? why is it that when i do a search for win vista icons, they seem to look much much better (refined) than those i find for win xp?

 

Beryl is for Linux. It is very nice though, but some things seem over the top sometimes. And it's a shame you can't use Compiz themes with it. There aren't that many Emerald themes unfortunately.

As for the original question, customizing XP to look like Vista is not going to get you the Vista experience. Vista is so much more than a new UI. Security is the main reason to upgrade, with usability being the second reason. Stability and compatibility are the reasons to stick with XP. And price.

As for Vista's icons, they are rendered at 256x256 pixels rather than XP's standard 64x64. That's why they look so much better. AFAIK, you can get 256x256 icons to run on XP, but I'm not sure. You may need some kind of program or registry edit to make it work.

 

I don't think anybody should be forced to endure the "Vista experience" . Seriously though, I'm using RC2 to type this message and find it disgusting that the idling resource usage is 50% of my 1gb of RAM. That's pretty much inexcusable, no matter what other additions they've thrown in.

hehe, see attached screenshot

Edit: I'm not even running Aero Glass!

~ Brett

 

Sidebar is your biggest problem. Turn that off and watch your CPU usage go to zero and your memory usage go to about 30%. Sidebar=the suck.

 

It dropped to 531mb out of 1278 - not all that impressive...

~ Brett

 

i know what you mean but i would only like to jump to vista WHEN they release their first service pack. until then id just like to play around and get the "vista look". Security and other stuff offered by vista will just have to wait till the SP.

with this in mind, does anyone know how to make my icons render at 256x256 pixels while running windows XP?

 

I thought the deal with Vista icons is that they are vector graphics as opposed to raster images. basically Vista's method of rendering icons is infinitely scalable, whereas XP's icons are made up of X number of pixels at Y number of pixels per inch. so if you make the icon appear physically larger, there is no way for the image to "change shape," so it looks pixelated.

I made a little demo of how this works (albeit in Linux). The two icons in the center of the image are from the same image file, but its a scalable vector graphics file (SVG). Basically the file gives information about the shapes and colours of the image, instead of a bunch of coloured dots. As a result it can be huge without looking like crap.

 

I don't think vista does that; I'm pretty sure the icons just have 256x256 png versions (which windows xp is perfectly capable of using), and the default icon size is larger, so they look sharper. The overall style is different too. I don't think they've actually modified anything in the way it works from xp.

 

Nope. Vista planned to have scalable icons, but they didn't get it in from what I remember.

 

I hadn't paid any attention to Vista development for a long while, so basically all of the actually cool stuff that was going to be in the OS... isn't?

WinFS was innovative (IMO,) and it's gone. No scalable vector graphics. So basically they spent 5 years to create transparent windows and a slightly different start menu?

EDIT: After a little bit of googling, it seems like Aero is the implementation of vector-based graphics, and non-aero modes still rely on Raster imaging.

 

Not quite. Aero is an accelerated graphics desktop, but it's not vector graphics. Icons and everything else are still raster graphics. The new standard icon format is PNG though, which is good.

Look here: http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-vistaicons.html