What should I do about my OS?

I just ordered a new laptop from newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115506, t5800(2.0g), 4gRam, 9600m gs. It comes with vista home premium 64bit. I get XP for free from school. And I have a free copy of Vista Ultimate (not sure if it is 32 or 64) from work.

I have never used vista before. My copy of ultimate has been in the desk drawer since it was released.

When vista came out there were tons of issues with application compatibility or atleast that was the word on the street.

My question is basically if I should even bother with either version of vista. Am i going to run into problems trying to run games in vista 64??

Will XP find all of my hardware? Acer only provides 64bit vista drivers...

 

I was forced into Vista too a month ago since i bought a new laptop. It isnt that bad although i still prefer XP since i find it more clean.

But in my opinion you should stick with the home premium, the 64bit version responds better than the 32bit one, you dont really need the ultimate version since there are a lot of features you wont need.

Hardware problems are kinda limited at the moment, seems they fixed a lot of issues, although you are going to face a lot of problem is you planning to play old games.

Ah, and if im not mistaken Vista 64bit doesnt support 16bit apps (doubt its gonna be an issue though).

 

Ultimate discs come with 32 and 64. Use that. Compatibility issues with Vista was a thing of the past, unless you use antique hardware. Just install all Windows Updates.

And none of my games have any problems in Vista Ultimate SP1 x86
COD 4
RCT 3
Halo 1
Halo 2
NFS: Underground
NFS: Carbon
Counter Strike: Source
Crysis
Sim City 4 Deluxe

etc.

 

Fred how do you like your laptop? I just ordered the 6930 which is very similar. Are all those games playable on it?

 

That was two years ago.

 

If you're still considering going with the XP license you received from school, you need to read the EULA (i.e., the actual terms of the license itself) very carefully, because in all likelihood that license is restricted to use during the period you're enrolled as a student and probably must be uninstalled once you cease being a student.

Also, keep in mind that (a) you will probably have some problems finding all of the drivers you need for XP, and (b) as time passes, there will be more and more incompatibility issues between XP and the latest-and-greatest software that gets released.

Security-wise, however, XP will continue to receive security-related updates via Microsoft's extended support policy until April of 2014; _Vista Home Premium and Ultimate will only receive such support until April of 2012.

 

I think I am going to repartition the HD, and add the copy of vista ultimate I have, and leave an extra partition for an xp or linux install if i feel so inclined.

 

Glad to hear it works for someone. Did it work for you when Vista first came out? I kept getting graphical glitches with it and Vista no matter what drivers I used - though it is quite possible a newer driver finally fixed that. Or do you have ATI? That I'm running nVIDIA could also have been the cause of the problem.

I doubt that Microsoft will let Vista security support expire before XP - my guess is they'll end support at the same time for both of them. That's what they did with 98 and ME.

Sounds like a good idea to me - no reason not to go with Ultimate if it's free. And if Vista gets along well with all your programs and hardware, you might as well use it. I'd never recommend counting on Vista working perfectly with everything - hence why the extra partition is a good idea - but by now it's had enough time for improvement that it's worth giving it a chance.

 

I havent really done this in a while. From what I understand the HD comes with 3 partitions, one small recovery one, and the rest is divided on half, with one empty and the other with vista home on it.

Can I repartition the drive with home edition on it with out reinstalling that copy?

 

Vista was not that good on release but it has become a fine OS and much better than XP in my book, Windows 7 is even better...

 

While nothing is impossible (thanks to quantum physics ), and, for the sake of those who, as has been discussed in other threads, do not plan to upgrade to Win7 from _Vista, I hope that I'm wrong; however, I'm afraid that I have to disagree for the simple reason that from all appearances Microsoft is desperate to sweep _Vista and all the negative goodwill it generated under the carpet as soon as possible.

That is particularly the case, as far as I can see it, because Win7 is essentially to _Vista what SP2 was to XP, which means that the rationale for refusing to switch from _Vista to Win7 is much, much weaker than the rationale for refusing to switch from XP to _Vista.

Of course, that observation is a two-edged sword because, to the degree that Win7 is a natural development of _Vista, and not a break with _Vista as _Vista was a break with XP, the incremental costs for continuing to provide basic security support for _Vista past the 2012 cut-off date are significantly less than the incremental costs Microsoft will incur in continuing to provide basic security support to XP during the same period. Basically, since _Vista and Win7 share the same kernel, the MS team that handles Win7 security will, with only minor additions, be able to continue handling basic security fixes for _Vista whereas MS most likely will have to maintain a separate team to handle the continuing security fixes for XP.

Also, it should be kept in mind that, as per Microsoft's normal life-cycle policy, security support for the business and enterprise versions of _Vista will continue until 2017; it's only the non-business/enterprise versions of _Vista that are slated to lose security support in 2012. Microsoft originally applied the same policy to XP, with the result that XP Pro would, even under normal circumstances, have continued to receive security support until 2012. The difference between XP and _Vista in this regard is that, because of the huge delay in releasing _Vista, XP Home was originally due to lose all security support in April of 2007 - just at the same time that _Vista was first going RTM. That got a lot of people very het up (yours personally included ), and in response, Microsoft decided to modify its life-cycle policy just in the case of XP Home[/url] so that XP Home now gets the same extended security support that XP Pro would have received in any event, regardless of whether or not _Vista was timely released.

That same rationale most definitely does not apply to the non-business/enterprise versions of _Vista. Win7 - _Vista's successor - is on schedule to be released three years before those versions of _Vista lose security support, so there is not likely to be the same concern over being forced to jump ship at a moment's notice from a well-tested OS to a brand-new OS that's just taking its first shake-down cruise.

Also, there aren't the same hardware incompatibility issues that there were with the change from XP to _Vista - one of the reasons so many people got so wound up about XP Home losing security support in 2007 was that they would have been forced to purchase all new hardware in addition to the new OS just in order to ensure that they had a secure computing environment.

Many users make their hardware acquisitions based on their own life-cycle policy (conveniently enough, generally tied to the 3-year period over which the cost of that equipment can be amortized for federal income tax purposes ), and the coterminous loss of security support for XP Home and the release of _Vista - an OS that would not run on the brand-new equipment many users had just purchased, had many people concerned that they were essentially being forced to double-down on the hardware acquisition costs solely in order to be able to run a Windows-based operating system.

That concern will not arise in this situation for two reasons: (i) Win7 and _Vista are sufficiently similar that hardware that can run _Vista will also be able to run Win7, and (ii) once Win7 is released (assuming that release will be later this year), users who just purchased Vista-based systems who do not want to immediately acquire Win7 licenses and change over their new equipment to Win7 will be able to continue with their usual replacement life-cycle policy (i.e., replacement every three years or thereabouts) without thereby losing the security support that they all depend on.

Based on all of that, I really don't see any reason why Microsoft would feel compelled to extend the security support for non-business/enterprise versions of _Vista because everyone who just bought a Vista-based system will have almost three years from the date of release to amortize the costs of those new systems under their usual amortization schedules and still continue to receive the necessary security support from MS.

Of course, all of this is the rankest speculation, and only time will tell.

 

You should be able to resize the partition on which the home edition is installed without losing that installation, although you will have to use a third-party utility such as gParted or Acronis Disk Director Suite; I don't believe that the native Win partitioning apps are sophisticated enough to play the sort of musical chairs with partitions you're about to undertake.

 

Yep, gParted and the like should work. You may have to defragment first (I couldn't resize as much as I wanted to last year because of data at the end of the drive, but defragmenting solved that), but gParted is certainly a good option. Haven't used Acronis Disk Director myself. GParted is available at this site; you'll want to burn the ISO file to a bootable CD using software such as CD Burner XP (make sure you choose "Burn from ISO" rather than burning the .iso file itself to the CD). CD Burner XP, it should be noted, runs on both XP and Vista.

But how much more work is it to make patches for the Professional versions vs. Home? I don't know much about computer security, but I would think in most cases the solutions would be similar, and sometimes identical. I'd still maintain that if Microsoft kept ME support as long as 98, when 98 was far more common in businesses, they probably will for .Vista - especially if they're going to for Business/Ultimate regardless. And as bad as .Vista has been for their relations, abandoning it early patch-wise would only make things worse. Really, who was caught up about Microsoft still working on ME patches in 2005?

But as you said, only time will tell. By the way, what's that "amoritized for federal income taxes" about? Is computer hardware eligible for an income tax deduction every few years? I never would've guessed such a thing.

 

What about Easeus Partition Manager 3.0? Has any1 used that software? its free from download.com. Also I just realized my current plan is basically to have 3 Os's installed,which seems a bit silly.

I think I should create the system restore disks as soon as i get the new laptop. Which will back up the vista home edition i think. Then install vista ultimate and xp on 2 50gig partitions, leave the another 200gig for data, and leave the factory restore partition alone.

How does that sound?

Also is there a way to automatically sync installs between the two os's?