Windows Vista for Me?

I have an Acer Travelmate 8204, it has 2 gigs of RAM, 2ghz Core Duo, and an ATI x1600 graphics card. It's got a Windows Vista Capable sticker on it. Will Vista be slower than XP, or is it designed to be faster?

What I'm wondering really is if searching, browsing files, editing pictures w/ photoshop, etc. will be slower than when I'm using XP Pro now.

Also, will gaming slow down?

 

I have an 8204 and ran vista for a few weeks. It seemed as fast as XP, but not faster. Games were generally about 10fps slower, but thats probably because the ATI beta drivers suck.

However, the major disadvantage to Vista is that eats up battery life like candy. In XP, on my 8204, I easily get around 3:30 hours. With Vista, I couldn't get anywhere over 2 hours. Since Aero relies heavily on the GPU, it is used a lot more than in XP, hence the increased battery usage.

For a portable, I would stay away from Vista if battery life is your concern. At least until they improve that aspect.

 

With a fast dual-core processor and 2 GB of RAM (which you have) Vista should feel notably faster than XP. If you only have 1 GB RAM and a slow dual-core or any single-core processor then it runs about the same... maybe a slight advantage to Vista. Lower specs than that, and you should stick with XP or upgrade you system.

As for battery life, I like aero, so I leave the system set to balanced mode when I'm on battery. The battery life is slightly les than XP (maybe 15-20 minutes) but that's it. If you set your machine on Vista's Power saver mode, then aero will be automatically disabled and you should get XP-like or better battery life.

 

Will photoshop on windows XP take advantage of the multithreading capabilities of the processor? If I recall, photoshop has been written to take advantage of multi core processors. While I dont have the answer, it may factor into your decision making...

 

tpoynton -- yes, the latest versions of Photoshop are multi-threaded regardless of your OS choice. Vista just seems to have a better thread scheduler than XP does, so programs and the OS seem to take better advantage of the second core.

 

THANKS for the info. You really do learn something new every day!

 

So, the drivers for my ATI x1600 should be current, working, and fine when Vista is offically released in a week or so? The switch-over from XP to Vista will pose no problems?