Windows XP Vs. Vista

[Zero001]

If you want to still play old games without any problems-like me, stick with XP. Unreal Tournament 99 FTW!

 

You wouldn't have any trouble running that in Vista x64.

 

Honestly the only problems I've had was running a mod Forgotten Hope, and installing the original Dawn of War. Being a mod FH isn't coded as well and a simple right-click>properties>compatibility mode solved the issue. The same has to be done for BF1942 if you want to run the mod. Battlefield 1942 on it's own doesn't need compatibility mode. Dawn of War didn't give me a Vista issue, but rather a 64bit issue. Most of the time you just run these programs in the x86 folder, but EA gave me some extra work by making me create a new user with only access to x86. I installed it using the new user and BAM! my administrative account had the files and I deleted the new user.

 

You shouldn't have any problems with most games. Even Command and Conquer from Windows 95 days installed and runs flawlessly.

[cheese]

you cant compare windows xp against vista , there are many more versions of vista

Vista ultimate is bether then windows xp but windows xp owns the regular vista, you also got a windows vista made for game's

 

vista is bether then windows, it has more options

[Red]

Actually thinking about some trouble I've seen people have with running some games on vista, I'd say go with XP.

[Captain Colon]

you cant compare windows xp against vista , there are many more versions of vista

Vista ultimate is bether then windows xp but windows xp owns the regular vista, you also got a windows vista made for game's

I was going to say sort of the same thing...much like XP Home is shit but XP Pro is pretty good, Vista Home is pretty shitty. It has very few of the features that really make Vista better than XP. Ultimate performs much better (if you have enough memory, I think it recommends an extra gig for Ultimate over Home) and has many more features.

 

If you have an older machine then I'd stick with XP (although you can turn off Aero in Vista and get a substantial performance boost), but if you've got a computer that's been made in the past 2-3 years and has at least 2GB of memory, Vista Ultimate is the way to go. Especially if you've ever used OSX or Linux and know how to use features like symlinks, which are now supported in the latest iteration of NTFS that I believe is only supported by Vista. It's also got lots of features ripped from Linux/OSX that make Vista a breeze for lazy people like me, such as the quick-search start menu and native hotkeys for the first 10 items on your quicklaunch bar. When I get back from classes I just hit Win+1 and firefox is open and I'm ready to browse the internets, and if I forget to open winamp before I already opened a game I can just hit Win+2 and bring it up and start the rock without having to alt+tab, since it opens minimized and I have global hotkeys set up for winamp already.

[Phobos]

I've actually noticed vista (ult) booting up and waking up a lot faster than xp, but vista still hogs more mem/cpu. I turned off the automatic SearchIndexer, but TrustedInstaller.exe pops up randomly and just eats away at my cpu.

[Veggie]

Vista has come a long way. Between Service Pack 1 and drivers having gotten much better and more stable, Vista is very reliable.

 

XP is faster for gaming not by much tho, also with Microsoft ending the patch lifecycle for XP, a lot of people are going to Switch to Vista.

[Itch]

Vista has come a long way. Between Service Pack 1 and drivers having gotten much better and more stable, Vista is very reliable.

 

XP is faster for gaming not by much tho, also with Microsoft ending the patch lifecycle for XP, a lot of people are going to Switch to Vista.

 

You still have over a year left before they end of life the XP patching.. and even then I'm not so sure they will end XP patching. For example if you run WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) you still get critical and security updates for Windows 2000! Even though it is technically past it's "End of Life" for patching. Granted they won't issue driver and software updates for that OS but who cares?

[Straylight]

I'm not a huge fan of Vista, but the things they did had to be done. XP is pretty old and even though its pretty stable- It does have a pretty flawed driver model that can cause the entire system to hemmorage.

 

Plus, a great deal of Vista drivers out right now are simple kludges in programming. Meaning they are tweaked drivers that barely require Vista. I'm sure by the time the new Windows 7 beta comes out there wil be some truly fast drivers that actually take advantage of the new architecture (and no I'm not talking about dx10).

 

There are a ton of other things they improved in Vista that I approve of. But most of those changes are under the hood. Meaning they wont really affect the end user anytime soon.

 

My suggestion is stay with XP unless you A) need 64bit computing or B) know theres a game that is Vista only that you want.

 

Vista is a pretty big mess, much the same way WinME was when they tried to cram a whole bunch of new things in the OS. I'll always look at Vista as an ugly transitional but necessary phase.

[LVG]

Yea id say XP although i have Vista to many bugs especially Hl2.exe errors

[PotshotPolka]

In a nutshell Vista is the NT of the 21st century, just switch it out later with Vienna.