Vista? Yes or No? And help

[Pangus]

Well i just got the vista upgrade option in the mail from dell and now i'm debating on upgrading or not. I have windows XP right now and my computer can easily fully handle vista. Can vista use basically every program/game that XP can use? Should i upgrade?

 

 

 

It says i need to back up any important files from my computer, is it trying to tell me that it's going to erase my hard drive or is that just like a safety precaution just in case something goes wrong?

[Cruiser]

I would check into any programs you know you absolutely have to have and make sure they will run on Vista first. I've personally gone through the trouble of downgrading the new Vista laptop we got back to XP because of usability issues, but that is specific to how we're using it. If it's just a personal use laptop you're probably safe upgrading. Just make sure you do some research on the programs you use to make sure they will work on Vista.

 

 

 

The backup recommendation is made with any major software upgrades because there is always an extreme chance something could go wrong during the upgrade. You should always have a backup of your important files, even if you aren't making any major changes to the machine.

 

 

 

Edit for spelling

[Pangus]

Alrighty

 

 

 

Yeah I'll back up my music and what not, thanks for the help

[no_way2go]

Vista is slower then xp.... it isn't optimal yet so I wouldn't go for it.

 

It's also a heavier load on your machine. Atleast 2GB RAM is recommended.

 

 

 

There is a good dutch article about this at Tweakers.net (a dutch technical pc site): http://tweakers.net/nieuws/47418

 

 

 

As you can see below Xp is faster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The test was done on a high-end pc (Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2,13GHz), Corsair 2GB XMS DDR2-800, Asus P5B-E-mtherboard)

 

 

 

Btw an installation of windows vista will delete everything on that harddrive because it needs to be reformatted.

[Pangus]

Ahh thank you for telling me that it deletes everything on my machine, that helps me a lot! :D

 

 

 

But yeah i think XP might be a little faster but with my computer i won't even be able to tell i dont think. Got 4gigs of ram and dual quatro cores something something haha.

 

 

 

So if i have a very high end computer do yall think i will be able to notice any difference?

[blade995]

Ahh thank you for telling me that it deletes everything on my machine, that helps me a lot! :D

 

 

 

But yeah i think XP might be a little faster but with my computer i won't even be able to tell i dont think. Got 4gigs of ram and dual quatro cores something something haha.

 

 

 

So if i have a very high end computer do yall think i will be able to notice any difference?

 

 

 

I highly doubt you have dual quad cores and 4 gigs of ram. Those specs are for a server, not a home pc.

 

 

 

Please give us your real specs.

 

 

 

I also believe those benchmarks are not 100% accurate. The Nvidia drivers that these benchmarks used were not the newest for Vista (from looking at hardocp the website who actually benched this), which the new ones are considered the first "real" Vista drivers. They didn't benchmark ATI cards with XP and Vista. ATI drivers are a little more developed for Vista at the moment.

 

 

 

Granted Vista does have it's flaws but if you can upgrade for very little money or for free, I would do it. Your going to have to upgrade to it eventually and if you can for free, might as well before the offer expires.

 

 

 

For the formating the hard drive you may have to erase everything but there is an option to upgrade and keep your files, but I don't know how good that works. Still make sure you have everything backed up in case something does go wrong.

[Pangus]

Ahh thank you for telling me that it deletes everything on my machine, that helps me a lot! :D

 

 

 

But yeah i think XP might be a little faster but with my computer i won't even be able to tell i dont think. Got 4gigs of ram and dual quatro cores something something haha.

 

 

 

So if i have a very high end computer do yall think i will be able to notice any difference?

 

 

 

I highly doubt you have dual quad cores and 4 gigs of ram. Those specs are for a server, not a home pc.

 

 

 

Please give us your real specs.

 

I also believe those benchmarks are not 100% accurate. The Nvidia drivers that these benchmarks used were not the newest for Vista (from looking at hardocp the website who actually benched this), which the new ones are considered the first "real" Vista drivers. They didn't benchmark ATI cards with XP and Vista. ATI drivers are a little more developed for Vista at the moment.

 

 

 

Granted Vista does have it's flaws but if you can upgrade for very little money or for free, I would do it. Your going to have to upgrade to it eventually and if you can for free, might as well before the offer expires.

 

 

 

For the formating the hard drive you may have to erase everything but there is an option to upgrade and keep your files, but I don't know how good that works. Still make sure you have everything backed up in case something does go wrong.

 

Lol right because you know what type of computer i have?

 

 

 

QX6700 quad-core processor

 

4GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667 mhZ

 

768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX

 

 

 

Yes dell shipped me the vista cd for free it came with the computer.

[soldier_side]

667MHz? I bet it barely runs xp..

 

 

 

Microsoft claims that if you`ve bought a pc in the last (about?) 2-3 years then you should be perfectly fine running vista.

 

if you`re going to get vista you ought to consider what version you`re getting as well. I`m currently running vista business. I really like it but it is a lot different than xp. drop down menus are almost completely gone, things look so much nicer and Vista has great security.

 

finding my way around pisses me off sometimes. it makes me feel stupid -.-

 

 

 

you can upgrade from xp professional but *not* home edition. (I did a project recently about vista business but it was rushed so I`m not a pro) I recommend just starting fresh though. store your files on a cd or something + download programs later. I also recommend using the VUA (Vista Upgrade Advisor) just to *completely* make sure you can run vista with no problems. It tells you what hardware you need to upgrade completely.

 

if you want to find out more about vista click:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/default.mspx.

[blade995]

Ahh thank you for telling me that it deletes everything on my machine, that helps me a lot! :D

 

 

 

But yeah i think XP might be a little faster but with my computer i won't even be able to tell i dont think. Got 4gigs of ram and dual quatro cores something something haha.

 

 

 

So if i have a very high end computer do yall think i will be able to notice any difference?

 

 

 

I highly doubt you have dual quad cores and 4 gigs of ram. Those specs are for a server, not a home pc.

 

 

 

Please give us your real specs.

 

I also believe those benchmarks are not 100% accurate. The Nvidia drivers that these benchmarks used were not the newest for Vista (from looking at hardocp the website who actually benched this), which the new ones are considered the first "real" Vista drivers. They didn't benchmark ATI cards with XP and Vista. ATI drivers are a little more developed for Vista at the moment.

 

 

 

Granted Vista does have it's flaws but if you can upgrade for very little money or for free, I would do it. Your going to have to upgrade to it eventually and if you can for free, might as well before the offer expires.

 

 

 

For the formating the hard drive you may have to erase everything but there is an option to upgrade and keep your files, but I don't know how good that works. Still make sure you have everything backed up in case something does go wrong.

 

Lol right because you know what type of computer i have?

 

 

 

QX6700 quad-core processor

 

4GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667 mhZ

 

768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX

 

 

 

Yes dell shipped me the vista cd for free it came with the computer.

 

 

 

That is different than what you said before. You said you had dual quad processors, you have 1 quad core, not 2. Your computer specs are actually believable for a home pc.

 

 

 

To answer your question, you should not notice any slow down with that pc. As long as you have up to date drivers you should be good. The Nvidia 8 series is meant for dx10 anyway, which only runs on Vista.

 

 

 

667MHz? I bet it barely runs xp.

 

That is his ram speed, not the processor.

 

 

 

Don't bother with the upgrade adviser either, I guarantee that will run vista.

[Pangus]

Ah meant to say it the other way around my bad, you are correct.

 

 

 

Did not know dx10 only ran on Vista, good to know thank you

[zonda]

667MHz? I bet it barely runs xp..

 

 

 

I have 1 gig of 333 mhz RAM... It runs xp flawlessly, you don't need an uber computer to do so, infact... I don't even know the specs of my other computer or my laptop because I rarely use them for more then extra storage, but I can tell you right now that they both run XP, and are both utter junk in terms of hardware.

 

 

 

As far as vista goes... I hate it. My friend bought it, and downgraded back to xp pro.

 

 

 

My sister's mother inlaw has a computer running vista, I had to do some networking on her computer... it was a pain in the keester.

 

 

 

This is just my personal opinion, but for the next X years, until microsoft gets the user-friendly issues, the RAM hog issues (as if 30+ meg's isnt enough) , and the annoying flaws worked out, I'll be keeping my XP up to date, thank you very much.

[soldier_side]

 

My sister's mother inlaw has a computer running vista, I had to do some networking on her computer... it was a pain in the keester.

 

 

 

This is just my personal opinion, but for the next X years, until microsoft gets the user-friendly issues, the RAM hog issues (as if 30+ meg's isnt enough) , and the annoying flaws worked out, I'll be keeping my XP up to date, thank you very much.

 

 

 

lol what kind of networking?.. Business/Ultimate is made for that type of thing. If she didn`t figure that out by reading 10 words on Microsoft`s website then that`s her problem.

 

Vista isn`t that bad. it just takes some getting used to. That`s probably one of the biggest cons besides the hardware/software compatibility. It`s a little harder to adapt to. Things aren`t handed to you as easily like the previous versions of Windows. It takes more than 30 seconds of shoving the computer and saying "I hate this crap it`s too hard" to understand how things function. I`ve had it for about a month and it`s not so bad anymore.

 

Vista isn`t a "ram hog" either. XP is most definitely a hog with ram and it doesn`t run properly on my windows 2k machine, which fits the requirements fine. I have countless errors and problems with the pc locking up. Vista being a ram hog is just hearsay. When people look at the requirements they hide under rocks in terror. Like I said, Microsoft says that if you bought a pc in the last 2-3 years it should run vista fine.

 

 

 

 

 

Windows Vista minimum supported systemrequirements

 

Home Basic / Home Premium / Business / Ultimate

 

 

 

800 MHz processor and 512 MB of system memory

 

20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space

 

Support for Super VGA graphics

 

CD-ROM drive

 

 

 

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc ... ments.mspx

[Cruiser]

Alrighty then soldier_side, do explain why Vista takes 6 times longer to unzip a 1.8mb file than XP does? Vista took 24 seconds to unzip said file on a brand new Core2 Duo, SATA2 drive and 2gb of ram. XP did the same thing in 4 seconds on an Athlon 3200 (1.8ghz), IDE drives, and 1gb of ram. You come up with a good reason why Vista on brand new hardware should be SLOWER than XP on 2 year old hardware (bought 2 years ago, models are older than that) and I'll start listening to your reasoning.

 

 

 

You can argue the minimum requirements all you want. A new OS on brand new hardware should be faster than its predecessor on slower hardware no matter how you look at it.

[JoeDaStudd]

667MHz? I bet it barely runs xp.

 

Ok your advising a guy about computers and you dont even know;

 

A) RAM has a frequency

 

B) A QX6700 is almost the best processor around to date.

 

 

 

Now, about your question personally I would keep hold of the vista DVD until either; a DX10 game which you want to play comes out or the drivers for vista are sorted out.

 

 

 

Although you could very easily dual boot the two OS's and have both Vista and XP running on your PC until you make your mind up on which one you want.

 

 

 

Ps. if the specs in your PC are what you say they are its a very, very nice pc :mrgreen:

[RpgGamer]

im not completely understanding of the technicals but my aunt recently upgraded to vista (and like you thought her computer was good enough to handle it) and she hated it. it took out her hardrive, it ran slower, it was just all around terrible. Ive also heard that vista is on recall from that dell mailing upgrade thing.

 

 

 

bottom line - Vista = bad

[zonda]

Windows Vista minimum supported systemrequirements

 

Home Basic / Home Premium / Business / Ultimate

 

 

 

800 MHz processor and 512 MB of system memory

 

20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space

 

Support for Super VGA graphics

 

CD-ROM drive

 

 

 

This is the funniest thing I have ever heard. A 20 gig hard drive with at least 15 gigs free space? Yea, you could install vista on that... but with the combination of how slow that processor is, and the fact that most of the OS will load as cache onto your hard drive (which aready is strained from having less then 5 gigs left) rather than the RAM... I can't believe that they actually said that those are the min req. I shutter at the thought of waiting 30 minutes for my OS to boot up, only to watch it crash.

 

 

 

And you say its not a RAM hog? Task manager is your friend.

 

 

 

XP Can be heavilly tweaked as well, disabling services saves a huge ammount of RAM, might want to try that on your computers your having trouble with.

 

 

 

The biggest annoyance I found is they took the windows firewall 1 step further and integrated it into everything.

 

 

 

I was trying to install microsoft office on a ladies computer... needless to say it had to ask me 4 or 5 times if I wanted to run the exe and install it, because after all it could be potentially dangerous software. DID I MENTION IT WAS MICROSOFT OFFICE I WAS INSTALLING?!?!?

 

 

 

I'm all for security, but treating customers as if they are ignorant 4 year old children is not the way to go, most people today at least have a general understanding of computers. XP had plenty of features - warning the user if they had no anti virus, firewall, ect - all geared for security. If a person still gets a virus or what have you, at that point its their own fault. You don't just go to google.com and get a virus, generally speaking it was someone downloading something they shouldnt have or viewing something they probably shouldnt be.

[blade995]

It's not the firewall that doing that to you Zonda.

 

 

 

It's a new "feature" Microsoft added called UAC, or user account control. It's a lot worse than a firewall, don't get them confused :wink: .

 

 

 

The first thing I did when I installed Vista was disable UAC. =D>

[lilbubba829]

There's lots of attacking and very little actual information being talked about. Yes it takes longer using the Windows unzip utility, however if you install a program that does it, it runs faster. Nobody knows for sure why, but that's just how it goes. The system itself is NOT six times slower, but unzipping files can be. Most times the system runs FASTER, unless your drivers aren't completely opitimized for Vista. If that's the case, it's your fault for not looking into it.

 

 

 

 

 

Also, don't offer to install a program if you don't even know how to use the operating system. Those messages CAN be disabled if you feel you know what you're doing, but there are computer users who do act like five year old children and Microsoft gets blamed for their computers getting ruined. Why do you think everyone complains about Microsoft's lack of security? You know how almost all of those exploits and viruses come from? People downloading files and installing programs they aren't sure about. But Microsoft gets blamed. Also, most people are too lazy and cheap to buy a firewall, and if you look into all the topics about Microsoft's firewall it's biggest complaint was that it only blocked incoming. So they make it both ways and you're still complaining. That's not Microsoft's fault either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vista hasn't been a RAM hog for as far as I have seen, yet many programs (such as explorer) increase exponentially their memory usage in Windows XP. Granted you can always end it, which I do, but it will always keep coming back. That problem hasn't yet occured in Vista.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Steven

[blade995]

Wait, so your saying other people use a computer like a 5 year old but you don't know NOT to disable explorer. Explorer.exe is a main system file of windows.

 

 

 

Vista isn't a ram hog? Are you crazy? Xp uses about 400-500MBs of ram at idle, Vista uses 900MBs at idle. Almost double of what XP uses.

 

 

 

I have XP and Vista dual booted and almost the same processes starting up. Infact I might have more run at start up on XP than Vista.

[Cruiser]

There's lots of attacking and very little actual information being talked about. Yes it takes longer using the Windows unzip utility, however if you install a program that does it, it runs faster.

 

WinRAR unzipped my example file in under a second on both platforms, not faster on Vista. This is not a measure of the OS speed either and just proves the OS file operations are the problem.

 

 

 

The system itself is NOT six times slower, but unzipping files can be. Most times the system runs FASTER, unless your drivers aren't completely opitimized for Vista. If that's the case, it's your fault for not looking into it.

 

I never said the system was 6 times slower. Please learn to read. I asked for an explanation on why it takes Vista 6 times longer to unzip the file. A new OS should bring faster operations, not slower than it's 6 year old predecessor.

 

 

 

 

 

Vista hasn't been a RAM hog for as far as I have seen, yet many programs (such as explorer) increase exponentially their memory usage in Windows XP. Granted you can always end it, which I do, but it will always keep coming back. That problem hasn't yet occured in Vista.

 

I'm sorry, but Explorer does not exponentially eat ram. I have XP running on 6 machines in the house (ranging from years old, to brand new) and none of them do what you describe. I'll repeat that, none of them. The 1ghz LAN server quite regularly uses less than 500mb of ram under heavy load too, while the Vista laptop we bought (now happily running XP) idled well over 500mb after removing all the crapware.

[soldier_side]

Alrighty then soldier_side, do explain why Vista takes 6 times longer to unzip a 1.8mb file than XP does? Vista took 24 seconds to unzip said file on a brand new Core2 Duo, SATA2 drive and 2gb of ram. XP did the same thing in 4 seconds on an Athlon 3200 (1.8ghz), IDE drives, and 1gb of ram. You come up with a good reason why Vista on brand new hardware should be SLOWER than XP on 2 year old hardware (bought 2 years ago, models are older than that) and I'll start listening to your reasoning.

 

 

 

I don`t know why it would have been slower, but I`m sure that those 20 more seconds of suspense was killing you. What does the operating system have to do with the speed of how fast it was unzipping? You`re blaming Vista for slowing you down like that? seriously, does that even make sense? If Vista, the huge power tool with its vicious teeth, with all of the foam at the mouth was going to slow you down, wouldn`t it be much slower than that?

 

 

 

You can argue the minimum requirements all you want. A new OS on brand new hardware should be faster than its predecessor on slower hardware no matter how you look at it.

 

 

 

I was just stating what the minimum reqirements are. it`s better to have something to support your opinon rather than saying "lol vista is bad"

[Cruiser]

I don`t know why it would have been slower, but I`m sure that those 20 more seconds of suspense was killing you.

 

When you're working with a few thousand photographs and trying to do on site sales and other file operations said photos, speed matters. Faster processing means faster sales and more customers served. These slow speeds apply to more than just the zip tool, I just happened to use that as

 

my example at the time.

 

 

 

What does the operating system have to do with the speed of how fast it was unzipping?

 

The slow zip tool is part of Vista (and it's overall file operations), built into the OS and just one of many possible examples of the slow file operations many have experienced. That is what is has to do with Vista. You should look these things up.

 

 

 

You`re blaming Vista for slowing you down like that? seriously, does that even make sense? If Vista, the huge power tool with its vicious teeth, with all of the foam at the mouth was going to slow you down, wouldn`t it be much slower than that?

 

Yes I'm blaming Vista, because Vista is the problem here. The rest of that paragraphs just sounds like a weak attempt at trying to blame me for the problem.

 

 

 

I was just stating what the minimum reqirements are. it`s better to have something to support your opinon rather than saying "lol vista is bad"

 

You should probably read up on the problem then. Yes a hotfix is available, but not publicly rolled out to fix a rather obvious problem, most likely to avoid admitting the flaw. Instead it's tucked away in the knowledge base. That still doesn't change the fact many, many users are having this problem. The fact Dell has reintroduced XP on some of it's models is proof enough that the Vista bloat is not needed and not wanted.