Windows Vista-revisited

[96SC]

All:

Several weeks/months ago a thread was going around about Vista.  Most of the comments weren't very complimentary.

We are in the market for a laptop for our son but every one we see has Vista installed.  What is you opinion of Vista now?  Can you get a new laptop with XP?  If you get a computer with Vista how easy is it to change it to an XP?  Should you convert it to XP? 

Thanks for any info you can give me.  

Jim

[wmccall]

There are some still selling with XP, but they are probably not major brands.  HP and Dell have bowed down to the all mighty Microsoft. My company is buying Dell laptops with Vista and reimaging with XP.   If you stick with Vista, get 2gb of memory, it helps.  Vista will probably be ok for college and will get better.    You can always go back to Visa later.  Microsoft just gave me a free copy of Vista Ultimate and it is better than when I first looked at it.

[countryboy]

I've had a dell with 2gig memory and Vista for 4 months now, not a single problem with vista at all. I'm wondering if most of the problems with vista are when people upgrade from XP and not with a new machine, just a thought.

[Brewman]

You might have a point.  My dell desktop PC came from the factory with Vista, and no problems at all.  I had to download a couple drivers for my printers, not a big deal, and everything works fine.  

  But those who are trying to upgrade an XP machine to Vista may have challenges.  But I remember that the transition to XP from whatever preceed it wasn't exactly a walk in the park.  From what I've read so far, that was a tougher transition than XP to Vista is.  But people forget stuff over time.

[96SC]

I seem to remember either reading, hearing, dreaming that if you had a MS Word document with XP you couldn't load it into Vista or some such thing.  Since all of sons current Word documents are XP I would hate to make him re-type them to fit the Vista programming.  Is this true or was it all a dream? :-/

[countryboy]

I think that is a dream, MS word doesn't have much to do with what MS plateform your using. Only way MS wouldn't open a file is if you created it in say office 2000 and were trying to open it in  office 97 it might not open back ward, but most thinks will work forward, version wise. Unless you were thinking MS Outlook in xp and MS Mail in Vista, but I didn't have problems there either really.

[ndabunka]

Vista DOES consume a great deal more resources on ANY laptop.  This is simply a result of Microsoft continuing to poor more and more crap on top of the existing crap to the point that you can no longer tell which of the junk below the surface is of value (or obsolete).  Of course, it does make it easier to continue to develop and since memory and processing power is so plentiful now-a-days, there is really no point to cleaning up the clubhouse.  But, for those of you wishing to continue using your older laptops or simple seeking faster performance out of the newer laptops, most every vendor will provide you an XP CD upon request for a small fee (usually $15.00).  One thing to note is that the actual manufacture's XP CD must be used or else the MS authentication will fail (and thus you can't apply and of the required 1.2 million "patches" that you will need to run anything).  So, spend $15, re-install the OS (or do a dual-boot like I am planning) and enjoy running XP EVEN FASTER on the new hardware.

[Pathfinder]

IMO if your running Vista on a laptop dont use Norton(symantec)Programs  As most know
but forget to mention that it uses up a tonne of Virtual Memory which tends to drag down your comps performance. If you maxed out your mem for your desktop it isnt too bad.
I have switched many people who had lagging problems with nortorn and switched to Trend Micro(much better IMO) and their issues went away.  But as most have stated  you need lots of RAM.  Just my 2 cents.

[Micah]

I find it hard to belive that the answer to all of your problems is out there and yet nobody has thought of it yet.  We are running about 15 computers at our office half xp and about 5 vistas and a couple windows 98.  But by far the best 2 computers we have are APPLE OSX.  For a student apple is the only way to go.  The more you use an apple the more you hate windows

[Spiderman]

We just got our new HP DV9429 w/ Vista Home Premium and haven't had any problems.  It has 2GM of memory, however, which from what I read was recommended for Vista.  I found a few laptops with XP, but with Vista being out there in 99% of new computers, it didn't make sense to stay with XP.   The HP we bought was by far the best deal I could find.  $949 with 2GB mem, 2.2GHz dual core processor, 120GB and 80GB hard drives, and 17" widescreen.  I was set on Intel's dual core processor, but after talking to some computer geeks, I felt comfortable with the AMD Turion.  Good Luck!

[autoplay]

If you go to Vista from XP,and you use Office,you'll need to upgrade your office,which is a cost factor.

I recently installed Vista 64 bit,and had no trubs.  I DLed my drivers,prior to installing Vista.

Vista boots faster,and seems to be faster,than XP.  That also could be,I'm running the 64 bit edition,which is utilizing my mem and dual cores more efficently too?.?

Vista has reworked the sound engine,so in that regards,drivers and certain apps will be awhile,before fully functional.

I'm using a dual drive setup...so I can boot up either XP,or,Vista,from boot/gate.  I prefer that verses using a dual boot drive setup,as my 64 and 32 bit OSs are separate.

A plus for Vista,verses XP,is it will run directX10,if you have the vid card to drive it. XP will only allow directX9 or lower.

[Pathfinder]

I find it hard to belive that the answer to all of your problems is out there and yet nobody has thought of it yet.  We are running about 15 computers at our office half xp and about 5 vistas and a couple windows 98.  But by far the best 2 computers we have are APPLE OSX.  For a student apple is the only way to go.  The more you use an apple the more you hate windows

Well yeah thats the easy solution & thats the way Im going for my other  desktop and laptop in the next month or so. Plus you can run windows based programs on a mac

[96SC]

Thanks to all of you for your input.  I sounds like Vista isn't the problem prone OS I had thought it was.  (Maybe the Apple commercials were the culprit)
We had never thought of the Apple option either.  We'll have to take son to tinker with Vista and an Apple to see which he prefers.

Thanks again.

[countryboy]

Autoplay, why would you have to upgrade your MS Office?

[autoplay]

Awhile back,the wifey upgraded to Vista. She has Office2003. We tried everything,and nuttin worked. Eventually we were told that she would need a Vista version of Office,in order for it to work "100%".

Wifey scraped Vista,and is back to XP.