Back to XP for me

[Brandon]

After using Vista for over a month on my laptop, I don't think it is ready for me yet. Maybe in a few months but I keep having tons of little bugs that just dont make it fun anymore.

Example:

When in standby, the battery (fully charged) won't last more then a day - with XP i had it for a week in standby to find it used only 20% (Yes I disabled hibernation)

Switching displays (LCD, LCD+TV, LCD+CRT, CRT) is a pain in the rear. Toshiba's software doesn't work and god forbid i unplug the external monitor without reenabling the LCD - then I have to shutdown and reboot.

Brightness always resets to 100% every 10 min and I have to keep adjusting it

I bet most of this could be fixed with updates from Toshiba, but it doesn't seem worth the trouble at the moment. I am tired of having a completely dead laptop in the morning - as well as spending 15 min to attach an external display

[aydc]

Me too. Today I set my boot manger to load XP as default. I realized that the only reason I used Vista for was the transparency. I don't think I really need it. I'm going back to XP for good until I see a compelling reason to use Vista, like some game or program that won't work without it.

[MikeS2k]

I went back to XP purely for the performance.

The XP shell does all I need it to and Vista offers no advantage,

I was excited to hear during the Vista hype stage that you would get a 5-10% performance increase in games,

now it seemes that even with good drivers it's quite the opposite.

XP is clean and functional enough and it plays games nicely (I'm not rich so can only afford a 2500+ and 6600 GT, 1GB RAM)

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

IMHO if they would have kept the planed features in vista, i could have seen a good reason to switch from XP, it seems the only thing is Aero ( I have pro ), which with the utx or window blinds, it defeats the purpose of even that. They say increased Security with Vista, but anybody can have that in xp if they use common sence

[digitalsoft]

Im on my way to switching back aswell, thankfully i never fully switched to vista, but its just not good enough... unlike the switch from 98 to xp that was a great switch, i feel that the vista switch isnt needed... :s

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

I switched my work PC (the Mac in my sig) over to Vista just before christmas and i'm already running into a number of problems with it.

Really regret making the switch but its too much of a PITA to put it back to XP.. so many apps to reinstall, etc.

Memory usage on Vista is just mindblowing - some days I can boot up the machine, and do virtually nothing, and have a commit charge of over 600MB. Its just insane.

[null_]

I'm still running Windows XP because of the mature and stable drivers - NVIDIA haven't released drivers that support SLI or Multi-GPU configurations, Creative still don't have their drivers in order, I'm not sure about Ageia whether or not they have RTM drivers available or not.

Windows XP is insanely fast on this system, and does everything I need it to. In Windows Vista, I barely ever use Search, Windows Photo Gallery isn't all that great compared to applications such as Picasa, the Windows Aero UI is nice but it's mostly eye candy in my opinion and gets boring after a while. Windows Explorer is alright but it's still got bugs in it, and overall I just feel more productive in a Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 environment.

Basically, I just spent a fair amount of money on this system, it's a long-term investment and I plan on keeping it around for a few years. And right now, I'd prefer to run an operating system that actually allows me to take advantage of the hardware, run stable without applications crashing, etc. Windows Vista can't do that for me on any of the machines I've tried it on (and no, I haven't bothered wasting the time to install it on my new system), but Windows XP runs stable as a rock, it's faster than I could ever ask for, and it truely performs.

[Cold Blood]

I also switched to xp. Way too many problems. Just open 3 or 4 programs at once and the whole thing freezes unlike xp were imediately the programs ran.

Not to mention that the os is somewhat bloated with useless features ,especially for power users, that use a lot of ram. I don't need UAC nor windows defender. I never had problems with spyware unless I was clearly aware of the risks and ran some infected programs because I needed them badly. And virusses were never an issue because of a good antivirus and careful thinking.

After you get used with glass you won't even notice it anymore. And this applies to all the other goodies. Don't need flip 3D and neither flip.

For some users it may be a good thing but for me I don't see even one reason why I should switch to vista.

[ToneKnee]

I switched my work PC (the Mac in my sig) over to Vista just before christmas and i'm already running into a number of problems with it.

Really regret making the switch but its too much of a PITA to put it back to XP.. so many apps to reinstall, etc.

Memory usage on Vista is just mindblowing - some days I can boot up the machine, and do virtually nothing, and have a commit charge of over 600MB. Its just insane.

*sighs* Why do people always forget that Vista cache's the memory for the system to make it faster. And Releases it if a Programs needs it?

[Yogurth]

Uninstalled Vista RTM after ~2 weeks, more or less same experience as ppl above me. Just not good enough to move to it.

@NeoFlux ... did You get the feeling from posters above that Vista was faster than XP?

[+shift. MVC]

And for gaming performance, do realize that these drivers are STILL not final. I would expect much better performance once the final drivers are released.

[SMH]

I'm pretty eager to upgrade to Vista but I've been saying to myself to wait at least two months or so after the official release until I upgrade. This way most programs, drivers etc will be fully compatible with Vista and I should have no problems.

[Daedalus]

I have switched back to XP too... mostly Vista ran very well, with a few app compat hiccups (to be expected). The main reason for me was game performance was appalling. I know final drivers haven't been released yet, but on seeing the current performance, I plan to wait at least another 6 months before trying again. Perhaps I will make the switch once DirectX 10 gains popularity.

XP is just so stable and hassle free because of it's maturity.

[david13lt]

I am using for about ~2 months, and I am backing to XP. I can see that it is faster than XP is some ways, but my video card isn't supported and I am still thinking should I buy with PixelShader or not...

As I noticed this technology was created by Microsoft. I don't know, why Windows starting to require better hardware. If it is going to go up, I am going to choose something that doesn't require so good hardware and money from me. Mac, maybe I am coming to you... Let's see what we are going to have coming week.

[gill]

I have been using Vista as main OS for 4 weeks now (RTM from MSDN). I have it in dual boot with XP.

PC is 2 months old (Intel Core 2 duo, 4GB ram, 1.5 TB HD, GeForce 7600GT), and I must say that Vista is A LOT faster than XP is. I do admit that not everything is OK yet (I have some driver issues with X-Fi, and some external USB HD's).

Today, I had to switch to XP for a few hours to do some development on ASP.net 1.1 (which is yet something else you do not want to do in Vista). Now I noticed how fast Vista really is! In XP, I have to wait a few seconds to start up Visual Studio or Photoshop. In Vista, I click the shortcut, and it's there.

It indeed uses a lot of ram, but as someone said, it uses it to start applications faster. And that REALLY pays of!

Probably, you need a very good PC for the Vista experience. I won't be switching back, that's for sure!

[hagjohn]

That's why I have 2 drives. 1 with XP and Vista on the other one. I never liked dual booting. Vista seems to work well with my computer and is just as fast as XP, if not a little bit quicker. I will probably keep XP as my main OS for a while though.

[Night Prowler]

I have Vista Ultimate installed on my wife?s computer and it runs very well. All she does is web stuff so it works great for that. It also gives me the opportunity to get used to the GUI and the new system control functions. However, I did install it on my laptop for work and ran it for a few weeks and had to remove it because of a multitude of small quirks, as mentioned in this thread. I'm a power user, so on my personal home system, Vista will NOT be installed until it has matured several months, maybe until SP1 is released. The driver situation and the slowness of some of these companies to make their programs compatible is pathetic.

Microsoft is not going to get into my wallet at this point. They should NOT have shelved some of the planned features that would have made it compelling to upgrade, and AREO doesn't impress me (nice but not worth upgrading). I think Microsoft has way over estimated on business adapting VISTA and I know they are way over estimating on the general public running out to update to VISTA.

[freak_power]

I have a feeling that NVIDIA and ATI can't make SLI/Crossfire work under Vista.

[Jeff Flowerday]

I'm not going back. I've had no deal breaker problems. Vista is noticebly faster than XP on my machine.

With each driver release it just get's better and better.

[raskren]

I have a feeling that NVIDIA and ATI can't make SLI/Crossfire work under Vista.

They have. And they've demoed it already so you can quit reiterating the same garbage over and over again.

[null_]

They have. And they've demoed it already so you can quit reiterating the same garbage over and over again.

Now all we need NVIDIA to do is release the drivers so that us folks with SLI/Multi-GPU can actually take full advantage of our configurations.

[giantpotato]

I too am considering going back to XP, some of my reasons:

1) Gaming Performance is better in XP

2) Nero burning ROM is not compatible with Vista, I can't burn a disc and do anything else at the same time because Nero has a memory leak or something in Vista.

3) I don't have a router and can't set up an Ad-Hoc WiFi connection to automatically connect when windows is restarted.

4) I can't get my PPPOE connection to connect automatically on boot, I have to login first.

5) I can't connect via remote desktop when someone else is using the PC, in XP there's a workaround for this.

6) For me, XP boots faster than Vista

7) General system performance, considering I only have 512MB of RAM

8) Sometimes WMP complains that I don't have enough ram in Vista to simply play a DVD, Seriously why should playing a DVD require more than 512MB? All other applications are closed.

9) There is something seriously wrong with the audio Levels of my HDTV tuner under Vista. The volume is set to a minimum, but the audio records so high the audio is completely distorted.

I'm sure there are more little things, but that's all I could think of right now.

The only thing I really like about Vista is the Aero interface, and perhaps ReadyBoost for my laptop.

[Mordkanin]

2) Nero burning ROM is not compatible with Vista, I can't burn a disc and do anything else at the same time because Nero has a memory leak or something in Vista.

The latest version of Nero is fully compatible with Vista. and I've been using it for weeks without incident.

But yes, you should get more RAM.

[gill]

The latest version of Nero is fully compatible with Vista. and I've been using it for weeks without incident.

But yes, you should get more RAM.

In fact that is not true. If you have Nero (latest versions too) installed, and you browse to a folder with video files, you'll get a COM surrogate error. Known issue at the moment, will probably be fixed in the coming weeks.

[Jeston Veteran]

I used to have Vista and XP dual boot, but ever since I built my new machine Vista has been the only OS and I'm not ever looking back. It runs like a dream.