Microsoft Windows OSes Compared

[lammmetak]

ill choose windows 2003 server , even for my desktop. it has all the things i need for a desktop and it can do more with less. altough it is a great os it isnt my favorite. currently my list is as follows: 1. Mac OS X 10.4.9 2. Windows 2003 r2 3. Ubuntu Linux 4. Vista 5. FreeBSD

[NEVER85]

Anyone who sees Vista as a good operating system should actually read up on the OS, if you continue to think it's good please proceed to commit suicide.

The people that think Vista is a good operating system probably actually use it and base their opinions on their own experiences with it. Meanwhile, it seems your negative opinion is based on what other people have said about it and decided "hey, I'll think Vista sucks too". Also, commit suicide? That's a little extreme. There are more legitimate (albeit still misguided) reasons to commit suicide, such as if the love of your life tragically died, but I guess thinking Vista is good is grounds for me to off myself.

[Rudy]

if i had to put them in order it would be:

2000 > XP > Vista > 98 > ME > 95 (sorry but 95 barely supports anything anymore, putting up with ME's BSOD is worth it :p)

[Irwin R]

Windows Vista is a good OS. I have read up on it and I have had it installed on a secondary machine (linux on primary) since the beginning of January and it's fine, in my opinion. I've had zero problems with drivers, stability, or speed.

I suggest you commit suicide; you're either bad at researching or your literacy skills aren't too good. I don't see why you would have a problem with drivers, stability or speed unless you're doing something stupid. My XP box has never crashed on me (unless I'm coding/testing rootkits) simply because XP itself is very stable but third party software is always what causes your issues. Oh & don't even try to compare Vista's efficiency to that of XP.

Perhaps you'd like to share with us why you think this?

I've been running Vista as my primary OS since it was RTMed and I've had no issues at all with it; fast, some good new features and surprisingly stable for a new OS release; mine hasn't crashed once so I can't even say it's not as solid as 2000 or XP are.

I had two terms for you; Trusted Computing & PatchGuard. These two abominations of this capitalistic company basically hand your computer over to Microsoft, I suggest you do the research. Your statement about crashing is utterly pathetic, you're only going to crash on XP if you use unstable software/drivers! Vista is different in this regard though, it still has bugs within the OS itself that will cause errors with no provocation.

The people that think Vista is a good operating system probably actually use it and base their opinions on their own experiences with it. Meanwhile, it seems your negative opinion is based on what other people have said about it and decided "hey, I'll think Vista sucks too". Also, commit suicide? That's a little extreme. There are more legitimate (albeit still misguided) reasons to commit suicide, such as if the love of your life tragically died, but I guess thinking Vista is good is grounds for me to off myself.

I'm looking at this operating system purely from what Microsoft provides us (excluding a paper on Trusted Computing by a professor at Cambridge) so it's safe to say that any foolish remark you make towards me that goes along the lines of "you're just following suit with others" is erroneous and idiotic. In my opinion, if you're an idiot then there's no point in living ;)

[timmmay]

Windows XP (64-bit architecture is just an added bonus)

Anyone who sees Vista as a good operating system should actually read up on the OS, if you continue to think it's good please proceed to commit suicide.

haha funny you should say that...i use vista now purely because i did read up on it and saw how much improvement there is under the hood compared with xp.

[Irwin R]

haha funny you should say that...i use vista now purely because i did read up on it and saw how much improvement there is under the hood compared with xp.

Haha funny you should say that; the best improvement in Vista is the rewritten TCP/IP stack. Many of the changes in Vista were/are aesthetic and they do not effect the speed of the OS in any good way at all.

[Malik05]

2000 and XP pro

[stereopixels]

I had two terms for you; Trusted Computing & PatchGuard. These two abominations of this capitalistic company basically hand your computer over to Microsoft, I suggest you do the research. Your statement about crashing is utterly pathetic, you're only going to crash on XP if you use unstable software/drivers! Vista is different in this regard though, it still has bugs within the OS itself that will cause errors with no provocation.

And if you actually bothered to read what I put you'd realise I wasn't even knocking XP, I still use it on several of the machines in my house. Vista isn't the only system to implement TPM; FYI both Apple hardware and the Linux Kernel (since 2.6.13) have included support for it, and of course whilst it does have cons for privacy if mis-used, it also offers several benefits to ordinary users, though that is not to say I'm a supporter of it because I'm personally not.

[Irwin R]

And if you actually bothered to read what I put you'd realise I wasn't even knocking XP, I still use it on several of the machines in my house. Vista isn't the only system to implement TPM; FYI both Apple hardware and the Linux Kernel (since 2.6.13) have included support for it, and of course whilst it does have cons for privacy if mis-used, it also offers several benefits to ordinary users, though that is not to say I'm a supporter of it because I'm personally not.

You'd then know TC is a module that isn't used/enabled by default in the Linux/Darwin kernel. You'd also know that the gains for users would be minuscule compared to the level of privacy invasion. Oh & did you know that you can't run unsigned drivers nor inject libraries in 64BIT Vista? This hurts many companies like Stardock who rely on API hooking to use their bitmap patching engine. What makes this more abusrd is that the DDK for Vista is incredibly buggy so there's minimal chance for a small company to code a company that would be signed (approved) by Microsoft.

[h3xis]

I suggest you commit suicide; you're either bad at researching or your literacy skills aren't too good. I don't see why you would have a problem with drivers, stability or speed unless you're doing something stupid. My XP box has never crashed on me (unless I'm coding/testing rootkits) simply because XP itself is very stable but third party software is always what causes your issues. Oh & don't even try to compare Vista's efficiency to that of XP.

I had two terms for you; Trusted Computing & PatchGuard. These two abominations of this capitalistic company basically hand your computer over to Microsoft, I suggest you do the research. Your statement about crashing is utterly pathetic, you're only going to crash on XP if you use unstable software/drivers! Vista is different in this regard though, it still has bugs within the OS itself that will cause errors with no provocation.

I'm looking at this operating system purely from what Microsoft provides us (excluding a paper on Trusted Computing by a professor at Cambridge) so it's safe to say that any foolish remark you make towards me that goes along the lines of "you're just following suit with others" is erroneous and idiotic. In my opinion, if you're an idiot then there's no point in living ;)

God your reasoning is pathetic and juvenile; try using reasons that actually make sense and are logical. You're just jumping on the bandwagon because everyone else hates it and you want to be "cool" and want to "fit in." I'm not ignoring what you've said about Vista but any time you look up "omg bad stuff about Vista" in google you're going to get plenty of dirt...as with ANY OS so in truth, you fail. Until I see some major problems that hinder my work I will continue to use Vista on my secondary machine. This isn't an OS holy war. I see that you're new here so I'll give you slack, but with your hot sh** attitude you're not going to make any friends here. You're not witty and you're not changing anyone else's mind. Who the hell are you to say you know the internals of Vista? You don't. You lose. Good day, sir.

[NEVER85]

I'm looking at this operating system purely from what Microsoft provides us (excluding a paper on Trusted Computing by a professor at Cambridge) so it's safe to say that any foolish remark you make towards me that goes along the lines of "you're just following suit with others" is erroneous and idiotic. In my opinion, if you're an idiot then there's no point in living ;)

Question: Have you actually USED Vista for any length of time? Simply reading what some crackpot professor who has no idea how Vista internally works only proves your opinion of the OS is flawed. I encourage you to take a spare computer (if you have one), install Vista on it, and use it for a week. If your opinion hasn't changed by then, good for you, but no one here is going to take your opinion seriously for the reasons you've given for disliking Vista.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

You'd then know TC is a module that isn't used/enabled by default in the Linux/Darwin kernel. You'd also know that the gains for users would be minuscule compared to the level of privacy invasion. Oh & did you know that you can't run unsigned drivers nor inject libraries in 64BIT Vista? This hurts many companies like Stardock who rely on API hooking to use their bitmap patching engine.

That's a load of crap. Stardock doesn't use drivers (unsigned or otherwise) nor kernel patches in any of their products. They rely on hooks in the windowing system which are several layers removed from anything affected by PatchGuard or the signing requirement. Learn what you're talking about before you start spewing nonsense like that again.

The only people affected by PatchGuard are the people writing rootkits to hijack your system or hide their evil DRM crap from you. The driver signing requirement only affects drivers loaded into kernel space, and contrary to popular belief, has absolutely nothing to do with WHQL certification or anything like that. Code signing ensures that only the code that the user agreed to install is ever run and that a driver hasn't been tampered with. It's not for quality control (at least not in any direct way) and is an important step toward ensuring the security of your system.

Trusted Computing is an initiative to create software and computer systems that people can trust. It's had a profoundly positive impact on Microsoft software lately, and both Vista and Office 2007 are prime examples of that. Trusted Computing isn't a technology or feature - it's a design philosophy which prioritizes security at all levels of design and implementation.

If you're instead referring to TPMs and BitLocker, those are also huge wins for security and privacy. Finally, you can have sensitive data on a laptop and be sure that it can't be retrieved if the laptop is stolen. This is incredibly important to corporations with sensitive data on portable computers, and having a completely trusted and verifiable boot path is very important to that - although it's primary purpose is for convenience (so you don't have to enter a PIN unless the boot process was altered or the hard drive is in a different machine). Of course, Vista only uses the TPM if you enable BitLocker (or if it is enabled by your IT manager). It's just as optional as any TPM support that might exist in Linux or what not.

Also, I reported you for your comments above. What you said has absolutely no place on a forum like this, and tells me that you're probably an immature kid with no respect for anyone else's opinion or concern for how your wordsmay hurt someone. Grow up.

[Viper_Maniac]

XP Pro or 2000. I prefer XP but 2000 is great too. I installed it on my moms computer a couple years ago. Its been running great since then. I hated 98SE. I never had more problems with an OS than that one. More BSOD's on that OS than any other MS OS I've used. I never used ME. Didn't quite see the point in it.

[Chad]

Ok let's stop with the childish comments.

[Digital.K]

XP Home/Pro, without a doubt!

[Shokus]

My opinion, 2c worth:

1. Windows 95 - Pretty okay for its time. Had a number of BSODs, but still, generally ran my Red Alert and Starcraft decently! Reasonably satisfied with it during its time. Of course, not applicable now.

2. Windows 98 - Never used it on my computer.

3. Windows 98 SE - Never used it on my computer. But I remember using it on my friend's computer once long ago and was SUPER IMPRESSED! :D Those were the days man!

4. Windows ME - Used it on my 1st laptop. Ran pretty fine for most of the time, But then strangely, after about 3 years, ME decided to go haywire and gave BSODs to me every 5 mins or so. So I would say it's the most disappointing OS to me because of my final impression of it. Haha!

5. Windows 2000 - Never used it on my computer.

6. Windows XP - Reasonably impressive using it before SP2. Pretty stable, worked well. But still had some BSODs occasionally, when doing some things like installing a data transfer cable and stuff. Then after the pre-SP2 era, XP worked pretty good! Nearly no BSODs (can't remember the last one already), occasionally Windows Explorer still crashes on me, but rare enough for me to say it is very stable. Needless to say, works with any hardware and software, and is for now, the compatibility king! Still using it on my home desktop, not for any reason, but simply because the hardware does not support Vista well... 512mb DDR RAM and 9200SE graphics card anybody?

7. Windows Vista - Been using it on my laptop for a while. Pentium M 1.7GHz, 1GB DDR2, Radeon x700 64mb, with Aero enabled. Needless to say, it is pretty slow sometimes especially when multi-tasking. So far, no crashes, no BSODs, so at least for the short period of time I've been using it, I would say Vista is very stable. Printer not supported in Vista, but still works with XP drivers, so I'll give it a big :) I'd just say it's unfortunate Vista really demands a reasonable modern computer (from the last 2 years) to run it really well, smoothly and all, and there are a few quirks and annoyances such as UAC (not that I hate clicking "Allow", but that sometimes Vista just does not permit me to copy files around in my computer due to permissions, and then I'd have to go around setting permissions and even resorting to random whacking of the files to get them where I want them to be). But overall, my Vista experience thus far has been very satisfying.

PS: Vista uses my graphics card a lot eh? I'd notice my laptop becoming a lot hotter just running Vista, as compared to XP, and it is due to Aero utilizing my graphics card?

[simmorya]

h3xis <---- I couldnt agree with you more.

My preferences:

1. Windows 2003/XP x64

2. Windows Vista Ultimate

3. Windows XP SP2 (32-bit)

4. Windows 2000

Windows Vista would be far greater in my opinion once Nvidia releases some good drivers which seems to be taking FOREVER!

So far my games are running better on my Windows XP x64 system.

Edited April 3, 2007 by simmorya

[Hak Foo]

Good Wireless support? (It's a must for me, I switch between a dozen wireless networks daily. Hell, even XP seems primitive in this area compared to Vista)

I actually prefer that Windows 2000 just punts on 802.11 support, leaving it to the card manufacturer. I recall the stock XP tool was NOT particularly good; the gold-master version couldn't speak WPA, and it doesn't tend to provide great details as to what's going on.

I find the card included utilities more useful than the WinXP standard ones-- the cards I bought (Marvell 8335-based PCI boards) gives you a far more useful site survey (identifying the difference between 802.11b and .11g networks, indicating what channels networks are on which is useful for interference issues...) Admittedly, doable in XP, IF you turn off the built-in network.

Support for .NET 3.0?

As soon as someone tells me what exactly .NET means (in ONE sentence), I might be impressed. I get the impression (now that it apparently doesn't mean Passport or any of Microsoft's Web products anymore) it might be the new version of the Win32 libraries. But are they even final?

Cleartype (My 1920x1200 15" laptop screen looks horrible without it.)

Given, although I don't care when you can get FSAA for free just by using an old CRT :D :D :D

The shell is just so....crude compred to Vista....

Yeah, there are prettier ones.

Windows 2000 is the last version before they jumped the shark into in-your-face copy-protection schemes, obnoxious privacy policies (I still use WMP 6.4) and 'Are you sure you want Windows to pick its nose' dumbing down.

[SacrificialSoldier]

Windows XP! Totally! Nothing tops it! Vista is way to "user friendly!"

[Brandon Live Veteran]

As soon as someone tells me what exactly .NET means (in ONE sentence), I might be impressed. I get the impression (now that it apparently doesn't mean Passport or any of Microsoft's Web products anymore) it might be the new version of the Win32 libraries. But are they even final?

One sentence? That could be tough. The .NET Framework consists of the CLR (Common Language Runtime) and a set of libraries that build on it. It's a managed programming environment similar to Java, although multiple languages are supported (including a Java-clone, J#) - though C# is the most common .NET language. There are also Managed C++, VB .NET, and more. Essentially, .NET lets you write code in any supported language (or even a mix of them), and then the code gets compiled into something called IL (Intermediary Language).

The IL can then be run on any platform with a CLR implementation (and any libraries the code relies on). Microsoft has versions of the CLR for Windows (both x86 and x64), as well as for Windows CE / Windows Mobile. As the IL language and CLR are all ECMA standards, there are other implementations such as Mono, which is open-source and runs on Linux and other *nix OSes.

Like Java, .NET code is "Just In Time" compiled. This has several advantages, especially when writing cross-platform code. For example, .NET applications can have a single .exe file that gets compiled and run as a 32-bit application on 32-bit versions of Windows, and as a 64-bit application on 64-bit versions of Windows.

.NET code is also far easier to write, less error-prone, and more secure by its nature. However, it doesn't provide as low-level access or control over memory for the programmer, isn't always as tunable for performance, and requires the user to have the .NET Framework installed. There are also versioning complications when dealing with managed components in an unmanaged process (like writing .NET add-ins for the Windows shell, which is not .NET).

[Rudy]

^

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it's a shame they didnt use this "cross-platform" to make it compatible with other OSes....but i guess that would dent their monopoly....

[Brandon Live Veteran]

^

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it's a shame they didnt use this "cross-platform" to make it compatible with other OSes....but i guess that would dent their monopoly....

It's a standard, and Microsoft hasn't stopped anyone else from implementing it. Can you blame Microsoft for taking care of their own platform (which happens to be used by 90% of the world) first?

Plus, there already are betas of .NET for the Mac and other platforms (WPF/e).

[Mordkanin]

It's a standard, and Microsoft hasn't stopped anyone else from implementing it. Can you blame Microsoft for taking care of their own platform (which happens to be used by 90% of the world) first?

Plus, there already are betas of .NET for the Mac and other platforms (WPF/e).

Plus there is a linux implementation of .NET: Mono.

[Rudy]

Plus there is a linux implementation of .NET: Mono.

yea but i was talking about MS porting it themselves

[DrCheese]

Windows 2003. I'm not one of those people that run it as a workstation, but its still an absolutely amazing OS. I've never seen it die unless hardware is on its way out and its designed so well.

Although nowadays its a joke, NT4 was good in its day. If it had better supported games and so on I would have installed it as my main OS inplace of the trash that was the Windows 9X series (You can't deny it)