Who's choosing XP over Vista?

[magik]

I chose Vista and I can't see myself going back to XP again.

+1

[Neoauld]

+1

i had vista, and went back..and now back on vista

it grows on you, and frankly i like it

doesnt feel slower 2 me, and its perfectly stable

few bugs get to me, but theres a few thigns in xp that annoy me also

[Elliot B.]

I think thats the main reason most people hate Vista ... of course they are not honest like you and they blame something else :)

It's the reason I went legit with Vista and I'm enjoying the experience.

[abecedarian paradoxious]

What does it matter which one of us chose which?

You mights as well ask everyone on an airplane who chose peanuts and who chose crackers-n-cheese then try to get the world everyone at the airport to go along with the majority on the airplane.

Pure pointless. And if you need proof, compare the number of replies to this thread to the number of Neowin members.

As big as Neowin is, even if every single member agreed on one point, it would be a statistically negligible percentage of the number of people online.

There are more computer users online in Los Angeles than there are Neowin members.

Edited January 4, 2008 by Regression_88

[Mapex]

I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I don't let that bias my opinions of their products.

When XP first came out, I switched to it in a heartbeat. 2000 Pro had better performance, yes, but like someone said in another forum I recently read, you have to equate performance to currency - how much are you getting by upgrading if you spend some performance?

2000 was probably 5 to 10% faster than XP, but XP was much more stable. The performance cost meant nothing to me as a result.

With Vista vs XP, I have trouble going to Vista Ultimate. The problem is that I spend a ton of performance currency for the following:

-UAC, the worst thing ever created

-Having to manually run everything as an administrator despite being logged into an administrator account, especially when factoring in programs that have to hook into another application or applications that require some sort of input while another application is your main focus (Xfire and Ventrilo fall into these respective categories).

-Windows Defender updates every damn morning

-Inability to run apps you want to run with full privileges at startup without annoying Defender measures

-Less performance and stability

-Cool graphics

I have a system that can support Vista fine - Core 2 Duo T7200 laptop w/ 2 GB RAM, 256mb x1400 Radeon, what have you. But I get nothing out of Vista but problems over XP.

Instead of complaining about Vista and declaring a subjective statement about how XP is superior to Vista, I want to ask you Vista-lovers (I mean that as people who enjoy Vista over XP and don't seem to be having my problems) about what you did to get over these humps.

For UAC, I used Tweak-UAC (www.tweak-uac.com) to suppress the prompts, which seems more like a hack than anything, and only works on Ultimate and not my Home Premium install (in the Home install silent mode is rendered as UAC is off, leaving an annoying system tray icon from Security Center).

Running everything as an administrator despite being logged into an administrator account sucks when instead the OS should tell less tech savvy users to create a non-administrator account to use instead of impose these anti-spyware defense utilities on power users and other computer savvy users. I'm an electrical engineer, not a retard. The main administrator account should be made more like the UNIX root account and named administrator accounts should function almost as freely. Only users with restrictions should have to deal with manually selecting "run as administrator" and whether or not a program ran properly and what not. Well, not even they should suffer from this.

Windows Defender is a solid utility, but why so many damn updates? I'd rather use Spybot for spyware removal than Defender for spyware prevention seeing as I almost never allow spyware to slip past my eyes and install itself. Really, Windows Defender is redundant for someone like me, and having to update it every day or be told by Security Center that I have automatic updates off is annoying and unpleasurable.

Furthermore, because of Windows Defender, I cannot have Logitech SetPoint and many other startup applications run automatically without restrictions (including running them as an administrator, which is require for keybinds on mouse buttons to work in games and what not) without using a hack to bypass Defender in the task scheduler or some other way to circumvent the anti-spyware measures. MY OWN SOFTWARE THAT I TRUST IS NOT SPYWARE, VISTA!

Because of all this bloat, Vista, even after a clean format, feels like I'm running a new computer with an OEM installation and all the garbage applications and trials I do not care for. Dell or HP, if I'm having trouble with my computer the LAST thing I am going to use is Dell eSupport - I'll figure out the problem and fix it before your technicians' web searches after a 60 minute wait on the phone grant them the same solution. Vista was sluggish and, for me, was unstable. I just couldn't use it for the simplest of tasks, forget gaming.

The one thing I liked was the Aero UI, but that's really all I got out of Vista Ultimate over XP.

Now, tell me, how did you Vista lovers fix or bypass these problems to make your Vista installation run seamlessly and efficiently? Don't tell me you used vLite.

Edited January 4, 2008 by Mapex

[Smigit]

I use Vista and wouldnt want to go back (although one PC I am about to upgrade is still XP). Things like integrated search and all that just make the experience better along with better memory management ect. It has problems but it feels alot better to me than XP as an OS

[FlibbyFlobby]

I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I don't let that bias my opinions of their products.

etc...

You can disable UAC quite easily, either from the User Accounts section of the Control Panel, or via msconfig. The same goes for Windows Defender, you can simply go into its options and choose to disable it. Once you've done that you have a completely unrestricted administrator account and things will start up on boot without being blocked.

The issue of things not booting up has more to do with software vendors not updating their applications for Vista than Windows Defender. The whole point is applications should rarely need those kind of privileges anyway.

You mention that an administrator on Vista should function more like Root on Linux. I don't think you'll find many users that run Root on Linux, even the most tech savvy ones. The whole point is you shouldn't ever need to, retard or not. This principle should apply to every operating system.

Edited January 4, 2008 by ziadoz

[abecedarian paradoxious]

Not sure what you're offering here other than a thesaurus-assisted re-interpretation of countless other vista critiques.

I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I don't let that bias my opinions of their products.

When XP first came out, I switched to it in a heartbeat. 2000 Pro had better performance, yes, but like someone said in another forum I recently read, you have to equate performance to currency - how much are you getting by upgrading if you spend some performance?

2000 was probably 5 to 10% faster than XP, but XP was much more stable. The performance cost meant nothing to me as a result.

With Vista vs XP, I have trouble going to Vista Ultimate. The problem is that I spend a ton of performance currency for the following:

-UAC, the worst thing ever created

-Having to manually run everything as an administrator despite being logged into an administrator account, especially when factoring in programs that have to hook into another application or applications that require some sort of input while another application is your main focus (Xfire and Ventrilo fall into these respective categories).

-Windows Defender updates every damn morning

-Inability to run apps you want to run with full privileges at startup without annoying Defender measures

-Less performance and stability

-Cool graphics

I have a system that can support Vista fine - Core 2 Duo T7200 laptop w/ 2 GB RAM, 256mb x1400 Radeon, what have you. But I get nothing out of Vista but problems over XP.

Instead of complaining about Vista and declaring a subjective statement about how XP is superior to Vista, I want to ask you Vista-lovers (I mean that as people who enjoy Vista over XP and don't seem to be having my problems) about what you did to get over these humps.

For UAC, I used Tweak-UAC (www.tweak-uac.com) to suppress the prompts, which seems more like a hack than anything, and only works on Ultimate and not my Home Premium install (in the Home install silent mode is rendered as UAC is off, leaving an annoying system tray icon from Security Center).

I endured the prompts until I had my system fully updated and appropriate vista-compatible programs installed. After that, no prompts... go figure.

Running everything as an administrator despite being logged into an administrator account sucks when instead the OS should tell less tech savvy users to create a non-administrator account to use instead of impose these anti-spyware defense utilities on power users and other computer savvy users. I'm an electrical engineer, not a retard. The main administrator account should be made more like the UNIX root account and named administrator accounts should function almost as freely. Only users with restrictions should have to deal with manually selecting "run as administrator" and whether or not a program ran properly and what not. Well, not even they should suffer from this.

So you're complaining that Vista forces you into a less capable account then asks you for permission to perform administrative duties. Sounds more like it does what you want than what you're willing to admit. Savvy users should operate under less capable accounts and SU or RUNAS when they want to do something admin-related. Vista saves you the trouble of making other accounts and you complain?

Also, I don't get the 'running everything as an administrator despite being logged into an administrator account sucks...' comment. It's a contradictory statement- you complain that an administrator runs programs as an administrator. Maybe you meant 'not being able to run everything as an administrator in spite of being logged in as an administrator sucks' ?

Windows Defender is a solid utility, but why so many damn updates? I'd rather use Spybot for spyware removal than Defender for spyware prevention seeing as I almost never allow spyware to slip past my eyes and install itself. Really, Windows Defender is redundant for someone like me, and having to update it every day or be told by Security Center that I have automatic updates off is annoying and unpleasurable.

I've never once been prompted to install a WD update. Maybe that's 'cause I've automatic updates turned on? One could argue that using Spybot is redundant since Vista comes with Windows Defender. I will say though, that using two condoms doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of contracting a disease either.

Furthermore, because of Windows Defender, I cannot have Logitech SetPoint and many other startup applications run automatically without restrictions (including running them as an administrator, which is require for keybinds on mouse buttons to work in games and what not) without using a hack to bypass Defender in the task scheduler or some other way to circumvent the anti-spyware measures. MY OWN SOFTWARE THAT I TRUST IS NOT SPYWARE, VISTA!

Perchance it is the device manufacturer's fault for not WHQL'ing their drivers for Vista... maybe?

No one complained about Microsoft or Windows because of the Pentium floating-point bug so long ago, did they? But they complain about SLI not working on Windows in spite of SLI being an NVidia invention and as such it is NVidia's responsibility to make their product work on Vista.

Because of all this bloat, Vista, even after a clean format, feels like I'm running a new computer with an OEM installation and all the garbage applications and trials I do not care for. Dell or HP, if I'm having trouble with my computer the LAST thing I am going to use is Dell eSupport - I'll figure out the problem and fix it before your technicians' web searches after a 60 minute wait on the phone grant them the same solution. Vista was sluggish and, for me, was unstable. I just couldn't use it for the simplest of tasks, forget gaming

The one thing I liked was the Aero UI, but that's really all I got out of Vista Ultimate over XP.

Now, tell me, how did you Vista lovers fix or bypass these problems to make your Vista installation run seamlessly and efficiently? Don't tell me you used vLite.

None of what you wrote was a problem for me so there was nothing to bypass.

"Your results may vary."

BUT I like IIS7 and its unlimited inbound connection limit, the Media Center interface and the extra stability and consistantly responsive interface it gives me on my computers. It most pleasantly surprised me on my MSI KM4M-L/Athlon XP2000+/1GB/FX5200 system: when XP worked it was fast but when it lagged I might as well go get a pizza however Vista is consistant with it's responsiveness and never hangs the system for minutes on end like XP did. It may not be as 'quick' as XP, but is more productive. Comparing the two, to me, is like comparing a sprinter with a marathon runner- the sprinter may be faster at times but over the long-haul doesn't compare. This comparison goes beyond basic performance: XP crashed a lot more on the above system than Vista... matter of fact, Vista has never crashed on it during the year it's been running.

You don't need the most modern hardware to run Vista, you just need support from the hardware manufacturers in the form of drivers that work.

-late-

[Mapex]

ziadoz, problem with disabling UAC is the annoying tray icon that insists it should be on. Even with msconfig Vista detects that UAC is off and should be enabled. Same goes for Defender. I shouldn't be nagged for making decisions on an administrator account.

Furthermore, regarding administrator privileges, applications should not require them, I agree. But Vista doesn't know the difference between a legit application and spyware, so it blocks them both from operating properly. Even with updated software made for Vista, many applications like to hook into others and that is something Defender deems threatening, so it blocks it.

Something as simple as using your media keys on your keyboard or laptop to go through your music may or may not cause trouble - for me it always does. The application governing these media buttons calls a generic system command that Windows should associate with an open media playing application, but Vista will block it assuming it is spyware trying to run in the background. This is an application limitation which cannot be bypassed without a change to Vista's anti-spyware mechanisms, all of which seem to be heavily integrated into the OS.

And no one runs root on Linux because it's too risky, but they hardly need to enter the root account in the middle of every day use anyway. Users use root as needed, which is very rarely. Same concept should apply to UAC, Windows Defender, and Vista's "Run as administrator" option, err, requirement for most applications. Again, I believe this last feature is too much of an anti-spyware measure on MS's part as opposed to limitations due to applications not being made with Vista in mind.

[Mapex]

So you're complaining that Vista forces you into a less capable account then asks you for permission to perform administrative duties. Sounds more like it does what you want than what you're willing to admit. Savvy users should operate under less capable accounts and SU or RUNAS when they want to do something admin-related. Vista saves you the trouble of making other accounts and you complain?

Also, I don't get the 'running everything as an administrator despite being logged into an administrator account sucks...' comment. It's a contradictory statement- you complain that an administrator runs programs as an administrator. Maybe you meant 'not being able to run everything as an administrator in spite of being logged in as an administrator sucks' ?

My comment is saying that, as I'm logged into an Administrator account, all of my programs should automatically run with full privileges. However, I still have to go about manually allowing these privileges to make more of applications work as needed. One year later I still don't have a solution to this despite multiple updates to said applications, all of which are mainstream applications, mainly game oriented. I see this as a problem. If I want to run my manually run applications with less privileges, I'd make a new account without Administrator privileges and without the ability to install and uninstall applications and drivers.

I've never once been prompted to install a WD update. Maybe that's 'cause I've automatic updates turned on? One could argue that using Spybot is redundant since Vista comes with Windows Defender. I will say though, that using two condoms doesn't completely eliminate the possibility of contracting a disease either.

If you use two condoms the chance they'll break is significantly increased, so it's actually worse than using just one :p But I know what you mean. IMO though, the best anti-spyware is user knowledge of what spyware tends to be attached to and what does not - it's really not hard to see 90% of spyware before you click on it. Add minimal software support and you're (I'm) good to go.

Perchance it is the device manufacturer's fault for not WHQL'ing their drivers for Vista... maybe?

No one complained about Microsoft or Windows because of the Pentium floating-point bug so long ago, did they? But they complain about SLI not working on Windows in spite of SLI being an NVidia invention and as such it is NVidia's responsibility to make their product work on Vista.

In my specific case for the Setpoint, it has nothing to do with drivers. It's basically a control panel for the drivers, akin to ATI CCC for the ATI drivers. The problem is, for the mouse button binds to keystrokes and other custom functionality to work, the SetPoint program must be run as an administrator, which causes a conflict at start up. I know how to bypass this, but again my circumvention is more of a hack than anything else.

[Boeing 787]

In 2010:

Windows 7 is a bloated slow pos and I'm going back to Vista. :laugh:

[Mr.Yberdo]

I'm using XP, i had used Vista for 6 hours, then I get nervious and reinstalled it. Vista is nice and very automatic, and that suck for better users, to beginers it's quite good. I need system where I can do what i whant, and that wouldn't be automized.

I'll reinstall back to Vista only then, when there woudn't be any new software, drivers.

Sorry for my bad English :blush:

[ravisunny2]

Vista is new.

Like all new s/w (these days), it is pushed into the market, and debugged later.

Give it a chance.

Else stick to XP, and wait.

[FlibbyFlobby]

ziadoz, problem with disabling UAC is the annoying tray icon that insists it should be on. Even with msconfig Vista detects that UAC is off and should be enabled. Same goes for Defender. I shouldn't be nagged for making decisions on an administrator account.

Furthermore, regarding administrator privileges, applications should not require them, I agree. But Vista doesn't know the difference between a legit application and spyware, so it blocks them both from operating properly. Even with updated software made for Vista, many applications like to hook into others and that is something Defender deems threatening, so it blocks it.

Something as simple as using your media keys on your keyboard or laptop to go through your music may or may not cause trouble - for me it always does. The application governing these media buttons calls a generic system command that Windows should associate with an open media playing application, but Vista will block it assuming it is spyware trying to run in the background. This is an application limitation which cannot be bypassed without a change to Vista's anti-spyware mechanisms, all of which seem to be heavily integrated into the OS.

And no one runs root on Linux because it's too risky, but they hardly need to enter the root account in the middle of every day use anyway. Users use root as needed, which is very rarely. Same concept should apply to UAC, Windows Defender, and Vista's "Run as administrator" option, err, requirement for most applications. Again, I believe this last feature is too much of an anti-spyware measure on MS's part as opposed to limitations due to applications not being made with Vista in mind.

You can disable the Windows Security Centre system tray icon notifications in its options too.

Again it seems your complaint stems back to applications being poorly written, or not even written at all for Windows Vista. I haven't experienced any issues with media keys myself. I do however experience some annoyance with legacy applications (Notepad++ and WAMP), whereby they always require administrator privileges before they will run, but again this is down to their developers to resolve, not Microsoft by diluting UAC.

On the topic off UAC, I'd like to see it become a bit more intelligent, even on an administrator account. For example if I'm renaming or moving something about in "Program Files" I expect to see a "Continue or Cancel" dialog. However surely I should be prompted for my password to install software, instead of seeing this same dialog? Aren't there supposed to be some amends to reduce shell/UAC prompts in SP1?

[Knife Party]

Vista is new.

Like all new s/w (these days), it is pushed into the market, and debugged later.

Give it a chance.

Else stick to XP, and wait.

i have to agree with you on that matter....yet still i'm still on XP and when the time is right, i'll make the switch

[Avatar Viper]

after 1 short week with vista, i am off to XP :D

[insanekiwi]

i haven't been back for long but to cast an objective verdict: it's the same story with vista and xp as it was with windows 2000 and xp. many people moaned when xp came out and stuck with 2000 or whatnot.

it all comes down to personal preferences and for my part, i'm doing fine with vista.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

XP simply because I get better gaming performance.

[tunafish]

For me i am sticking with Vista.

Windows XP when it crashed it would crash bad like wham to the point were you have to reboot and would sometimes do it randomly as well no matter what. Just like fully lockup etc

But with Vista it has yet to crash on me, or lockup on me.

I have yet to see any slow down in the games and applications i run in Vista. They all run fine with good FPS.

Vistas UAC is a dam good idea as many times it has stopped why dont we say not so computer intelligant people from installing some random application etc, which i might add could of been installed under XP.

Windows Vista for me has found drivers for some of my hardware which XP windows update would not of found for me.

99.9% of the programs that i ran in XP run fine in Vista, and with companys finally update their stuff to support vista its only getting better.

What i have noticed is most issues with Vista are 3rd party related, be it through drivers or applications.

EG

My graphics performance is crap - wait for companys to better code their drivers for vista, same thing happened for XP.........

People who say well vista requires more resources etc, same thing happened for XP when it was released. Just remember technology and software evolve, if you dont then don't expect newer software to run/have good performance on old hardware.

[coolzee]

Thats me, i hate vista..but i do like the feature it has.

vista such a ram lover...all the labtop and pc that comes out are 2gb of ram.

so what im really saying is that it needs high requirements just to run it, which suck.

:p

[LaraBoft]

Ok. I have Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. Business is 32 bit, Ultimate 64. I installed the 64 Bits version about 3 weeks ago. This because my setup can easily handle 64 or even 32 bits. My rig: C2D E6700, 4 GB ram 8800GTX. The first time (maybe one year back) I installed vista 32 Bits it was too early and I couldn't find any drivers for some of my hardware. Went back to XP. Three weeks for the test Ultimate 64 Bits. Finally I could use my 4 GB of ram. It installed fine, installed every latest driver for VGA, Audio, Lan etc. Installed Office. Then installed Need for Speed Pro street. This game I could run in XP at 1920 resolution. So I tried this in Vista. Well, it started up. When I tried to race, I had a lot of lag and the game did not run smooth. So I used Google to search for an answer. Didn't find one. After a week of trying to play the game, I reinstalled XP. I'm still on it. I think I still like XP better than Vista. Do you guys now if I installed the 32 bits version it will be better? Or is this just the problem with Vista? 32 or 64 bits no difference?

[sweetsam]

I hated vista when I first installed it on my P4 machine [P4, 3.4 GHz, 1GB RAM, GeForce FX5200] when it was released. The machine just could not handle it as well as it did with XP. Besides Vista at the time had the processor running at 50% constantly in the background for some reason. Then I upgraded to C2D 3 GHz, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7600GT and gave vista a shot again. After I saw how well it performed [score 5.4] I was glad I upgraded. I am beginning to like vista now. I agree with UAC being an annoyance. But the prompts are beginning to go away. I see them less often now. I have also turned off some of the services that are useless for me. I have got it setup the way I want and am beginning to like it. Now I dual boot between XP and vista. I am mostly on vista now and go to XP only when I do web dev work. I need IE6 to test which as of now does not work in vista.

[ichi]

Who's choosing XP over Vista?

Who's choosing at all?

[mtber]

XP for me!

Has anyone heard of a SP3 comming for XP when SP1 gets released for Vista?

[Smigit]

XP for me!

Has anyone heard of a SP3 comming for XP when SP1 gets released for Vista?

pretty certain an SP3 is on the cards but it was to be mostly just an update rollout as opposed to one that adds alot of new features.