so we have an example here of the hoopla. one person asks how could I possibly order Vista (well, since I dont have Vista , and I can always load up XP, that was one reason, a free PUT option), and another person claims they are happy, after getting over the 'Fear Of New'. I've got 2 gig and a dual core cpu on the lap, so I ASSUME it will run just fine. I'll be surprised if it isn't FASTER than my XP desktop.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't faster. When i went to an e6600 with 800MHz ram xp went thru the roof. If you can do it without much effort the interesting question would be the relative performance of xp and vista. Has anyone seen that detailed somewhere?
Ok ... a bit of research Networking performance: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=9 OS Performance http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=11 http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=12 Vista performance is worse but not awful. Vista needs 1GByte more ram than the equivalent XP. Beware of compatibility issues. I'll stick with XP and maybe go dual with Ubuntu some time in future.
People upgraded from W2K to XP because of the user interface, increased performance, and some better multimedia and hardware plug&play support, not because MS stopped supporting W2K. To this day they continue to issue hotfixes. I know because one of my computers is still happily running W2K.
I think the deal is this, unless you have a specific reason not to get Vista, order it with a NEW machine, I think you're probably ok with it. I do not think anyone should be upgrading at this time on a current install.
I use Office 2007. It's solid. I use Visual Studio 2005 and currently refactoring codes for .NET 3.0. It's solid. I use Win Server 2003/2. The performance is solid. Microsoft isn't going down. I especially like the new .NET 3.0 Framework. SOLID!!!
You might want to read this article called 30 Days with Windows Vista and pay particular note to the conclusion which states it is a dangerously unstable operating system that leaks data like a sieve http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTMxOCw5LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
I note at the end of that very same article: Editor-in-Chief's Note: The fact is that Vista is far from "unfit for any user," and this statement by the author is simply incorrect. If you read the discussion thread linked below you will find there are many Vista users that are having positive experiences. The author's experiences are his own and I think a great look into just some of the complications that can come with upgrading to Vista. Some have had worse experiences and some have had better. -Kyle So. And the author claims that data dvds written under Vista were not readable on non Vista systems?? Sounds pretty intense to me. Do you believe that? More likely his dvd writer is flaky. I'm a hacker, and I can usually hack these op systems into submission, but I'm perfectly willing to trash vista if it sucks. But you know what, my gut tells me the Vista bashing is a lot like the IB bashing we get here. Tells you as much about the basher as the bashee. Courtesy of those Girlie Men Mac Geeks