XP or Vista on New Notebook?

I can order my new notebook with either. I'm used to XP, and I know that it's more lean and efficient than Vista. Is there any reason for me to even consider the more bloated and invasive Vista OS over XP?

 

Only reasons I can think of are:

1) It looks better with the Aero Glass
2) It's the newer OS with likely more support/features coming in the future vs XP which is pretty much done except for security/critical updates.

But IMO I'd still pick XP over Vista. It's quicker, stable, and everything works on it.

 

I actually got to use Vista a little bit the other day, and I think I noticed the icons and interface text being more visible and legible than in XP.

Since I already have an available XP OS in my possession, maybe I should just order my new notebook with Vista to have for your reason 2, instead of paying more for it later.

 

I'd say stick with XP if you plan to game with your laptop. And like adinu said, the only benefits of Vista is the looks and additional features (but I can live without them). For me, Vista is problematic. If you have older versions of software, they won't be compatible with Vista. eg Adobe CS2 software, ArcGIS 3.1, Matlab 2006b etc. I have to use these programs on a daily basis and having XP installed on my machine saves me hundreds or even thousands of dollars from purchasing new software.

 

this would be a good idea...also, if you order your notebook with vista, you can dual boot with the XP OS that you already have.

 

That's what I'm thinking of doing as well.

 

i love vista more than xp.

but my opinion is dual boot or go play with both os's

 

i now fully prefer vista to xp

 

Do tell, sell me on it!

 

PM me before you do that- I found a program (well, boyfriend did) that is helpful for resizing Vista. And I have more experience than I'd like with dual-booting to Vista now, lol!

The only things I really liked about Vista are these:

A) It's pretty.

B) It has a neat "diagnose and repair" feature for the wireless connection, which actually works.

C) It has a built-in partition manager, though you'll need to download the program I mentioned above if you want to make Vista too much smaller than it starts out. It's an awfully possessive OS.

Other than that, it's pretty much convinced me to switch over to Linux. Being dominated by my operating system totally isn't my thing...

 

you can simply use v-lite. vista (some people think im crazy) has been more stable for me than xp ever was. personally imo most peoples problems is they just dont know vista well enough.

if you are a die hard gamer i have to digress xp is better for you for performance reasons. but i find vista just fine.

i prefer the layout of vista, the ese of use. the control i have over what i want to have rights to the admin account. i run with a fully disabled uac account that i can still assign admin rights to what i want to. i just dont get the annoying pop ups all the time.

v-lite works great and there are also other ways of making vista lighter if you really need to. i run ultimate on all systems and have no issues at all.

very easy way to make vista non possesive if you want to as well.

 

I'm headed over to Linux, BSD, or both no matter what, but I'll keep windoze kicking around for awhile, at least until I know I wont need it at all. Also I like to try and keep up on current major OSs if possible.

I've been following your thread on your multi-boot situation, and I've learned a few things from it thankfully. It looks like WinXP first, Vista second, and Linux/BSD must be last to be installed, all booted from GRUB. The biggest pain seems to be the drivers.

I'm surprised how quickly XP drivers have become less than a second thought to so many manufacturers, including Asus. So far HP has been catching their XP drivers up with their Vista drivers, but that may end before long.

 

Awesome tip! I've been playing around with nLite for XP lately, and now I see there is a Vista equivalent!

You got rep!

 

For Windows Vista Home Basic/Home Premium:

1- Click Start, and type "cmd" in the search area, right click on "Command Prompt" and select 'Run as Administrator".

2- In the command prompt type "net users Administrator /active'" (Note the capital "A" in Administrator) and press Enter, you will get a confirmation as "The command completed successfully".

3- Click Start, and type "regedit" in the search area and click Enter, navigate to: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
Double click on "FilterAdministratorToken" and set it to "0"

*************************************

Now log-off, and you'll see new account named "Administrator" is available, click on it to login.

Now you are the master of your domain! I recommend if you're going to use this method is to apply it as soon as you do a fresh install of Windows, so you can simply delete whatever administrator you've created in the setup process, and make this one the "real" administrator for your PC, also you can rename this new admin account or change its password like any other account from "User Accounts" in the Control Panel.

A last note: Please apply this procedures only if you know what you're doing. Disabling security features in the operating system is not something recommended to the average Joe, and for sure I won't be held accountable for any damaging happens to your system or files resulting from running a full administrator account all the time.

Enjoy!

 

OK, I'll try it, but if anything bad happens, you'll be hearing from my lawyer!

 

lol,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

I didn't get a chance to use Vista very much, so I'm not sure what the change does.

What is different about this "Administrator" account you are "forcing" on me, and are responsible for if anything whatsoever, not limited to financial loss nor excluding death should it occur as a result of your harmful actions.

 

well okay.. in vista there is always a admin account in the backround no matter who is signed in. this is what "controls" the uac or user account controls. so if you turn on your notebook and you are signed in as scoober... in order to run a alot of things you need to say okay or yes go ahead etc. or give individual files or .exe's admin rights.

by making a sole admin account it operates as xp used to. there is no okay or yes or can i do this or why not etc... you are the sole admin now. not vista. you basically take over as the actual admin not just a account with admin privledges.

understand??

i do not recc this to anyone that is either not smart enough to know what NOT TO RUN. or anyone who is a click happy person who just doesnt care what they are loading or installing in their case i recc leaving the uac alone for their own good. if you are not comfortable with vista or have little experience with xp do not do this.

 

OK, that's what I thought it was, and that sounds exactly like what I would have wanted to change if I knew how. The constant permission asking was beyond annoying, and made me feel like a 3 year old, and I'm actually 4 already!

 

yeah i hate it myself. ... and im almost 4...

 

I'd like to contribute to this thread.

Yeah Vista is nice and all, but you should consider a couple of things here. Especially if you run professional apps that weren't written for Vista. And if you're an avid gamer.

Here's my story. When I got my insp 1520 I did a dual boot xp/vistax64. So I tried to use most of my apps with Vista, some of them worked, some didn't. After a while I just noticed that I only booted into Vista to use office07, at that point I just gave up Vista. I had a customized Vista install, with most tweaks pre-configured + all the bloat removed. The final image only had around 850MB, and Vista was just the way I wanted it. Unfortunately I found the Vista interface to be somewhat counter-intuitive. I like to tweak the hell out of all my hardware/software and Vista just hides everything (try looking at the status of your wired ethernet connection, in XP right-click in tray, in Vista you have to click through like 3 different windows).

In my opinion Vista is a pretty OS for the average joe, because it has increased security (UAC anyone?), and makes sure that you don't change any system setting ever, as it's just such a hassle to do so. From a pure functionality view, Vistax64 did offer me some increased security measures, but most users only use the 32bit version that doesn't even include those. (kernel patch) And even after some serious tweaking I wasn't able to get more FPS in games in Vista than in XP. (now this might change after sp1/2 and I might switch to Vista again after that, but not right now)

But let's get back to the issue at hand.
A dual-boot option is a nice thing, if you set-up your Vista using vlite (removed all the features (bloat), slipstream all updates (maybe sp1 later) + drivers). Afterwards you'll have a Vista /XP system where you can try everything out on Vista (i.e. get used to it) and still have the snappy XP for whatever apps/games you want to use/play. I exclusively use software that uses little to none system resources (that is except the OS, you can find some in my sig) so my computer runs optimal, and Vista is at the moment (even with all the performance hotfixes included) just not optimal in my opinion. Thank god there is vlite, as the retail Vista distro is just packed with stuff you don't need.

 

I would think twice about doing the admin tweak. First UAC believe it or not is good. Malware these days is mostly self inflicted these days because people on XP runs as an administrator allowing malware to run wild. UAC goes a very long way to stopping that.

UAC can be annoying, but after abotu 2 weeks, unless you tweak your PC constantly instead of using it, it will calm down greatly as you get your PC setup the way you like it.

If you just cant stand it, try this it keeps the security and cuts down on the pop-ups.

http://www.tweakuac.com/

 

It really depends on how experienced you are with computer security and your internet usage, I think.

I was running XP Home on my old computer, and had no anti-virus installed. I used Firefox with Adblock Plus to browse the Internet, and while I didn't limit myself to a few trusted sites, I also didn't go downloading porn or other risky files. A few months later I ended up installing AVG, but the scan turned up nothing of concern.

To paraphrase, viruses and spyware really aren't an issue, if you know what sites to avoid. So I don't think Vista's "security" features are necessary for more experienced users.

 

I too have run XP with little security, because I knew what I was doing. The problem with that logic is you really need to know what you are doing.

A cheap router that drops all ICMP traffic, automatic updates on, free defender and free AVG goes along way for very little $$$ to protecting a user. Add in good computing practices and you should have no problems.

However logged in as a administrator is only one click on "ok" and malware will take you out.

UAC will stop that.

 

I'm a gamer, and I use Vista exclusively as many others do. XP is played out, but if you don't mind doing another clean install down the road to Vista, then use XP. If you're thinking about dual booting, I would use XP alone before I did that...sounds like a waste of space IMO.

 

Just to clarify, I am a very experienced user, and I need absolutely no hand holding whatsoever. I've been hacking with DOS and Reg hacks for many years. I do not use "automatic update", and I actually hate it, as well as IE. I update manually as necessary, and use great freeware utils for any needed sec, and I'll also mention that I tweak the Reg and the administrative security settings in XP to my hearts content.

And last, but by no means least, like Grey, I haven't been downloading any porn, at least not lately.

So in the end, between vLite and the Admin tweak, Vista would be much more usable to me than before. I may just get it, and install it "after" XP.

 

I run vista 64 and besides some legacy games and a printer driver issue I really haven't had much to complain about with vista. I did follow the tweaks thread in this forum and I would highly recommend at least browsing it because you can address a lot of the things about vista that people complain about.

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.