XP vs Vista SP1

[Tbag]

Ive had Vista on my laptop Sony AR61M for a few weeks now and thought it was alright and didnt know why people hated it so much. Ive heard this is like Win Me, a stepping stone untill the next windows comes out.

The more ive used it ive noticed its quite slow compared to my previous laptop that had XP and was 2Ghz, 512ram 60gb HD, the specs are quite low compared to what I have now but peformance wise its pretty slow.
Start up fully takes around 3-4 mins and ive tried a defrag & spyware/virus scan but still it takes time.

I need to mention that I have not yet installed SP1, will this speed up my performance or anything? Im reading that there is little difference in performance and stability between XP & Vista SP1.

So whats people thoughts on Vista SP1? Is it worth thinking about a downgrade to XP, I know there will be driver issues but the Sony helpline say It can be done by using drivers from a previous Vaio that had XP and there is a guide on the ClubVaio site.

[guns1inger]

There are a couple of questions here, so here is what I have seen

1. SP1 for Vista is a must have. It does improve performance, including start up and shutdown times, fixes issues with wireless networking, file copying, memory usage etc. If you are running Vista, you need SP1.

2. Vista uses more resources than XP. On the same system, Vista will use 40% more memory, and installs in a much larger footprint (still less than 50% of that of OS X, but probably 3 times a standard XP install), and it does take longer to respond when running some apps. Part of this is because there is a lot more going on in the background - indexing, real-time defragging etc. - part of it is because it simply a different beast to XP. For responsiveness I would put it on par with OS X 10.5 on similar hardware - the security layers make apps sluggish to load, but once they are running, they run just fine.

3. Vista SP1 is stable. Not all the drivers out there are, but that is the same for XP. Any Vista ready applications that I have run have been stable and run just as well under Vista as they do under XP.

4. XP runs happily in half the RAM that Vista needs. I believe you can do most of what you need in 1 GB with XP, but I would not run Vista with less than 2 GB.

5. I run XP at home, and Vista at work. If I was told tomorrow that I had to use Vista at home, it would not be the end of the world. I have no problems with using Vista at work on a 2GB Core2Duo laptop, with the exception of a single wireless tracking application that will not run under Vista. I have turned off most of the eye candy (Aero/Sidebar etc.) and it all runs smoothly. But I have not seen a compelling reason to change the home machine.

Vista with SP1 is certainly not the basket case that people would like you to believe Vista to be. Having to maintain a mixed fleet of XP, Vista and OS X machines, there is no doubt that XP is by far the better OS, with Vista and OS X running neck and neck for stability, resource requirements and over-all annoyances.

The real problem you will face going forward is that it will be harder to go back again. Sony say you can run XP on your laptop by using drivers from a previous model. OK. But for how long will these be supported ? Will they give you all the features the new drivers do ? Will they be upgraded ? Eventually the hardware vendors will force obsolescence on you by not supporting older hardware, which will mean no backwards drivers for XP on your newer kit. HP used Vista as a way to kill off a lot of older printer models by simply not supplying drivers for them, or supplying only basic generic drivers.

Final summary. A fully patched XP will run faster and leaner than a fully patched Vista on the same hardware. It is a leaner OS, no doubt. Vista does not have a killer app to make it a must have item (there are those who say the same about XP though, and stick with Windows 2000). If you have Vista and are happy with it on a new machine, install SP1 before you decide to go back to XP. You may find that XP support for newer kit is not as supportive as you thought.

[Tbag]

Very detailed answer, thanks.

Before today I was all set to downgrade but doing a bit of reading today about SP1 out for Vista im having huge doubts.

Vista can be annoying sometimes with it asking permission for everything but I suppose its not the worst problem you can have and tbh I quite like all the "eye candy" but can do without the 4324 bits of software sony has preinstalled.

I will install SP1 and see how I get on

[guns1inger]

TweakUAC can als remove a lot of the prompts without actually turning off the underlying security benefits that come with UAC. Worth installing.

[MJA]

memory these days is very cheap .you can get 2GB for less than $40

[SingSing]

There are no incentive to add memory even it is cheap if the user is not getting anything REAL for Vista.

Microsoft is spending money to say Vista is not that bad, but they should tell people what is it good for ? Incremental look and feel improvement is not a strong come-on, and that stuff is always subjective anyway.

The sign is out there. Customers bought new PCs with Vista and many downgrade to XP. This never happened since the inception of HomePC.

See: http://weblog.infoworld.com/sentinel/archives/2008/08/bursting_the_vi.html

[RLT69]

SingSing is correct. There is no compelling reason to move to Vista and Vista has had more problems in its' roll out then XP. Vista is not a stepping stone. Vista was not meant to be ME, though everyone is comparing Vista to ME becomes of the growing irrelevance of Vista and the strong demand for XP. The problem is Windows 7 is looking less and less like an improvement over Vista.

There's a HUGE installation base for XP. Manufacturers are not going to dump support or XP anytime soon. Especially when you have OEMs still providing users with a way to use XP.

Vista is a huge flop for the corporate community. Corporations are not going to go out an upgrade Vista simple because it's out. Corporations are not going upgrade hardware outside of the normal upgrade cycle simply to run Vista and even during their normal upgrade cycle Corporations are still deploying XP. Unless there is a business demand, Corporations are not going to move and you have already seen articles detailing these reasons.

Corporations have invested huge sums of money in hardware and custom software that is supported on XP. Corporations are not going to upgrade unless the same hardware and software will run on Vista. In many cases it does not. The economy is tight and the IT budget is even tighter. XP will be in the Corporate world for sometime to come.

[Tbag]

So most of you support the downgrade option then?

[ahhaa]

I'd be interested in any comments on the 64-bit side of things too...

[rallynavvie]

You should be careful "downgrading" laptops as they sometimes contain proprietary drivers which you won't find for XP. I don't know if I completely subscribe to this idea but there is a chance you may lose functionality of some of its devices (biometric, webcam, etc).

I switched to Vista in June when I built the new workstation. I bought the OEM install DVD with SP1 already included so my experience was pretty good starting out. I held off upgrading to Vista for the longest time since XP was getting everything done that I needed and why fix what isn't broken? There are maybe a few small applications that used to use that just won't work with Vista but I've already found replacements for them that do.

I switched to 64-bit Vista about a month later when I realized 4GB of memory wasn't going to cut it for what I was doing. Again there were some programs that just didn't want to work but for the most part everything that worked in 32-bit Vista works in the 64-bit flavor. I did verify prior to re-installing that all of my peripherals and hardware had 64-bit drivers. That would be the only thing that would have kept me from changing to 64.

[disturbed1]

Very detailed answer, thanks.

Before today I was all set to downgrade but doing a bit of reading today about SP1 out for Vista im having huge doubts.

Vista can be annoying sometimes with it asking permission for everything but I suppose its not the worst problem you can have and tbh I quite like all the "eye candy" but can do without the 4324 bits of software sony has preinstalled.

I will install SP1 and see how I get on

I would follow through on the installation of SP1, and attempt to tweak some of the background process. Even though Vista says it uses more memory, this isn't the same type of memory usage as XP. Vista has a more robust kernel. Like all big 3 OS's (Windows, Apple, Linux) they all borrow points here and there from each other. Windows borrowed some components from Linux and OS/X to put into Vista. Vista's memory management actually caches programs more efficiently than XP. It attempts to predict what you will run. This aids in cold start times. This is similar to Linux. Even though I have 2gig RAM, Linux has 1.8gig cached, but technically it is only using 176mb with the system fully loaded. Vista is similar. Even though task manager says it's using 1.2 gig, it may be in fact only be using 500mb of RAM, with the remainder cached
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

Every gripe about XP vs. Vista is the same bickering that happened 8 years with XP. XP is too bloated, XP is slower than Windows 98. Microsoft killed itself with XP. No business will ever use XP, and on and on. If you choose to run Windows, and your PC came with Vista, use it, learn it, and get used to it. XP is a step back from Vista. Vista includes new technologies and advancements on the underlying core, it's not just Aero or a different UI. If you're more concerned with the way things look vs. how they operate, you can always tune and configure the UI to your liking.

[edDV]

I'm happy with Vista SP1 on a 2GB Core2 laptop. It's a good match.

Taking a newer laptop back to XP risks security, driver availability and driver support issues. Why do it unless there is a specific application issue?

[redwudz]

I'm using Vista Home Premium on three computers, including this laptop and no real complaints. Even the one older video card I use will run in XP SP2 compatibility mode. That's not Vista's fault, the manufacturer hasn't released Vista compatible drivers.

After using Vista for a while, I won't go back to XP. I eliminated the sidebar and used TweakUAC to force UAC into 'Quiet Mode' and left all the rest the same. Networking to XP computers has been a bit of a bother, but I've got that sorted now. I like Aero and the automatic defragging, and the index features that make it a lot faster to find stuff on the drives.

Encoding speed is just slightly slower than XP, but with a faster CPU and RAM, doesn't really make much difference.

[johns0]

I'm running vista64 sp2 with 8 gb of ram,i like it much better than winxp.

[halsboss]

Vista includes new technologies and advancements on the underlying core, it's not just Aero or a different UI. If you're more concerned with the way things look vs. how they operate, you can always tune and configure the UI to your liking.

Good post ... now, WHAT was new that I can see and actually use if I spend HUNDREDS of my dollars, again ? And then some more to ensure hardware has a bit of extra to cater for the performance-sucking ? Apart from Microsoft-enforced hollywood restrictions, that is (protected path crap) ?

It's better under the hood ? Dear, dear, boys and their toys it seems. It sucks more cpu/memory, it has been established. So, what from a USER perspective (not hollywood) is better ? Someone said it has "no killer app" embedded ? XP continues to motor along just fine for many (64 bit aside... and how many apps require that, again ?)