Windows Vista Basic or Windows XP Home

The base hardware requirements for Vista are generally higher than for previous versions of Windows. In Vista's case with the fancy GUI stuff enabled the graphics card in particular should be fairly beefy. Apart from that a modern/high spec processor, lots of memory help and a fast/large hard disk help. I don't think that as time passes Vista will become faster on the same hardware of capable of being run on older hardware if that's what you mean.

I've just been installing XP Pro on an old PIII 500MHz, 384MB RAM, 20GB hard disk machine today and am surprised by how fast it seems to run. On the other hand I haven't yet installed all the add-ons such as anti-virus/malware etc. However I doubt that this PC could run Vista and yet it's more than enough to satisfy the computing needs of the owner.
 
ClubMan said:
The base hardware requirements for Vista are generally higher than for previous versions of Windows. In Vista's case with the fancy GUI stuff enabled the graphics card in particular should be fairly beefy. Apart from that a modern/high spec processor, lots of memory help and a fast/large hard disk help. I don't think that as time passes Vista will become faster on the same hardware of capable of being run on older hardware if that's what you mean.

I've just been installing XP Pro on an old PIII 500MHz, 384MB RAM, 20GB hard disk machine today and am surprised by how fast it seems to run. On the other hand I haven't yet installed all the add-ons such as anti-virus/malware etc. However I doubt that this PC could run Vista and yet it's more than enough to satisfy the computing needs of the owner.
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I've stripped XP down (turned off all the graphics crud) and run it on machines as low as PII 400mhz laptop with 192mb of ram and it ran fine, even with AV and Firewalls. Theres also Win 98 lite and Nano98.
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I'm running Vista Premium and it was very slow until I turned off a lot of stuff like disk indexing, UAC and other features. I've left the graphics crud on as I'm playing with it. But I've no dount in time people will find out ways of turning all the stuff off and speeding it up.

At the moment Vista is very imature. As any OS is when its released. A big problem for Vista is that it was stripped of a lot of new features to get it out the door and shipped. So at the moment it doesn't really offer much over XP. Except its slower.
 
Sn@kebite said:
Do you mean RAM/CPU? Or special hardware cards Microsoft might issue to Vista users?
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RAM, CPU, GPU, I/O (Hard drives), FSB etc. Anything thats not software.

What do you mean by "Special Hardware Cards"? Do you have an example?
 
aircobra19 said:
RAM, CPU, GPU, I/O (Hard drives), FSB etc. Anything thats not software.

What do you mean by "Special Hardware Cards"? Do you have an example?
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No i just wasn't sure what hardware you meant. I thought MS were talking about hardware that speeds up Vista. But now i know you meant cpu, ram etc..:eek:
 
Sn@kebite said:
No i just wasn't sure what hardware you meant. I thought MS were talking about hardware that speeds up Vista. But now i know you meant cpu, ram etc..:eek:
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What other kinda hardware is there?

I don't think there'll be any magic bullets. aka SLI, AEGIA PhysX cards if thats what you are thinking.
 
Sorry if it's a silly question, but can I ask what you mean by Vista running slower than XP?

Do you mean that programs that are running on a pc with Vista as the OS will run slower than programs running on the same pc with XP as the OS?

Or do you means when you switch the pc on and have to wait on the OS loading it takes longer to wait for Vista to load compared to XP?
 
Becca said:
Sorry if it's a silly question, but can I ask what you mean by Vista running slower than XP?

Do you mean that programs that are running on a pc with Vista as the OS will run slower than programs running on the same pc with XP as the OS?

Or do you means when you switch the pc on and have to wait on the OS loading it takes longer to wait for Vista to load compared to XP?
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No idea about load times. Vista is meant to be faster, I haven't really noticed any improvement to be honest. I generally turn a machine on then come back to it. I don't sit waiting for it to start. Or sit there timing it.

Most benchmarks show that Games and Applications generally run up to 40% slower. Thats not in doubt. But thats not really what I meant. I mean doing simple things like copying files from one location to another takes longer. it checks disk space which takes ages, only then copies it. Often taking many times longer than XP would. Last night I copy a 2MB file and it took vista about a minute to decide it had enough space to copy it then copied it in seconds. Often Vista seems to freeze an application when its doing something very simple. Other applications run fine, and eventually the original application come back to life. What its doing I have no idea, theres processes or tasks obviously taking up cycles. Doesn't do it all the time, just sometimes. Its a known issue and I'm sure it will be fixed with service packs in the future. Anyway stuff like that is slower.
 
aircobra19 said:
Its a known issue and I'm sure it will be fixed with service packs in the future. Anyway stuff like that is slower.
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If I purchase a new Dell pc now with Vista, will these service packs be free to download from Microsoft?
 
aircobra19 said:
I've stripped XP down (turned off all the graphics crud) and run it on machines as low as PII 400mhz laptop with 192mb of ram and it ran fine, even with AV and Firewalls. Theres also Win 98 lite and Nano98.
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What specific stuff do you switch off? Do you mean stuff like displaying window contents when dragging, fading menus in/out and all that stuff or something else? If you have a link to a relevant tweaking site then that'll do nicely.
 
I noticed in Zone Alarm here, when you click on Attention: Win98SE/Me support discontinued
http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/updates/znalm/zaAEN1023.html

Support Discontinued
On July 11, 2006, Microsoft will end support for Windows 98, 98SE and Me, which will have the resulting effect of making these operating systems less secure.

Windows 98/Me are older operating systems, and are therefore inherently more vulnerable to attacks than newer operating systems. Now that Microsoft will no longer provide security updates to these operating systems any PC running them will become increasingly prone to security vulnerabilities.
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Also, Zone Alarm are now not supplying updates for those using Windows XP.

So even though XP is faster than Vista, I'm wondering which to choose.

Will XP really now be more inherently vulnerable to attacks than if I had Vista?
 
I don't believe theres fundamentally much of a difference between Vista and XP, expecially as most people will end turning off UAC in Vista as its too annoying. From my experience one you are behind a firewall, hardware and/or software. Don't use IE but firefox or similar, and are careful on the web, and don't run with admin rights you are going to avoid 99% of all nasties on the web, regardless of OS. I end up looking after a good number of PC's and once they are set up like that, you almost never have problems.

If you are really concerned about it, run a Unix/Linux/OSX.
 
Becca said:
Also, Zone Alarm are now not supplying updates for those using Windows XP.
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I used Comodo Pro free edition on my home PCs these days.

[broken link removed]
[broken link removed]

Will XP really now be more inherently vulnerable to attacks than if I had Vista?
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Not if you take some steps to secure it - for example....

 [broken link removed]

This link might also be of interest to you:

[broken link removed]

As you can see I'm a great fan of Gizmo Richards' newsletters and reviews! :)
 
Becca said:
Also, Zone Alarm are now not supplying updates for those using Windows XP.
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I think you might be a little mixed up with the different windows versions. Microsft stoped updating Windows 98 in 2006 and so zone alarm are not supplying updates to Win98. It is still supporting XP and will continue to do so for the foreseable future.

My choice of OS would be XP - I would stay away from Vista until an SP1 release at least. Unless there is some specific functionality in Vista that you need then I don't see the point of getting it.
 
efm said:
My choice of OS would be XP - I would stay away from Vista until an SP1 release at least. Unless there is some specific functionality in Vista that you need then I don't see the point of getting it.
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I'd agree with that. And would avoid Vista indefinitely if the reported that my PC was not ready and could not be made so through affordable upgrades of the hardware (which is most likely the case with all hardware that I own).
 
efm said:
I think you might be a little mixed up with the different windows versions. Microsft stoped updating Windows 98 in 2006 and so zone alarm are not supplying updates to Win98. It is still supporting XP and will continue to do so for the foreseable future.
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Ah, yes I see what you mean. The reason I was confused there was because I went to this ZoneAlarm page to download the update.
http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/updates/znalm/zaAEN1023.html

You'll see slightly down the page there is a button marked Windows 2000/XP.

I clicked on this button which is where I got the message.
 
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