I am about to buy a new pc which means I am on the verge of the dilemma of installing the old XP sp1 OS and updating it to SP3 or installing Vista which might be included with the PC.

I had the ambition to stretch the lifespan of my current pc until the release (and support) of windows 7 but it will not last that long I am afraid.

I have not heard many complaints about Vista recently as a year ago but this could be due to the fact that many people kept XP because of the teething problems with Vista.

Can Vista be considered as a stable OS by now?

Get a Mac 1!111!!!!11!!! :doh:

On-topic, I've had Vista for a year now, and if I were to choose a new OS right now, I'd go for XP still. It isn't really any worse and it actually works 99% of the time.

Vista is fine now - however theres really no point in buying it with 7 on the brink of release.

While most Microsoft OS' have teething issues at birth - as 7 is so closely based on Vista I can't see there being many problems at all.

As long as you buy a new PC with Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate, you should be ellegible for a "free" upgrade to a comparable edition of 7 if you pay P&P, as long as the machine is new.

EDIT - What problems are you having with Vista, J@tko?

Quote from J@tko :

Get a Mac 1!111!!!!11!!! :doh:

I grew up with Mac's but a Mac capable of satisfactory running LFS will be quite expensive I am afraid.

Quote from Jakg :

EDIT - What problems are you having with Vista, J@tko?

It's mainly been fine [apart from the old Vista Sleep/Hibernate bug thing that I've had a few times], but recently I've got some audiodg.exe bug that hogs my CPU causing epic lag whenever I'm playing LFS/Sims. Currently in the course of googling various solutions, none of which have worked so far...

It's just these little things that get me :P

Is the audio issue to do with XP, or your audio drivers?

Vista's biggest issue has been lazy hardware manufacturers - but for the most part thats been ironed out (the only issue i've had was a USB -> Ethernet generic thingy).

I'd say use XP or wait until 7 if I were you. Vista is like the runt of the litter, and should be allowed to die peacefully.

Again - Whats wrong with Vista?

Theres a lot of hate for it out there - but no-one ever really seems to come up with any good reasons why!

I tried Win 7 and its way much better on my really old system then Vista is. I think they finally figured out the performance in right way. Its a shame they did not at start with Vista but iáts no suprise from M$

Quote from Jakg :

Again - Whats wrong with Vista?

Theres a lot of hate for it out there - but no-one ever really seems to come up with any good reasons why!

Jakg....for example the Win 7 run for me almost as quick as XP SP3.\
Vista definately not.

Crap...why I did 2 posts

Dunno. Worked fine for 10 months, and just started going wrong last week.
It's not updated itself or anything, and I havn't installed anything.

The most common solution doesn't work either :/

FWIW I think the negative press hasn't helped the development of the OS'es at all:

Lots and lots of people said they wouldn't buy Vista until SP1 was out - while I understand the sentiment, they were effectively committing to buy an OS when a fix came out - without actually knowing what it would fix. As such, Microsoft released a... lacklustre SP1 because they wanted people to buy and actually use Vista. Unfortunately, it still wasn't taking off - they launched SP2 which again improved things, but there was the irrational hatred of Vista still floating around.

The only way they could fix the public perception of Vista being a failure was to junk it and use something else - people praise 7 as being amazing, and while it is better all round than Vista, it's not a night and day improvement as its little changed from Vista.

At work customers always say they want XP over Vista - if I challenge them as to why none can give me a proper reason, but I bet they will all be saying how amazing 7 is when it's released...

Obviously theres no point buying Vista with 7 on the horizon, but currently if you buy a PC with Vista you should get the upgrade to 7 for less than £15.

EDIT - 7 is faster all round than Vista, and has a lower system load too (which crucially means PC's with 1GB of RAM will be usable) - but in all out benchmarks 7 will probably bench slower than XP. In real world usage thanks to superfetch etc 7 should beat them all. From my experience running 7 on 2 different PC's, yes it's faster - but not a night-and-day difference.

So just because Vista is a bit slower, it sucks? That makes no sense. Get a fast PC with 4GB ram or more and stop whining. Never want to go back to XP.

Slow. My new i7 6GB system with Vista 64 installed was slower than my old AMD 64 X2 3200 (or whatever it was ) with XP. I don't call that progress!
Bloated.
Took an age to get support from manufacturers in terms of drivers, and I gather some still struggle, especially those with older systems.
I really REALLY hate how it asks me to triple check if I want to do something, despite being logged in as an administrator and having clicked on the button in the first place. I don't need nannying.

7 is still bloated in terms of absolute size considering it's just an operating system and can't do much without additional programs. But it's really quite quick (I can't tell if it's slower than XP if it is), isn't quite as nannying by default and generally makes small but significant improvements over Vista in every way.

But I still might stick to XP, as that won't cost me a penny But if I don't buy it during the offer period, it might be years before it falls to that price again, so NOT upgrading might ultimately cost me more. Decisions, decisions... And then I'll have to get a DX11 graphics card, and so the PC Cycle continues!

Quote from Bose321 :

So just because Vista is a bit slower, it sucks? That makes no sense. Get a fast PC with 4GB ram or more and stop whining. Never want to go back to XP.

yeh it sucks.
Not only home users will be in some time migrating to this new system.
We just have PC refresh and these have 2GB of memory.

It sucks because it can not use the avaible resources right. They simply did not care much when Vista came. Finally it learned them.

Quote from Jakg :

EDIT - 7 is faster all round than Vista, and has a lower system load too (which crucially means PC's with 1GB of RAM will be usable) - but in all out benchmarks 7 will probably bench slower than XP. In real world usage thanks to superfetch etc 7 should beat them all. From my experience running 7 on 2 different PC's, yes it's faster - but not a night-and-day difference.

I think Superfetch is main reason why people think that Vista is a huge resource hog and because it causes some HDD activity even during idle. Since OS has grown more complex and has a lot more features than Xp, some performance has probably been lost but it's not as huge as some think. I've made the whole transistion from WinXp to Vista and now to Win7 RC, but without running benchmarks and recording average FPS for games that I've had installed on each system, I can't tell the difference in framerates. However, loading times have significantly improved due to better memory management. Difference between WinXp and Vista is huge, but between Vista and Win7 it's maybe slightly improved too but there's much less HDD activity during desktop use or idle.

But this behavior is not really that uncommon, it happens everywhere. Listen to someone talk about music and you'll hear how music died long time ago and today's artists are bunch of sell outs. Take a look at cars and you'll see people praising the cars they grew up with and complain about new cars, same deal with computers and games.

If the PC comes with Vista, you'll be entitled to a cheap upgrade to W7 from MS. I think the cutoff date was 30th of June, so if you buy a new PC with Vista after that date, you can upgrade for "very little", or so they say

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

If the PC comes with Vista, you'll be entitled to a cheap upgrade to W7 from MS. I think the cutoff date was 30th of June, so if you buy a new PC with Vista after that date, you can upgrade for "very little", or so they say

50$ for Home Premium and 99$ for Professional AFAIK

Yep.
http://promotions.newegg.com/M ... 7%2fPreSale%2f362x130.jpg

I love vista personally, there are a few things I don't like about it which go back with compatibility issues from games of mine built for windows 98.. lol.. but other than that, besides being kinda slow I like Vista.

I just have a full slow hard drive and 2gb of ram so.. plenty of room to improve if I want to but I think I'm just going to wait for 7 and a laptop that is quad core.. or just go for a desktop, not sure yet.

I just.. I like vista, but there are some things that make me mad, like drivers.. vista has always had an issue with me and drivers, for example right now.. my screen will NOT turn off unless I shut my laptop down, something to do with the ATi drivers, sometimes they will work, but they haven't worked all summer so I have no idea.. I really need to restart from scratch but.. don't have a new harddrive or want to spend money on a new hard drive when my computer is quite dated anyways!

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

If the PC comes with Vista, you'll be entitled to a cheap upgrade to W7 from MS. I think the cutoff date was 30th of June, so if you buy a new PC with Vista after that date, you can upgrade for "very little", or so they say

26th of June.

"Free" upgrade, but P&P can get cheeky - some manufacturers charge £8, some (Yes, HP & Compaq you cheeky gimps) charge £21.99 for P&P!

Quote from morpha :

50$ for Home Premium and 99$ for Professional AFAIK

Thats for the upgrade-which-is-actually-full version. New PC's or retail copies bought within the upgrade period get a "free" upgrade.

Quote from Jakg :

26th of June.

Sorry, never looked it up. All I know is I have a damaged in transit PC I found for €5 in a bargain bin, so I'm going to use that as a cheapy upgrade to W7 when it's released.

Quote from Jakg :

"Free" upgrade, but P&P can get cheeky - some manufacturers charge £8, some (Yes, HP & Compaq you cheeky gimps) charge £21.99 for P&P!Thats for the upgrade-which-is-actually-full version. New PC's or retail copies bought within the upgrade period get a "free" upgrade.

Like I said, "very little", not "free".

Sorry for seeming anal - theres a lot of misinformation on the internet!

For the PC you'll need a receipt showing the date of purchase, and the Vista key.

EDIT - I have noticed in the T&C's that they say the PC must be made within the upgrade period - but I'll be honest I don't see how thats gonna work as few PC's have a date of manufacturer written on them, but the ones that do usually are already a month or so "old" when they are new...

I have both, I presume it doesn't matter that the PC has a faulty motherboard though?

No, not at all. Not sure what details you'll need though - I only have info on the DSGi specific portal (unhelpfullying grabbing the domain name "Win7Upgrade.co.uk")