Back to XP, and loving it. [props to Vista haters]

That was photoshop 7, sorry for the typo.

I use several older programs that do not have patches because the manufactures want me to buy the newer versions which I don't need. The present versions serve me well and it is cost prohibitive for me to buy new software just for the sake of having the latest and greatest. I also have a number of non-commercial programs used in job production which I would have to replace with a comparable Vista compatible version which would also require me to reproduce over a years worth of work into the new program. Even if I left the old files with the old program and started a new system with a new program I would have to run two computers and two programs to have access to the old files and I would not be able to extract the data from the old files for use in the new one. So I would be back to square one where I would have to transport all the old information into the new program. I had to do this once before a couple of years ago before I learned my lesson about backing up my work. It took me over a month working twelve hours on the weekends and four to six hours in the evenings to get all the information back into the system and that was only three months of work. If you know of another way to work around this problem I am all ears. I am desperate for a ?cheap? solution.

I couldn?t agree more. XP was introduced in 2001, its getting old. I?m Looking forward to Vienna or Windows 7.

I have an IBM X41 tablet with XP that I adore. The only problem is it's good for business apps but not for doing media stuff (photos, video editing, etc.) So I got an HP with Vista for my media work, but even with a huge amount of memory, a spiffy processor, and a glorious looking screen I can't do very much because Vista takes up so much room to run itself. I tried fiddling around with taking off some of the bells and whistles to free up space, but then it looks terrible. It's like having two boyfriends; one that's smart and reliable but boring, and one that's eye candy but dumb.

Just got an HP Quad System with two 320 GB Hard Drives, 2 gigs of ram and video editing is a breeze with the Vista Movie software. Perhaps you do not have enough RAM in your system to let Vista do its job. What processor is in your computer?

Hate to say this. but for Vista to run really well you need 2 gigs of ram. It will run with less, but will drag its feet a bit. On any system with on board graphics some of your ram is being used for the display.

2 gigs of ram are essential, together with an appropriate video card. As stated my OS operates very smoothly and responds very quickly.

I hear you! I am mot quite in the same boat but my boat is floating right next to yours and it seems to be taking on water faster with every new bit of information. I need a computer for work but it would be real nice for the amount of money that I have to spend for it to have a few extra features that will allow me some play and relaxation time. The biggest problem with Vista is not the additional cost that you have to put out for the price of the unit but all the cost that continue to pile up along the way. First you have to pay to upgrade all of your Microsoft software and this can go upwards of $600.00, but the cost of replacing any well serving but too old for patches software that you are now using on your computer. Now add on the price of additional RAM which is 1G minimal with a recommendation of 2G. If they are recommending 2G that means if you plan to keep this computer for any length of time then you better have more than 2G. It is almost impossible to find a low to moderate priced laptop that is upgradeable beyond 2G and I have found none that upgrade past 4G; which means any computer that I buy now will have to be a throw away. I guess the only sensible thing to do is to wait to see what is over the horizon before committing to any system right now but since my laptop is dead I have to buy something soon. Thank God I keep all of my important client files backed up on individual thumb drives. I have a different thumb drive for each vendor. This allows me to reduce my search and availability time, reduces the risk of my losing everything if one is lost and renders the information almost useless if stolen. I am thinking if I am going to have to start all over from scratch then maybe going with a Mac is a viable option if for no other reason than I am so annoyed with Microsoft right now that I the thought of empowering them by giving them my money. If they are this uncompromising now how much worse will it be if they are allowed a full monopoly. We have to keep enough viable companies functioning to at least make them put their foot the brake on occasion.

I think you are going overboard a little with these specs, I have no such hardware and my machine is running fine on Vista, 1 Gig works absolutely fine, I only have a moderate C P U and no problems, no other software issues only drivers for my old H P scanner which I admit is more than 7 years old and I am sad about. Day 1 my ethernet would not work but the first update cured that, Call of Duty 2 did not work at first but another update and its fine. Its easy when you read some blogs to think you need the top spec and you just dont.
My experience has shown in the U K anyway that people I know either hate it or when they get used to Vista would not go back to X P, personally I think its the best O S I have ever used.
Mick

Mick,

I am not saying that you have to have more than a gig of ram to run Vista. You can run Vista on less than a gig however; from the research that it is recommended that you have 2 gig to run all the Vista features and for optimal performance. I am sure that what kind of computer you own, what you have on it, the kind and number of peripherals you use, all play a factor in how well Vista works or does not work for you. I bought my first computer in 1983 and was told that I would never be able to use up the 20 Mb memory hard drive that came with the computer and the 4.77MHz with 64KB RAM was blazing. One thing you can bank on is that you never have enough storage and you will never have enough memory. Though the specs I mention here may appear to be over the top it is only for today, in about a year things will be a lot different. My gripe with Vista has more to do with the cost and the hijacking of the system forcing you to have to change all of your software to meet the requirements of Vista rather than Vista making the adaptations necessary to meet the needs of the consumer. It feels almost like they are saying if you don?t like it than take your ball and go home. This lack of consumer response and consumer blackmailing will only get worse if we continue to support companies that treat us this way.

Hello Lynda,
I see what you mean about being held to ransom, it can get costly, I try to keep pace, I updated my graphics card about new year time to a 512 mb middle of the road, quite reasonable and it blows such as Call of Duty away. I try to match what I want from a P C and also what I buy is likely to be long lived and I wont have to replace that in a hurry. I too never thought I would ever need a Gig of memory but thats common place now.
All the best
Mick

"I couldn?t agree more. XP was introduced in 2001, its getting old. I?m Looking forward to Vienna or Windows 7."
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Oh yes, that's the one whereby Microsoft will start charging a yearly subscription fee in order for us to use their operating system. Just so we can fill Steve Balmer & Microsoft's Board of Director's pockets even more?

NO THANKS.

And Microsoft is counting on lemmings out there to pay it because many people out there would rather pay this new extortion fee, rather than troubling themselves with learning something new.

Unless Microsoft does a serious rethink about it's behavior towards it's customers, then it looks like XP will be my last Microsoft product.

Before I upgraded to Vista I was concerned, with all the talk about DRM, Five months with Vista and no DRM issues. I did upgrade my on board video with a PCI Express card with HD. You can buy a full Vista Home Premium OEM for $120 [and that?s not an upgrade version]. And I have Linux as well, but for now I prefer Vista.

Vista is "something new" and although the concept of basic Windows is there the interface is different and the way you go about things could cause a learning curve, enough to cause some users to decide if they have to learn something new it might as well be another operating system.

I think it maybe a little extreme to consider a subscription service for an operating system for home users, unless this is done by other operating systems.

It is fair to have choice of which operating system you want to use and not be considered a lemming because of that choice - I have tried others, I like more control then a Mac offers and I couldn't get all 5 of the computers in my house to run Linux and my 12 year software collection. Microsoft really doesn't force anyone to use their products in their home and everyone is free to make the choice that they feel is best for them. It also may not be Microsoft's fault that no other company has stepped up to the plate and made a competing operating system.

Northlite
Any one with all them marbles will always be resented by some.

Hello Northlite,
I could not agree more, its okay people moaning about Microsoft but you have to have tried other stuff out there to compare all alternatives, Like you I have a spare computer to try things out on, I experimented with a few flavours of Linux and they do not hit the mark quite right, Open Office unfortunatly has compatability issues with documents and attachments when sending stuff to pals on Microsoft.

As far as I can see the market is open to anyone else to try with a totally new O S but bear in mind it would have to be as good and have cheaper development costs than Microsoft products and of course be compatable with most of the world already running X P or Vista, thats a tall order.
As for Vista I think its the best yet, many I have spoken too have said now they are used to it they would not move back to X P.
I can remember when X P was the new kid on the block and listening to much the same comments, and there were slight glitches with that too!

Cheers
Mick

"Vista is "something new" and although the concept of basic Windows is there the interface is different and the way you go about things could cause a learning curve, enough to cause some users to decide if they have to learn something new it might as well be another operating system."
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I've used it. I don't think it's that all that new, compared to learning OS X or a Gnome or KDE distro for the first time. Yes, the search is better than XPs, but underneath all that aero eye candy, lurks the remnants of XP, Win2000, 98SE, etc, and that C code going all the way back to 1980s. It didn't take long at all to figure out the basics of Vista.

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"I think it maybe a little extreme to consider a subscription service for an operating system for home users, unless this is done by other operating systems."

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A little extreme? That's the future, my friend. If Microsoft has it's way.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-523472.html
http://www.pcnss.co.uk/windows-7-vienna/#article

I'm not paying a yearly fee to rent their OS every year. Screw that.

Just as I object to Vista phoning home periodically, authenticating itself to make sure your not pirating their software. Guilty until proven innocent.

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"It is fair to have choice of which operating system you want to use and not be considered a lemming because of that choice - I have tried others, I like more control then a Mac offers and I couldn't get all 5 of the computers in my house to run Linux and my 12 year software collection."

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Software doesn't have to run indefinitely. It's not guaranteed to work after 10 to 20 years. Might be time to upgrade after 12 years, or at least find some alternatives. With a little bit of patience and asking around in forums, you might have been able to get Linux to run on all 5 of those computers. Many people just don't want to learn something new, that's all. They'd rather pay extra some monopoly rather than have to deal with it.

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"Microsoft really doesn't force anyone to use their products in their home and everyone is free to make the choice that they feel is best for them. It also may not be Microsoft's fault that no other company has stepped up to the plate and made a competing operating system."

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No, of course not. If I've already monopolized 90% of the PC computer market, I wouldn't have to force anyone to use my product either.

I am afraid that you have stumbled in to a sticky wicket. It is pretty hard to argue with the facts but you have to be in a position to see the whole forest; otherwise all you see is a pretty tree in your backyard that is giving you fruit and shade. The guy across the street maybe able to see that that tree has a nest of rats hiding the branches eating more of the fruit than you can harvest and can see the devastation at the landscape borders clearly indicating that it is also harboring the queen for a multitude of termites that are slowly eating their way into your home. By the time you go to plug in that computer and feel the wall give way because the whole infrastructure has been eaten away right up to the paint it is too darn later to do anything.

None are so blind as those that ?will? not see.

When Vista was in Beta, I installed RC1 Ultimate on a Sony Vaio with only 512Mb of Memory. Vista "adjusted" itself for my old system. All the cool graphics were disabled but it did work, no worse or better than XP (which ran like a dog on that machine).

Since then I've purchased two new HP's preloaded with Vista. They are high end machines with 2Gb Ram so they work beautifully with Vista.

I couldn't find the XP install CD's for my Vaio so I decided to give Ubunto a try. It was simple to download and install. Most amazingly it really does work and its all FREE! For basic Web browsing, Word processing, etc.....it works just fine and IT's FREAKIN FREE! (I can't get over that). But alas it is not anywhere near as polished or feature filled as my Vista O/S. Not even in the same ballpark in my opinion.

Vista has turned out to be a great O/S and is doing just fine in my home and Business life.

I bought the Acer laptop primarely to travel with, I was in Huntsville Alabama last weekend, I only stay at hotels that have wireless internet, the wireless internet at the Hotel was NOT Vista compatible....!!! now thats the last straw, I sat in the hotel for 2 hours trying to reset everything about the strong network connection I had in the room just to find out it would not work anyway because of the stupid os.... I wasted an hour and 45 min or more when I needed to be out takeing care of business... it wont happen again!!!

FWIW, there is no such incompatibility with Vista in the pure sense. IMO and E, it is far easier for the novice to set up a wireless connection with Vista Home Premium pre-installed. The problem you were having had nothing to do with Vista per se, but perhaps some sort of client software the hotel forced you to install(?) You can't really 'blame' Vist for that- the hotel is to blame, or the software firm who they've contracted with. Again, as long as your laptop had the appropriate drivers and a wireless card that supported the correct type/frequency band (a/b/g) used by the hotel, it should have worked fine, spare any sort of third party program required by the hotel to connect.

XP was not faster on my system, I also had dual boot. After 3 months I deleted XP.

My specs:
HP Pavilion Media Center a1477c
Vista Home Premium
Athlon 64 X2 4400+
2gb Ram
XFX Geforce 7600GT ? 256mb Ram
2 Sata HD
2 DVD RW Drives

When I was up at Costco a couple of months ago, I did a cold boot of a HP Pavilion Core 2 Duo laptop with 2GB of RAM, and it took Vista almost 5 minutes to fully bootup. Pathetic.

Then when I went into task manager to see how much memory it utilized, it was up to 950mgs on idle with only a couple of aero widgets open and no wireless.

On my HP nc6400 Core 2 Duo (2GB of RAM) at home running XP Pro, with full wallpaper and 128mb ATI video card running, I was idling at 235mgs. And that's in XP mode (not classic mode) with the wireless & NOD32 running in the background.

If you have lots of apps starting at boot up, that can slow down XP's start time. By deleting unnecessary programs, I cut my boot time in half. Check msconfig and click on the startup tab to see what's being loaded. Also check your task manager to see what's running in the background after you boot up.

But since you already deleted XP, somebody else might catch this message.

Vista boots in 45 seconds on my system, thats with 5 Gadgets.

Vista needs time for you to get used too, I eliminated all unwanted apps from the start menu and it improved 100% in boot time, When you install something dont let the app give you a quick launch item, you dont need it, thats another time waster.I found that the free 10 bit Smart de frag works well with Vista but as a bonus to try out I put the de frag setting onto auto, I dont usually auto anything but I have to say I am getting quicker boot times and its staying sharp.
All the best
Mick

Most ordinary users IME do not tweak their new Vista systems accordingly. Removing the bloatware of McAfee & Norton is a first step, as well as going down the list of programs & services running unnecessarily at startup. Also, Vista 'learns' what programs you use and keep them in memory for quicker startup. I see a lot of folks whining about the huge amount of memory used, but fail to simply double the amount of RAM supplied at purchase. Also, there is sometimes the option of adding a faster HDD (7200rpm vs 5400) in some laptops (not all), giving more of a performance boost besides additional RAM. YMMV.

The biggest mistake I also see some obviously knowledgable folks making is not taking advantage of wonderful products like Acronis True Image for backing up an entire rig. You can save so much time via this method restoring a desktop or laptop, it's incredible.