After using Vista for about 7 months now I have to say I would never go back yo XP. BUT, you have to consider one thing, Vista should only be put on new builds imo, this is down to compatibility. I have had no problems what so ever BUT I knew there were at least working vista drivers for all my hardware. If you were trying to use older hardware you may have problems. As for 64-bit vs 32-bit, I'm using 32-bit again atm because there were a few driver issues when I had 64-bit installed. I could go back to it by now but of course that would mean formatting and I can't be bothered. If you have a fast enough pc Vista is fantastic and is no contest to XP imo (but I can't emphasise enough how important a high spec is, you'll also want 4gb or RAM, the performance increase over 2gb in the benchmarks isn't much but in real world it is fantastic).
How many antivirus/firewall apps are you running? Running redundant AV/FW really hogs system resources. May in part also be due to spyware, malware, bloatware, and/or viruses.
Only got ZoneAlarm (which brings up an initialisation screen after about 5 minutes, before working) and AVG installed. Also got two different manual anti spyware tools, but they don't load up on startup. No other AV/FW have ever been installed on the system and I scanned the system two days ago and found a couple of very minor spyware infections. Anyway, I just can't be bothered with sorting it out when I'm just going to get a new system soon. I may poke around, but I won't dedicate any time to it. As I said above, I'll be using both XP and Vista, mainly due to the games compatability (some of my favourites will not work well under Vista 64). I'll be using XP Pro 32 bit and Vista Home Premium 64Bit. Should be fun getting them to play nicely together! Andy
I building a new pc and probably opting for XP pro-64 bit edition because i have old software that i need to work. Been looking into the compatibility of my software and found issues with vista, but i think there could also be issues with the XP pro 64 bit edition too. It all works fine on the older xp pro 32 bit. Its a real headache just can't commit myself at the moment. Has anyone else found issues with compatibility of software that works on XP pro 32 bit but doesn't on the xp pro 64 bit ed. Cheers, Jon
That's one slow loadup. I went thru 4 reformats on this machine before properly researching and maintaining my PC health. Regular defrag, registry cleanup, visual down-stepping, msconfig, all the crap I knew about but thought was a luxury. (It's really not. My PC runs so much better for it.) What's the main benefit of 64-bit over 32-bit vista? A friend tried to explain it, but I got confused.
IIRC the main benefits are 1) support for 64-bit CPUs and 2) support for more memory (up to 128GB with Vista Business or Ultimate, or 8GB with Vista Home Premium.
If something doesn't work in 64-bit mode on vista or XP, can you do the thing of running it in compatibilty mode like change it so its running '32-bit'? (I know its sounds silly but if I get XP and Vista 64 bit then i dont want to find out that it wont work after i have installed it)
I think most programs still run in 32bit mode. (You actually have two "Program files"-folders. One for 64bit apps, and one for x86 apps.)
All 32 bit programs in XP 64 and Vista x64 are run on Windows-on-Windows, an emulation layer. Which strangely seems to run faster on my hardware than native 32 bit..
I actually prefer Vista over XP, there are some things I hate having to live without (the search in the start menu is so useful) but i agree, the reordering of the settings is so annoying (what was wrong with Add/Remove programs? why switch to programs and features?) On the other hand, Microsoft have still not released 64bit versions of their fingerprint software, which has made me downgrade to 32bit
I get that when I'm running My PC on the school Network. 12mins thanks to Sophos anti-virus, as compared to 20-30s when I'm at home.
I am still going to choose XP because I have read that Windows is coming up with new browser since there are still some bugs from its Vista. I think before upgrading checked first the browser if its already stable .
Vista unless you running a laptop with a nvidia 7 series or lower graphics card. I've tested both and I still find that you get more performance out of XP and it does make a big different when your card is starting to struggle a bit. (nvidia 7900GS). Even when using desktop drivers from a site such as http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ . I do love using Vista for day to day work though, I find the UI a lot faster to navigate.
I'm now running bussiness, and I do quite like some aspects of it, one thing thats allready getting me annoyed is the lack of 'up' buttons when your looking through folders. Otherwise I quite like it.
Pretty much Vista all the way unless you have software that definitely won't run on it, even in compatability mode.
