What are you getting out of Vista vs. XP? PLEASE READ!

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CrunchDude2 · #1 Post by **CrunchDude2** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 7:52 pm

Hey everyone, I'm typing this on my XP installation (dual-boot OS), because Vista crashed again. This time it didn't overheat, but it simply froze. And it takes forever to boot up. I've been running Vista since RC2 came out (when it was still in beta) and it was fun. And amazingly stable. But after 8 months of using the final release, I must admit, even though I had always said how great it was, it has now become somewhat of a nuisance. Start-up, shutdown, application execution times are NOTICEABLY longer than the IDENTICAL XP equivalents.

Now, if I want the look and feel of Vista, I can install a simple application that makes XP look like Vista. LOL I'm saying the novelty, and the 3D, and the live quick launch previews, etc., while impressive, seemingly lags the whole system. And I have a FAST one. Core Duo T2500 @ 2GHz with 2GB of RAM and a 256MB video card. My Thinkpad also has the "Vista capable" "guarantee???" LOL...

Bottom line: Why did you upgrade to Vista? Are you impressed? Disappointed? Delighted? Infuriated? What are you getting out of Vista that you cannot do on XP??? I really would like to find out.

#2 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 7:59 pm

It looks to me that Microsoft has produced an unworkable product with Vista. People are getting rid of it, business does not yet use it, it is not compliant with critical software.

I will sometime get a Vista laptop (2008 at the earliest) to see if I can make it work. I could make XP work when lots could not, so perhaps I can make Vista work, but I need VPN to work first.

In another thread, one user here preferred marketing pizzaz to anything that might work and whether that user meant it or not, manufacturers have concluded that it does not matter if their product works or has any value, only that it be "cool", because it will sell, whether it works or not.

... JDH

#3 Post by **tomh009** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 8:27 pm

I use it. I don't switch systems as often as some others here do, so when the X61 arrived, I went with Vista, as I expect to run this for the next 2-3 years.

Generally I'm happy with Vista. I like the new start menu after some initial discomfort -- typing in the first few letters of the application name is better than the huge start menu proliferation in XP. The integrated search works much more nicely than any of the three desktop search apps I used on XP. Control panel is actually better than the XP non-classic one. And the core OS memory management -- including ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive -- is greatly improved.

Eye candy ... Aero is all right, but apart from that, lots of the UI elements are much more polished (and scalable to high-DPI displays) than on XP. The folder views work nicely, and selectable thumbnail size is very nice. I don't use the 3-D flip for selecting apps (now that's Apple-style eye candy!) but I do like the little window previews when doing Alt+Tab or moving the mouse over the task bar.

Annoyances? Well, CUA can be a bit of a pain, but once you have your system configured properly, you really don't see popups very often. The image preview app is fancier than before, but I find it to be overkill.

As for app compatibility, so far everything is working well, Acrobat 7 was the only app that was problematic. And my elderly DeskJet 995c is not supported on Vista. Maybe time to buy that colour laser ...

Overall, at least on a new system with plentiful memory, I think it's a winner, even if it's on points and not by a knockout.

SHoTTa35 · #4 Post by **SHoTTa35** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:15 pm

i am happy with my Vista installation and don't use any specific software/hardware that requires XP. Everything i use/want works so i'm set there.

Performance wise well that's another story. With people like us on laptops with speedstep performance might seem a bit lacking. In "Balanced" mode it does seem a tad lacking which is expected anyways, in "Performance" mode it's still not as fas as XP would be on this system but XP was designed to run on a what? 300mhz CPU? It didn't come with all of this fancy pretty stuff that puts the CPU to use rather than sitting idle 98% of the time. I don't want my CPU to be spent sitting idle when it could be doing something productive when i'm not being productive. Instead of giving me a "DOS" feel when i'm just reading text, why not give me something extra or something. I don't want all the distractions but do something for crying out loud. We have these Core 2 Duos at 2.4Ghz and trying to not use them. What's the point. Surely things should happen instantly when we want them to happen like opening applications and all that but in all honesty i can do that now if i installed Windows 3.11 for workgroups. If i wanted apps to fly then i can always install that or even Windows 95 on here.

K0LO · #5 Post by **K0LO** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:23 pm

My favorite Vista features:

1. Shadow copies - very useful if you make a mistake and accidentally delete the wrong file or if you royally mess up that big spreadsheet that you spent a week creating and wish you had the version from 3 days ago.
2. Search - very quickly locate information inside of Office documents, email, etc. The best analogy is that it works like Google does for indexing the web; the search is instantaneous and the hits are sorted by relevance and the item that you were looking for is usually the first in the list.
3. The displayed path at the top of explorer windows consists of little drop-down boxes that let you quickly go back to any point in the path.
4. Superfetch - apps start up much faster than they do on XP.
5. Lots of little improvements to the UI, for example if you want to change the name of a file you often want to do this without changing the extension. In Vista if you click twice on a file to rename it, only the filename is highlighted (not the extension) so you can easily hit "delete" and then type a new name. In XP the whole filename+extension is highlighted when doing a rename operation.

I have a unique situation in that I have two identical machines; one at work and one at home. I switched the work machine to Vista 7 months ago but the home machine still runs XP so I get a daily dose of both operating systems running on identical hardware. Both have nearly the same applications installed. All in all the Vista machine runs faster, better and is more enjoyable to work with than the XP machine.

#6 Post by **Kyocera** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:26 pm

I'm using both with no regrets, like Vista specifically for the "eye candy" it really has not shown to be much more than that for me. Had to learn it so why not enjoy one aspect of it. Have not had any apps crash, anything I try to install I usually check out on line first, a few drivers I've installed let me know right off the bat they weren't compatible so I don't push the envelope.

Still love XP, still need it for everything else.

#7 Post by **tomh009** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:46 pm

k0lo wrote:3. The displayed path at the top of explorer windows consists of little drop-down boxes that let you quickly go back to any point in the path.

Yes -- this is definitely qualifies as a nice Vista feature.

k0lo wrote:5. Lots of little improvements to the UI, for example if you want to change the name of a file you often want to do this without changing the extension. In Vista if you click twice on a file to rename it, only the filename is highlighted (not the extension) so you can easily hit "delete" and then type a new name.

Right. And once you create a new file, the folder contents are automatically sorted instead of the new file always ending up at the bottom of the list. This is the kind of stuff I was talking about when I said the UI was more "polished" -- attention certainly was paid to detail this time.

#8 Post by **tomh009** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 9:55 pm

k0lo wrote:4. Superfetch - apps start up much faster than they do on XP.

Indeed, forgot about this one, too. Office apps are quick, but having Photoshop CS3 start up in 10 seconds is very impressive indeed.

K0LO · #9 Post by **K0LO** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 10:17 pm

tomh009 wrote:Acrobat 7 was the only app that was problematic.

BTW Tom, have you tried Acrobat 8? A huge improvement on Vista. They've fixed all of the problems that you are seeing with 7.

mattbiernat · #10 Post by **mattbiernat** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 1:39 am

jdhurst wrote:It looks to me that Microsoft has produced an unworkable product with Vista. People are getting rid of it, business does not yet use it, it is not compliant with critical software.

I will sometime get a Vista laptop (2008 at the earliest) to see if I can make it work. I could make XP work when lots could not, so perhaps I can make Vista work, but I need VPN to work first.

In another thread, one user here preferred marketing pizzaz to anything that might work and whether that user meant it or not, manufacturers have concluded that it does not matter if their product works or has any value, only that it be "cool", because it will sell, whether it works or not.

... JDH

couldn't agree more. few extra things that were killer for me in Vista
1. disorganized (menus in exlporer)
2. unintuitive (locations of preferances)
3. inconsistent (graphics)
needless to say i couldn't get used to Vista despite playing with it for 2 months or so. I rolled back to XP and I am so much happier. I will try to stay with XP as long as possible.

#11 Post by **tomh009** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 4:50 am

k0lo wrote:
tomh009 wrote:Acrobat 7 was the only app that was problematic.
BTW Tom, have you tried Acrobat 8? A huge improvement on Vista. They've fixed all of the problems that you are seeing with 7.

Not yet ... I gave Adobe my money for Photoshop CS3, I was hoping to wait for Acrobat 9 before I upgrade that one (Adobe cranks out new Acrobat versions constantly anyway). But maybe I should reconsider ...

lowie · #12 Post by **lowie** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:30 am

tomh009 wrote: I don't use the 3-D flip for selecting apps (now that's Apple-style eye candy!) but I do like the little window previews when doing Alt+Tab or moving the mouse over the task bar.

I've been using one of M$ Powertoys, ie. the alt-tab replacement program, under XP for a couple of years now. It can be downloaded here.
I've never quite understood why they didn't include this functionality in one of their update/service packs. 'Cause it also gives a preview of the window you're "alt-tabbing" to and is thus much handier than standard alt-tab functionality.

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dsigma6 · #13 Post by **dsigma6** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 7:23 am

I use it on one computer, but I HATE it.

It just caused quite a headache when trying to connect a Mini DV camcorder. I plugged it into XP and it worked right away, with far less problems.

Compatibility plus driver issues galore.

jgrobertson · #14 Post by **jgrobertson** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 10:21 pm

I have the 64 bit Ultimate on a 2623 DDU with T7400 Core 2 Duo. This machine has the Fire GL 5200 GPU which is a good performer.

I like the search features, the improved navigation, and all the little things that improve the experience. It still has some of the non-intuitive menu structure that seams to be in the MS bones.

In general it is faster than XP for me, particulalry since I turned off the Defender, use Avast AV instead of Norton, killed the auto restore point (so it won't run the HD solid for 15 minutes after booting up) and turned off automatically dump file creation.

I leave the Eye candy turned on because the GPU on this machine will handle it ok but I could live without it. I do like the 3D screen switch feature particularly with the new Logitech wireless mouse.

I find I use the Reliability monitor every day. It is actually increasing reliability (up to 2.97 from 1.07 out of 10) since I instlaled the two MS updates of August 7.

Reliability remains a problem and since the updates of Aug 7, I had to reinstall a lot of things, including all printer drivers. Once done, though, it is doing better.

If it were not for all the applications I have installed, I would go back to XP or at least the 32 version of Vista as this 64 bit one just has too many quirks (such as docking, undocking, sleep and wake etc. ) I keep hoping the MS will put an A team on this 64 bit version.

arni · #15 Post by **arni** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 4:39 am

Currently i'm working with 3 laptops from different vendors 2 running xp and my tp running vista ultimate 32. Applications are almost identical on all machines.

For day-to-day work i must agree that vista feels more responsive than xp. I had some problems getting vista to run properly on my tp but these issues where all driver related and since lenovo was continously pushing new drivers on the net all these little nags have gone. A have to say that i didn't run into many of the problems other people did since i'm carefully evaluating every software which get's installed on my system. I think that many problems arise due to the fact that people install software which is not supported on vista.

I like the new approach of security (UAC), Explorer Breadcrumbs, Search (which is a killer feature and i didn't like gds, wds and copernic on xp since every pice of them had always some quirks), Networking Center, Improved Control Panel, Sidebar, Mobility Center, Shadow Copies, Improved Media Center, Thumbnail preview and the new layout of user folder (on xp it was a nightmare with the cluttered user folder under c:\documents and settings). So there are some little things which i'm definatly missing when on xp but working with xp in a vmware session get's me the benefit of each platform without problems.

So even after 10 month wih vista (i upgraded right after rtm) my experience has been fine so far. For the few applications that refuse to run on vista i have a vmware xp image running all day (for some work related software like business intelligence studio).

pianowizard · #16 Post by **pianowizard** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:33 am

I previously complained how much slower Vista RC2 was compared to XP. Yesterday, I received a T42 on which the seller had installed Vista Home Premium and have been playing with it for several hours. With eye candy removed and video settings optimized for performance, it feels significantly faster than my previous experiences with RC2, even though this T42 only has 768MB RAM. I don't know whether that's due to the 7200rpm HDD I'm using (vs. 5400rpm or 4200rpm in the past), or whether that reflects the difference between RC2 and the finished product.

That's the good news. The bad news is, the display still looks crappy at non-native resolutions. It looks sharp only at the native resolution, 1400x1050. This is surprising because many people have said that Vista is much better than XP in this regard.

#17 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 9:18 am

pianowizard wrote:That's the good news. The bad news is, the display still looks crappy at non-native resolutions. It looks sharp only at the native resolution, 1400x1050. This is surprising because many people have said that Vista is much better than XP in this regard.

The non-native resolution is handled by the video hardware, not the OS, so Vista won't do any better or worse there.

What it does do better is scale the UI elements to the resolution. Right-click on the desktop, select Personalize, click on Adjust font size in the left-side bar, and then click the Custom DPI button.

ArtShapiro · #18 Post by **ArtShapiro** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:47 pm

I finally bit the bullet and went back to a dual boot XP/Vista on my T42. That way I can look cool at the coffee shop with Vista, and use XP when I want to get some work done without my older applications crashing. (The Olympus program Camedia 2.5 goes berserk with Vista, just as one example.)

What I really dislike about Vista is the absence of the Search Computer facility. When I'm on my work domain, with hundreds if not thousands of computers, and I know part of the name of a machine, I can't look for it with Vista.

Art

#19 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 2:54 pm

ArtShapiro wrote:What I really dislike about Vista is the absence of the Search Computer facility. When I'm on my work domain, with hundreds if not thousands of computers, and I know part of the name of a machine, I can't look for it with Vista.

I always wondered who used Search Computer -- I never found it useful on our work networks. I guess other people do use it!

mattbiernat · #20 Post by **mattbiernat** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:00 pm

pianowizard wrote:it feels significantly faster than my previous experiences with RC2, even though this T42 only has 768MB RAM.

also works well with 512mb of ram (but menus get a bit slow). i think MS did a good job setting true minimum requirements.

pianowizard · #21 Post by **pianowizard** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 7:57 pm

tomh009 wrote:What it does do better is scale the UI elements to the resolution. Right-click on the desktop, select Personalize, click on Adjust font size in the left-side bar, and then click the Custom DPI button.

Tom, your explanation makes a lot more sense than what I heard before from others. Thanks for the clarification.

#22 Post by **tomh009** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 9:27 pm

pianowizard wrote:Tom, your explanation makes a lot more sense than what I heard before from others. Thanks for the clarification.

You're welcome.

Your setup, for example, would potentially gain a lot from Vista, given the QXGA panels you are using. You could get larger window elements (icons, toolbars, system fonts etc) while still getting the advantage of the plethora of pixels for applications. I would be very much interested in finding out how it works if you have time to experiment with Vista on one of your R50ps some day ...

CrunchDude2 · #23 Post by **CrunchDude2** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:40 am

Interesting replies. I LOVED it at first, too, but it made my T60p with the FireGL V5200 crash almost every day by way of overheating. Now I desperately want to get rid of it and do a fresh installation. See my thread here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=47866

One poster mentioned "rolling back to XP". Well, I guess I want to do that. But it's high time for a re-install, so if you guys could visit the above thread and give me any advice, that would be awesome!

I also enjoy the "eye candy" and there are many improvements "under the hood" that you can't even see that are highly beneficial. Once I get this re-install done, I'd like to see how I can just put the cooling fans to full power at all times, because all those features put a lot of strain on my laptop, even though it's a Core Duo with the high-end video card.

Thanks again everyone!

gt5l · #24 Post by **gt5l** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 9:28 am

I had Vista installed on my T60p since day one. The day I received this laptop bootoed into XP (which was already installed) then did a clean vist install. I loved it and it has been very stable for me. I think over the past 5 months I had one OS crash, this used to be a weekly occurance with XP for me.

Torque · #25 Post by **Torque** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:28 pm

I'm happy with Vista and will not be buying into XP again.
I run Vista Ultimate on the T60 and XP Pro on the desktop.

The Explorer has definitely been improved. I like that they've increased the colour contrast of bars and other importaint stuff.
I like the way they have built the controlpanel, especially networking center.
The implementation of a search bar in the start menu is something I've waited a long time ago, this has replaced the app launchers I used earlier. Used with indexing your docs and apps folders, it takes no more than a few second to find that certain document or application - I never go through the startmenu>programs stuff anymore. Just write the first few letters of the app. Its awesome.
I work mainly with 3D-CAD and photo stuff. I've had zero problems running my applications under vista. Same goes for the tools I use on a daily basis. Some required to run with administrative rights in early releases - however, as the third party developers update their software, it has all become 100% vista-kompatible.
The new, agressive superfetch is a MASSIVE improvement over XP. Sure, it hogs your memory, but what is RAM worth if it's not in use?

I cant find a reason to go back to XP.

#26 Post by **jdhurst** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 3:52 pm

Torque wrote:<snip>
The Explorer has definitely been improved. I like that they've increased the colour contrast of bars and other importaint stuff.
<snip>

I accept the rest of your post. The one above is certainly up for debate. Vista does NOT have explorer.scf, and so there is no decent explorer in Vista. I ran it, I looked, and I think what is there as a file explorer is worse than useless. Colour contrast doesn't help when nothing you want is displayed. Just so people understand - none of my documents and files live in My Documents, and since that is all Vista Explorer displays, nothing I need is shown. 25 unproductive clicks later, I can find what I need.

It may work for you and that is great. For me however, a useful tool has been removed (Microsoft standard practice nowadays) so I will probably just use Total Commander (which I have a license to). ... JDH

K0LO · #27 Post by **K0LO** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 4:20 pm

jdhurst wrote:Just so people understand - none of my documents and files live in My Documents, and since that is all Vista Explorer displays, nothing I need is shown. 25 unproductive clicks later, I can find what I need.

Huh? That's not what I see in Vista's version of Windows Explorer and all of my documents are on a separate partition too:

View of entire computer

View of D: drive containing documents

Did you miss the single-click shortcuts that can be added to Explorer windows to quickly get to favorite folders?

#28 Post by **jdhurst** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:34 pm

Explorer.exe (available in 2000, XP and Vista) opens to My Documents. You then have to navigate to open the contents of C:

Explorer.scf (available in 2000 and XP but not in Vista) opens to the tree view of Drive C: instantly. I could not get Vista to do that (despite favourites and shortcuts).

I keep getting incensed that Microsoft takes scads of easy to use things and easy to view things and obfuscates them. If people want a confusing and obfuscated view of the world, that is entirely fine with me. But I hate have super, tried and true tools taken away from me. Productive, hard working people no longer matter to the doofuses at Microsoft who define programming standards.

... JDH

RWDPLZ · #29 Post by **RWDPLZ** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:35 pm

I used it for a week, installing it on a spare hard drive and it was okay, no crashes or problems or anything, pretty stable, and nice visuals. It was too much of a resource hog, maybe if I had a Core 2 Duo... I couldn't get older games and XP-specific aps to work with it, either. The only hardware conflict was my older Hauppage TV tuner, which that company has made clear will NOT be getting Vista drivers so they can sell more of their newer products.

I'm not even going to attempt to install it on my A31's.

#30 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:48 pm

jdhurst wrote:Explorer.exe (available in 2000, XP and Vista) opens to My Documents. You then have to navigate to open the contents of C:

Click on the Windows button. Type C:\ and press Enter. Presto -- you have an Explorer window open to the root of the C: drive. Or create a shortcut to C:\ and drag it onto the quick launch bar to get single-click access.

What are you getting out of Vista vs. XP? PLEASE READ!

What are you getting out of Vista vs. XP??? PLEASE READ!!!!!!!

What are you getting out of Vista vs. XP? PLEASE READ!

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