Microsoft: Windows XP stays if you want it

i run both and i loose almost 1500 points in 3d06 in vista and anyware from 5-15 fps in games all in all vista looks good but is a total waste ov hdd space LONG LIVE XP

Comment by damafia at 3:46am 14th May 2008

some people are getting confused as xp64bit isn't even a proper version of xp it is in fact windows 2003 with xp name stuck on it so compatibilty problems are no worse than vista. when xp first come out everyone treated it exactly the same way they treat vista now

Comment by mutty at 5:44pm 5th May 2008

If MS is so desperate to have improved Vista sales statistics, why doesn't MS bundle XP Pro with all versions of Vista? MS does not have to offer substantial support with XP, since most issues relate to other applications which while included are not necessarily a fundamental part of XP such as IE or Office and can continue to be supported. MS can make it so that everyone buying Vista/XP bundles can install and up/down grade as often as desired (think of it as adding or removing an Uber-ServicePack!) you don't and should not have to re-register, even when doing a clean install. Everyone is happy. I for one will continue to use my ancient W2K and Linux until Windows V7 is released, so it really does not matter to me either way, but I might be tempted to upgrade to XPPro/Vista, if it were bundled together in an inexpensive package. After all I only use Windows to install BIOS upgrades and similar Hardware specific activities where manufacturers do not provide Linux Drivers until support eventually appears in Linux!

Comment by Hitman101 at 7:54pm 2nd May 2008

guys its time to say goodbye to xp or what was the point in buying vista ? people need to lmove on ! a rolling stone gathers no moss !

Comment by higson92 at 2:37pm 30th April 2008

the major benefits are the small things that you wouldn't really think you would use, but once you have got used to them, they are great to use, such as the new taskbar feature, where you highlight your application and you see a little window there which shows you what is going on (i usually like using it to see how far something has done, such as installing games, software or publishing a movie from movie maker HD) and also i like the small feature of when you press ctrl, alt, del your computers view changes (i find its great to get out of those frozen games the the normal taskmanager keys cant minimize) plus if you dont like this you now have the one handed ctrl, shift, esc feature and the new sidebar is not that bad, at the moment i have constantly used gadget (such as a CPU and RAM usage meter, a HDD usage meter, a network usage meter, a weather gadget and a sticky note style gadget to remind me of the stuff i need to do), i like the new fancy style GUI, just because it goes well with my black monitor, and the new games explorer, again, another small addition but it comes in handy, plus it saves clogging up my desktop with extra unneeded icons. So like i said, all of the great features only seem small, but i think i wouldn't like them to be taken away, and yeah some of the OS may be annoying, but all that you need to do is, set it up to your personal settings, and like every PC user wants to do from the start, is just turn the UAC off, which is as simple as going into the user account settings and turn it off. and I would say, that the average user would take about 15 minuites (after installation) to change the settings to their tastes.

Comment by NikoBellic at 3:48am 30th April 2008

well, I'm at this moment running 32-bit & 64-bit XP on my 2 PC's , they are both doing renderings and theyare both using 1.8Gb of memory. And they the 64-bit has instant response time even though the CPU is at 100% load. Een vista 32-bit wouldn't install some of the apps I use. Speech redognition, although useful to some people...honestly how many of us use it on a day-to-day basis? The sidebar with 10,000 apps can be kept because I really only use 28 apps intotal so I don't see the other 9,872 being of much use (again especially since three of the ones I use mostly don't even install in Vista). Aero - again not much good with Photoshop/AutoCAD/3DS Max. Install your GPU driver and you're ALMOST good to go? after I install my drivers I AM good to go lol! The new folder system is quite elegant and the search is a great improvement but I organise my folders & start menu myself using folder templates and I don't search my PC often enough for that to be a huge benefit to me either. It isn't even slightly pro-sided, it's more like Media Centre edition meets OSX (and I find OSX annoying half the time). I think it's more geared towards home entertainment, games and general home use rather than being more of a workhorse like XP - hence most businesses still use XP as do DCC/Architects/Educational facilities etc. Also with regard to the system assessment tool (WinSAT). "The WEI allows users to match their computer hardware performance with the performance requirements of software..." again, anyone who knows what's inside their PC - as I'm sure most of CPC's readers do - don't need this, they can look on the 'system requirements' list of the game/app in question and alot of games have a similar tool on the web so you can...match your computer hardware performance with the performance requirements of software! so if anyone can think of any BENEFITS of a day-to-day nature then please post them I'd love to know

Comment by EdArch at 10:41pm 29th April 2008

well, I'm at this moment running 32-bit & 64-bit XP on my 2 PC's , they are both doing renderings and theyare both using 1.8Gb of memory. And they the 64-bit has instant response time even though the CPU is at 100% load. Een vista 32-bit wouldn't install some of the apps I use. Speech redognition, although useful to some people...honestly how many of us use it on a day-to-day basis? The sidebar with 10,000 apps can be kept because I really only use 28 apps intotal so I don't see the other 9,872 being of much use (again especially since three of the ones I use mostly don't even install in Vista). Aero - again not much good with Photoshop/AutoCAD/3DS Max. Install your GPU driver and you're ALMOST good to go? after I install my drivers I AM good to go lol! The new folder system is quite elegant and the search is a great improvement but I organise my folders & start menu myself using folder templates and I don't search my PC often enough for that to be a huge benefit to me either. It isn't even slightly pro-sided, it's more like Media Centre edition meets OSX (and I find OSX annoying half the time). I think it's more geared towards home entertainment, games and general home use rather than being more of a workhorse like XP - hence most businesses still use XP as do DCC/Architects/Educational facilities etc. Also with regard to the system assessment tool (WinSAT). "The WEI allows users to match their computer hardware performance with the performance requirements of software..." again, anyone who knows what's inside their PC - as I'm sure most of CPC's readers do - don't need this, they can look on the 'system requirements' list of the game/app in question and alot of games have a similar tool on the web so you can...match your computer hardware performance with the performance requirements of software! so if anyone can think of any BENEFITS of a day-to-day nature then please post them I'd love to know

Comment by EdArch at 10:41pm 29th April 2008

Firstly I've run both x86 and x64 versions of Vista and the 64bit used much more RAM. Also 32bit apps don't like Vista 64 at all, they take forever to load and crash randomly(especially Firefox). If you have Vista 64bit try this, launch Internet Explorer 32bit, then launch the 64bit version and watch how quick it loads compared to the latter. Again this wouldn't be a bad thing if we only used 64bit apps but we know that's impossible at the mo. I'm not saying it wasn't cool being able to address all of my memory but as I said with 64 bit my system used way more memory than the 32bit version so no benefit there at all. Also the sidebar crashes every 5 minutes where as it hasnt crashed to date on the 32bit system I'm running now. Only when you start using Vista 64 do you then relise how many programs that you miss out on, or even how many programs that don't take advantage of the OS and worse still how many drivers it just dosen't want know. Now my arguement on why to get Vista over XP... XP is a great OS and i still have it on one of my PCs. But with Vista it makes my computer feel like the £1000 i paid for it, and to be honest i think that anyone that has and likes Vista doesn't dislike XP at all, but we need to move on. Like anything, submarkets tend to follow the most dominent player; manufactorer; platform ect.. in that case ultimatly most future program releases will be optimised to run on Vista rather than XP whoever they're made by. When you talk about there not being any more than 8 extras or improvements in Vista let me list 10 atleast. DX10 Windows SideBar that has tens of thousands of apps Windows Aero DVD maker Windows Media CENTRE (brilliant with TV card) Improved windows Explorer Speech recignition Windows System Assessment Tool Instant search Improved User Account features(having multipule users don't bog down your PC like it did with XP) New folder/icon system(again nice touch when browsing saved media) Install and go (install Vista and your GPU driver and your almost good to go) I agree Vista isnt all pro sided and that i could think of as many cons to put along side that list. But the arguement is it an improvenment than my loyal old soldier Windows XP... yes!

Comment by TKSnatch at 10:19pm 29th April 2008

well obviously not better prog compatibility as even 32-bit progs that install fine in XP 32-bit & 64-bit won't install in either 32-bit or 664-bit Vista so they've obviously missed something. I also have 4Gb of RAM in both my 32-bit & 64-bit PCs but since XP64 uses less memory than Vista in itself that means I have more RAM for my 64-bit apps which means my renderings get done quicker (plus I don't need a HD pagefile). I don't know how this would translate in gaming as I don't have any 64-bit games but for what I do, it's beneficial. Plus, as I've stated before, it isn't big, clever, easy or fun trying to do work in Photoshop or 3DS Max using the 'aero' view...

Comment by EdArch at 5:07pm 29th April 2008

Alot of people here are slagging off the way vista uses alot of memory. Well running vista 64 and 4GB of RAM is one way to avoid the issue. The extra RAM vista "uses" is gained by a working 64bit OS. However I hightlighted "uses" before for a reason. Like many new OSs vista pre-fills your RAM for you. It drops often used programs into memory on startup. In the linux world this is called a good idea as it improves system responsivness. In a m$ world this is called hogging (I sense some unfair wordplay here...) but either way. I have had crysis using 2GB RAM and several other apps (likely using 500 or so mb) and a ctrl+alt+del to vista and the system is still responsive. This means vista is working in an available 500MB of RAM. And no the system wasnt page thrashing.

Comment by reashlin at 12:51pm 28th April 2008

Programmes running under XP64 but not under Vista64? thats very odd as Vista 64 has much better software compatability and support than XP64 ever had something M$ is only too happy to point out.

Comment by WoodSpoon at 12:19pm 28th April 2008

Windows XP forever !! dx10 hacks :P ftw dont tell ms hahahah even tho they already know

Comment by megapig at 12:27pm 28th April 2008

about people who 'can't afford vista' or can't afford vista-compatible computers. Alt of people don't NEED much more than they have now so why upgrade your system just to run a new OS. It's not about people being jealous because they an't afford it - there isn't much price difference between XP & Vista. It also isn't about eing 'closed minded' I've used Vista on my friends laptop and on my own PC - which is more than ista capable! I couldn't even install three of the programs I use the most so for that reason alone I binned it. Also I prefer using XP64 because it also has the 64-bit address code but because it has lower system requirements and uses up less RAM and CPU clocks, it means more RAM and CPU clocks are free for my programs to use (which means peole like nico who are striving for that extra fps in Crysis the game would be able to use more RAM and CPU time - and by the way...more colours? were you running XP in 16-bit colour or something?? the human eye can only see16.7million colours so 24-bit is all you're ever going to need. I don't think Vista is an inherently bad OS, I don't see what all the fuss is about with the 'new features' (whatever they are..I recall someone listing them to e and if I remember right 1 out of 5 of those was actually useful to me) so I'd be glad to hear of these mysterious features we apparently can't live without... I'm not fond of it because it won't run either 32 or 64-bit versions of the three core programs I use to do my work so it doesn't get my vote

Comment by EdArch at 10:43pm 27th April 2008

A lot if this Vista hate is down to fear of the unknown as well, some of the more adventurous Vista haters have installed it, looked at it and thought 'oh this looks a lot like XP so it will be the same' and as soon as they find out it isn't they go 'oh no it's not what I was expecting so it must be horrible quick get rid of it' and then they tell all their closed minded friends how horrible it was. I ignored all the critisim and brought Vista x64 along with 4gb of ram and it's brilliant! you'd have to pay me to switch back to XP, open your minds people and try it your self

Comment by WoodSpoon at 6:59pm 27th April 2008

I can't get my head around why Vista has to use so many system resources of cpu and memory. I used Vista Business Edition for about 30mins. Vista turned my "ferrari" of hardware components into a Citroen 2CV. Vista may have an Aero Interface which adds Visual glamour eye candy to the GUI. But I can do the same with XP. A E R O is an (acronym) for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open. Granted Vista incorporates security work into every aspect of software development in the OS. But Vista Can still utilize the same amount or usuable physical RAM as XP - around 3024MB. Only Vista's Page file used around 800MBs of memory at Idle. That's just not on. I had XP using just 114MB of memory at idle. How much free memory available - don't even do the math it more efficient that vista. Vistas Indexing services i noticed caused a lot of Page file bloat. An above all this Microsoft purposefully targeted higher system requirements when there is no need to do so. Think about all the people who realized that, their current computers hardware was suddenly useless.. - lack of compatibility with certain pre-Vista hardware and software. I feel sorry for those peeple for their loss on their part for them, their feelings, their money - & their dissapointment with Vista! I will buy Vista Once the OS uses my Processor 7 memory more eficiently & less of it. I do know there are lots more Software technologies built into Vista which also contribute to a Bloated OS, which will eventually manipulate new Hardware Techonolgy capabilities. For now though. XP has been updated to support everything Vista can do but much quicker with more responsiveness and more cpu and memory available for third party applications rather than most resources nearly all used just for the OS itself.

Comment by jamie_horwood at 4:16pm 27th April 2008

might i add, with the new sp1 in vista along with the ctrl shift esc combi for task manager, unlike windows usually taking around 5-10seconds for task manager to appear, mirosoft seemed to have prioritized this, so that as soon as you press the esc key, task manager pops up instantly. just thought i might add that. and for those people who still slag of about vista, you really have to give it at least a week before you comment at all on it. i had xp, and thank god (methinks) i didn't stay with xp. CRYSIS FTW

Comment by Evil_Clown666 at 10:02am 27th April 2008

This Whole Performance thing is just a story that people who cant afford Vista x64 use, now that SP1 is out with all of the latest updates, there is only about 2-3FPS in difference, BUT!!! your also gaining access to the features such as: 1: DirectX10 (Obviously), 2: with x64 you can have Crysis and more running in x64 mode, so that means, loads more colours, and a much better feal of quality, mind you i think most of the guys here would choose that extra 2-3fps over the abillity to have double the quality, better security, and many more features.

Comment by NikoBellic at 9:13am 27th April 2008

xp does'nt run pc tattletale in the background like vista, maybe this is why vista is so heavy

Comment by dusty at 10:22pm 26th April 2008

I like to keep as much RAM to myself as possible :) so i staying with XP as long as humanly possible, unless a game says it requires only vista, then its time for change ;)

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 9:25pm 26th April 2008

Exactly!!!

Comment by NikoBellic at 11:01am 26th April 2008

On reading this post, I considered for a moment about changing back to XP from Vista x64... But really I think that I have got used to it, and although its hard to get some bits and pieces to work, Really, once you have used it fr a few days, turned off UAC and such, its really not that bad at all. Plus you have the ahem "advantage" of DX10 which, in fairness, does look good, even if hardware can't handle it. If M$ are going to extend the support for XP until windows 7, then I don;t reckon that's a bad thing. There would be a lot of happy people out there who wouldnt have to buy a new, vista capable laptop...

Comment by PyrO_PrOfessOr at 10:48am 26th April 2008

i would never go back to windows XP now i have Vista, but the reason i dont reccomend you guys to upgrade is because if i do you'll just keep saying "Vistas Crap" although you have never tried it for longer than 2 hours, with your own personal settings on it, i know that because if you did and you had SP1 installed, you would never slag it off, you would just say, why did i make the mistake of staying with XP, and how could i ever have lived without these features. like i said Vista aint that bad at all, especially now SP1 is out too, so if all your gonna do is slag it off it just makes you stand out as one of these people who couldn't afford it and are just jelous that some of us have it and just trying to make us think that what you have is better.

Comment by NikoBellic at 9:29am 26th April 2008

Vista lasted about 4 hours on my new laptop... With MSs policy of forcing stores to remove all the XP computers (told to me by a store manager) left me no choice but to get Vista... My brand new Acer ran like crap... I removed vista and instaled my XP64 on it and it ran like a champ. Xp still has a long life yet and I hope MS ends up sticking with an OS that still works fine instead of fleesing the PC community like they did with Vista

Comment by DELTA at 10:39pm 25th April 2008

Vista lasted about 4 hours on my new laptop... With MSs policy of forcing stores to remove all the XP computers (told to me by a store manager) left me no choice but to get Vista... My brand new Acer ran like crap... I removed vista and instaled my XP64 on it and it ran like a champ. Xp still has a long life yet and I hope MS ends up sticking with an OS that still works fine instead of fleesing the PC community like they did with Vista

Comment by DELTA at 10:39pm 25th April 2008

i reckon zeevro has a good point although i do like vista, if you dont have it maybe you shoulod just wait for windows 7 or as i like to call it vista SP2. i think windows 7 will just be vista, but without the annoying things, like i usually say vista is just a Beta version of windows 7, and M$ are just trying to charge us to be Beta testers instead of paying us.

Comment by NikoBellic at 7:14pm 25th April 2008

I'd like to see XP in the market till Microsoft releases the next iteration of Windows OS. Being able to skip from XP to Windows 7 could be a good thing. As it stands (even after SP1), Vista is like a random pretty girl you meet on a Saturday night. Resonably good looking, but does not perform well when getting down to business. Vista is perfect for being a "miss right now" for a bit of fun. But for a long term relationship, XP is still the "miss right" for a lot of users.

Comment by zeevro at 6:59pm 25th April 2008

i guess this is good news for some of the more, poorer, IT community.

Comment by NikoBellic at 5:51pm 25th April 2008

sp3 doesn't change xp in the same kernal altering way sp2 did, the benchmarks will most likely be exactly the same.

Comment by luttman23 at 5:47pm 25th April 2008

This is good news for now, this way I can run older systems on xp still without the weight of vista. Also anyone know of any benchmarks of sp2 vs. sp3?

Comment by mr_nips at 5:25pm 25th April 2008

woop woop!

Comment by MDK_UK at 5:05pm 25th April 2008

• BFG unveils hand built Phobos gaming PCs
• UPDATED: LiveJournal announces mass layoffs
• Top 10 PC games chart
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 gets 500GB on single platter
• Creative reveals new Zii processor
• Happy Christmas from Custom PC
• Intel might buy Imagination Technologies
• First Blu-Ray and DVD hybrid disc announced
• Abit denies closure rumours
• Download ‘AAA’ games in a few minutes with AWOMO

These are the most popular news articles over the past seven days.

• Phenom II overclocked to 6GHz
• GeIL unveils Cyclone RAM cooler
• Rumour control: GeForce GTX 260 GX2 in January
• Nvidia cuts price of 216 SP GeForce GTX 260
• VIDEO: PC version of Mirror’s Edge features hardware PhysX
• Get Half-Life for less than a dollar on Steam
• IBM plans to build virtual human brain
• RivaTuner 2.20 adds SLI and CrossFire support
• VIDEO: ArmA II trailer released