A year later, Vista SP1 or XP SP3

[shahed26]

then again you could basically buy a PS3 (40GB) + a Xbox360 Pro + a Wii for the price of a Win 2008 license.

Nah, Windows Server 2008 is (legally!) free for over half a year (240 days), and its not much hassle to format that often.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948472 for the 240 day thing,

and see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en

or http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008...l-software.aspx

for the ISOs, all geniune direct from Microsoft themselves

True, even i don't have a server 2008 license, (way too expensive), i usually format my hdd every 4-5 months, and that is exactly what i do to extend my trial time (LEGALLY), unless you use win2008 for server stuffs usage, then a license is a must.

For workstation use, i modified the whole install.wim for my personal use, so i have all the workstation stuffs out of box, eg sidebar, tweaks in registry by hiving the reg, and more stuffs, basically its all tuned to act and work as a workstation out of box.

[CoffeeFiend]

Nah, Windows Server 2008 is (legally!) free for over half a year (240 days), and its not much hassle to format that often.

Of course there are trials. Then again, you could use a WinXP eval on your box too. Same thing for Vista. And I suppose I could get the 30 day trial of every shareware too, and reformat when those expire. And then again, you could buy a HDTV from a large retailer with a 30 day money back warranty, and return it the 29th day, and do that year-round.

And resetting your trial period all the time + reformatting and reinstalling everything more than once a year sure is a big hassle if you ask me, considering all the time it takes to install & configure everything if you use a lot of apps (after 240 days, it finally has pretty much all I need installed, configured & tweaked how it want it...)

Besides, it's illegal to do so. Just read the EULA:

"Not for Production Use"

"Solely for purposes of demonstration and internal testing"

"After this time, you will need to uninstall the software or upgrade to a fully-licensed version of Windows Server 2008." -- as in, stop using it, or buying it (NOT reformat as a way to bypass the trial limit)

It's wrong on many levels. It's meant for testing ONLY, NOT perpetual use for free.

Edited July 19, 2008 by crahak

[Mr Snrub]

It's meant for testing ONLY, NOT perpetual use for free.

QFT

[dennis123123]

Surely if they cared that much, they would only allow 1 product key request from a person's "windows live" login? Thats what they did with Server 2003.

[Fredledingue]

I would say that if you have a PC with XP installed, keep XP. Vista is not worth the hassle of a reinstall and investment.

Vista is suitable only on new computers. Pre-installed, on a new machine it's good, don't lose time reverting to Xp or dual booting (unless you real need to). Of course it's sad to know that it's slower, and not faster than XP, but with 3.4 Ghz dual cores, the difference is minimal.

However I prefer the look and feel of Vista over XP.

Sure there are a few more annoyances and absurdities than on XP, but when you know them, they are smalll details.

Everybody bashes UAC, even experts, but I do like it. It gives me a sens of safety, that my system is protected (I hope it's true). Unlike XP it allows you to install or modify stuffs without being permanently on Administrator privileges. On XP you need to switch usership to do that because running XP connected to the internet on Administrator account is suicide. I don't mind licking 3 or 4 times "Continue" when I install a soft once in a while. I don't understand why so many poeple disable it.

So far I'v met only one software (Encyclopedia Universalis) not running on Vista while running on XP and w98. I thought it was usualy old softs, but this one is not that old and much older things, even Windows 3.1 era programs, work surprisingly well.

I don't find Vista more difficult nor easier to configurate than XP (without external apps).

It needs maybe more customization, performance tweaks than XP, but XP was already like that. Nothing realy new here.

Edited August 10, 2008 by Fredledingue

[meowing]

Photoshop isn't really incredibly memory intensive anymore.

What a completely nonsensical statement. It has not changed in being a memory intensive software package. The memory it uses depends on what you're doing with Photoshop. And by the way, the latest PS CS is a humongous heap heavier and more resource hungry than *any* older version of Photoshop.

[meowing]

On XP you need to switch usership to do that because running XP connected to the internet on Administrator account is suicide.

Nonsense once more. This all depends on how dumb you are as a user. It's not the kitchen, it's the cook. I have never been running ANY Windows OS without being root (or Administrator as they call it) in my user-space, and I have yet to start feeling any suicidal tendencies or be contaminated or be at risk for any threat out there.

[iceangel89]

i am using Vista x64 at the moment. its stable (dont get explorer.exe being corrupt) but definitely (much ) slower in start ups at least. opening apps wise maybe its slower a little. kind of not sure if i shld install XP x64 or Vista x64 at the moment. x64 since i have 4GB RAM

i am on:

- Intel C2D T9300

- 4GB DDR2

- 1280MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

oh yes and i must mention it really takes up lots of HDD space, even after vLite.

looks wise, i used to like it but i got bored of it now actually, kind of like Mac OS X's looks but what prevents me from using Mac is its software compatibility ... i need to get a Mac version if i still want to use Windows as my main OS... if only windows and mac share the same software, eg. if i get "Software A" it can install in Windows and Mac without needing another version.

Edited August 11, 2008 by iceangel89

[CoffeeFiend]

Photoshop isn't really incredibly memory intensive anymore.

What a completely nonsensical statement.

It makes perfect sense.

Back when Photoshop 2.5 was out (on 4 floppies -- back when we were running win 3.11), people had like single-digit memory sizes, and the OS used pretty much all of it. Opening any moderately sized image used all the resources you had pretty much.

Back when Photoshop 4 was out (Win95 era), we still had very little RAM (most people having 16MB or less), and the OS used all of that too. Opening anything still used all your resources.

Back when Photoshop 7 (CS) was out (early win XP era), we still had around 128MB of memory, and XP's core uses more than 128MB, yet again leaving you with hardly any resources. Opening anything even remotely big (high resolution scans, drum scans, etc) or doing anything more than than the very basics still quickly brought your machine to its knees.

Nowadays, Photoshop CS3 opens on ~90MB of RAM which basically is nothing at all for any modern computer. You can also get 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 for as little as $70. I you have 4GB, and have Vista running + Photoshop CS3 open (nothing else, like in other scenarios), you still have over 3.5GB of RAM left to work with, without making use of any virtual memory (or 1.5GB on a box with 2GB) In the previous scenarios, you had a negative amount of RAM left after the OS loaded (anything you could use, was due to memory paging i.e. virtual memory), whereas now you have entire gigabytes left on commodity PCs! Even opening a 12 megapixel RAW file and adding a couple extra layers only uses an extra ~1% of my free RAM. Even an old box running XP with 512M of RAM could handle it. And processor wise, even a several years-old P4 will suffice for over 90% of tasks. In all those gigabytes of RAM free left, not only you can load a LOT of images at once, and do complex things with them, but you can actually multitask! Something I wouldn't even have attempted before (it would have been excruciatingly slow). I very often have Photoshop open at the same time than other apps that use hundreds of MBs of RAM and it works great.

Long story short, save for a couple exceptional cases/uses, Photoshop isn't one of those monster processes that brings any computer to its knees anymore.

It was a perfectly good point. I didn't think anyone wouldn't get it.

[bledd]

XP64 is where it's at

[Fredledingue]

On XP you need to switch usership to do that because running XP connected to the internet on Administrator account is suicide.

Nonsense once more. This all depends on how dumb you are as a user. It's not the kitchen, it's the cook. I have never been running ANY Windows OS without being root (or Administrator as they call it) in my user-space, and I have yet to start feeling any suicidal tendencies or be contaminated or be at risk for any threat out there.

Well I said "suicide" to put it shortly. I meant, you are more at risk of infection using Admin account than on a restricted account. The fact that XP is almost twice as much infected than Vista is probably because few poeple knows that.

My point was that I didn't understand why so many gets epileptic as soon as the UAC ask them to click "Continue" twice.

oh yes and i must mention it really takes up lots of HDD space, even after vLite.

Normaly Windows quintuplate (5x) its size every 3 years. So, normaly Windows7 (if released in 3 years) should weight 60 Gb after install. But with the multi Terabyte HDD we will have at this time, it won't be an issue.

[iceangel89]

oh yes and i must mention it really takes up lots of HDD space, even after vLite.

Normaly Windows quintuplate (5x) its size every 3 years. So, normaly Windows7 (if released in 3 years) should weight 60 Gb after install. But with the multi Terabyte HDD we will have at this time, it won't be an issue.

oh lol, then i hope other parts like RAM, HDD and CPU will be dirt cheap too?

[cluberti]

I've generally found Vista and XP on the same (newer) hardware to perform basically identical since SP1. Also, I've found that the video card (and good drivers - I'm looking at you, nVidia...) actually make a HUGE difference in speed of the OS. When aero (dwm) is enabled, and the video card drivers are subpar, the CPU and memory subsystem have to make up the difference and thus the system will get noticeably slower. I've gotten a P4 2.4GHz 1GB system to perform almost as snappy as a quad-core 4GB system just by installing an ATI Radeon 2650 into a box that previously had an Nvidia 7600 card.

Not that ATI drivers are great, but I gotta say nVidia Vista drivers have got to be some of the worst engineered pieces of software I've ever had the misfortune to be stuck with.

Also remember that in 2001, when XP was released, a 733MHz single-core CPU with 256MB of RAM and a 15GB hard disk was considered "mainstream" from the big-box vendors, so it's not surprising that XP on double that RAM and 4 and 5 times the processor speed and 2 to 4 times the CPU cores will seem snappy. Vista was designed to use "mainstream" hardware from 2007, which means ~3GHz dual-core CPU with 2 to 3GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk. As to hard disk footprint, if you consider XP SP3 has a hard disk footprint of ~1.23GB on average (according to Microsoft) when system restore is disabled, and Vista SP1 has a footprint of 13GB for x64 (excluding the space eaten by system restore, which can be lowered to 1GB with a quick command), Vista actually uses right about the same % of disk space according to available disk sizes at release as did XP. 1.23GB is 8.2% of 15GB, and 13GB is 8.13% of 160GB.

[MrCobra]

My vote goes to XP/XP64.

Stop being such an arse hannubys. Some people tested it for considerably more than the 2-3 days you assumed and found it wasn't suitable for their purposes. Other people simply don't see the need to fix something which isn't broken, ie. Windows XP. This does not make them archaic, nor is moving to Vista necessarily a move forward in many cases.

In our case, we are waiting to see if the specific issues which concern us are going to be addressed before we re-evaluate it. Only then after a proper evaluation will a decision be made. At the moment we are leaning towards skipping Vista and waiting for Windows 7 which Microsoft has stated will be modular. That will suit our needs very nicely thank you

I used Vista extensively for almost a year. I was turned off of it because of the running out of memory while copying files bug, which is still present. I wiped my machine clean and waited for SP1 to come out. The issues I had with RTM were still present in SP1. The "WOW" factor is just not there for me. I see no reason (yet) to move from something that works to something that STILL has major problems for something that's been out for 20+ months now.

[spacesurfer]

Sticking with XP.

Should this be in the Poll Section!