New computer after 5 years, can you help me?

[beats]

I just read that WinXP x86 has a 2TB limit..is it per partition, drive, or in total?

Per partition.

[phaolo]

Ah that's good. No hdisk space problems then. Thanks beats.

No direct answer about XP instead.. noone knows if it will effectively work on this hardware? :'(

[cluberti]

Err no, I've already tried Vista for 1 year on my brother's computer.

If it was Vista SP1 and still ran poorly, it was either underpowered (less than 2GB RAM on a P4, perhaps) or you have to look elsewhere for your troubles. Vista SP1 is fairly bug-free and quite compatible with most software, even x64 Vista.

Also, I think that all the FUD was quite right.. untweaked non-SP XP is awful, but after all this time Vista SP1 doesn't match a XP Pro SP3 on comfort and compatibility. I hope Windows 7 will be better.

While that is your opinion, you'll find most here would disagree with you. Vista SP1 (x86 or x64) runs just as well as XP SP3, and is compatible with most software packages that run on XP. There have been benchmarks posted on the 'net even, and they're basically the same performance on the same box.

Anyway what I fear most is the "Trusted Computing". According to what I read, that is also present in the hardware but it needs a TC compliant OS to work, and Xp it's not. If this is simply bulls***.. better! (but I don't have proof)

I just don't understand what people fear from TC and TPM. TPM itself doesn't lock anything, the OS and/or drivers have to provide the means to use the TPM chip. TPM is actually quite useful in assisting with cryptography, and Vista uses the TPM for BitLocker and OS key hashing and cryptography. Also, TPM does preserve anonymity with 1.2 (the current standard) via "Direct anonymous attestation", which is a protocol based on the idea of a zero-knowledge proof which allows a TPM user to receive a certification in such a way that the Privacy CA would not be able to link requests to a single user or platform, while still being able to identify rogue TPMs.

[beats]

No direct answer about XP instead.. noone knows if it will effectively work on this hardware? :'(

Of course it will.

[phaolo]

-beats

Ah finally, ty (the others didn't answer again lol)

-cluberti

If you're interested I have links to TC critic sites, even if I just discovered that some of them disappeared with no trace.

One was expecially interesting as it contained the hardware\software compliant list

Anyway I can still give you a link to a nice video about the "trust" these system should grant, plus some secondary sites (and wikipedia).

I don't have the skill to judge these things, but neither I'm able to know if it's you or them who are in error.

So, until I can, I'll stay with XP with no problems.

p.s: some sites got the opposite results comparing Vista SP1 and XP Sp3..

Edited September 16, 2008 by phaolo

[cluberti]

-cluberti

If you're interested I have links to TC critic sites, even if I just discovered that some of them disappeared with no trace.

One was expecially interesting as it contained the hardware\software compliant list

Anyway I can still give you a link to a nice video about the "trust" these system should grant, plus some secondary sites (and wikipedia).

Please do. I happen to know a bit about how TPM and Windows works, just fyi.

p.s: some sites got the opposite results comparing Vista SP1 and XP Sp3..

Correct, and they're mostly comparing Office 2003 on both platforms (and OfficeBench, based on Office 2003). Yes, Office 2003 runs far faster on XP because it was designed to use those components (ADO. OLE, ODBC, etc). Vista's components are designed for Office 2007, and if you run O2K7 on both you'll find Vista and XP to be quite comparable, with Vista having a slight edge. If you are only using this PC for Office 2003 work, then it's relevant. Otherwise, not so much.

[Zxian]

I just read that WinXP x86 has a 2TB limit..is it per partition, drive, or in total?

Per partition.

This is incorrect. The 2TB limit comes from the MBR standard that's used on most hard drives these days. To get around this problem in Windows, you'll need to use GPT disks, which are only availabld on XP x64, Server 2003 SP1 (or later), or Vista.