XP to Vista - is it worth it?

[11ryanc]

True, and it is much more stable than the original XP. But it has compatibility issues with certain software and hardware from what I've heard.

btw XP x64 even brands itself as Server 2003 in some areas

[Jody Thornton]

Yes of course NT 5 was quciker, and I miss the daylights out of XP's and 2k's raw, snappy performance. But the issue with XP is it can't even read more than 4 GB of memory, unless of course you go with XP x64 which is awesome. But has terrible support and sadly cannot even install SP3.

Er, that's not a flaw. SP2 for x64 Edition is like SP3 for XP. Remember XP x64 Edition is NOT AT ALL a 64-bit edition of the regular XP version. It's a workstation style retrofit of Windows Server 2003. So it's distinctly a different operating system. x64/2003 both report as Windows NT v5.2 whereas joe-blow XP is Windows NT v5.1

[Jody Thornton]

Oooops (sorry vinifera) I didn't see your reply...lol

[vinifera]

I'd even call XP 64bit more insecure than 32bit

as 32bit will be able to use patches from POS Ready 2009, that will have support till 2019

while 64bit loses support much earlier and after that has NO compatible counterpart to take patches from

Edited March 18, 2014 by vinifera

[Flasche]

I'd even call XP 64bit more insecure than 32bit

as 32bit will be able to use patches from POS Ready 2009, that will have support till 2019

while 64bit loses support much earlier and after that has NO compatible counterpart to take patches from

And that is another reason why I prefer vista over 7. Since windows server 2008 r1 is vista based (NT 6.0) patches shouldn't be hard to transfer, and 2008 r1 end one day before windows 7/2008 R2. http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170959-use-vista-after-2017/?p=1067721

[vinifera]

question is... why would you transfer... at all

[Flasche]

question is... why would you transfer... at all

I think the correct term would be port my error, but for unofficial updates.

[AnX]

Personally, i think so. Vista's codebase is far more advanced than that of XP, and is more compatible and will be supported longer. As for Windows Embedded 2009, don't expect MS to give it support beyond 2014, the 2019 date is probably on the line tech support or paid support.

[11ryanc]

^Agreed with An on that

[jaclaz]

Personally, i think so. Vista's codebase is far more advanced than that of XP, and is more compatible and will be supported longer. As for Windows Embedded 2009, don't expect MS to give it support beyond 2014, the 2019 date is probably on the line tech support or paid support.

I would like to have a current definition of "advanced".

The far more definitely does not apply, IMHO.

I see essentially the exact same codebase with a bunch of minor adjustment/changes, 2 or 3 of which either make no sense or are of no use.

jaclaz

[Flasche]

Personally, i think so. Vista's codebase is far more advanced than that of XP, and is more compatible and will be supported longer. As for Windows Embedded 2009, don't expect MS to give it support beyond 2014, the 2019 date is probably on the line tech support or paid support.

I would like to have a current definition of "advanced".

The far more definitely does not apply, IMHO.

I see essentially the exact same codebase with a bunch of minor adjustment/changes, 2 or 3 of which either make no sense or are of no use.

jaclaz

Curious now. What code base was changed from nt 5 to 6.

[MagicAndre1981]

nearly everything was improved in Vista. Read the Windows Internals book 4 (covers XP/2003) and 5 which covers Vista/2008 and compare it

[jaclaz]

http://www.jucs.org/jucs_18_2/performance_evaluation_of_recent

http://www.jucs.org/jucs_18_2/performance_evaluation_of_recent/jucs_18_02_0218_0263_martinovic.pdf

Abstract: The primary goal of most OSs (Operating Systems) is the efficient use of computer

systems software and hardware resources. Since Windows OSs are most widely used OS for

personal computers, they need to satisfy needs of all different kind of computer systems users.

In comparison with Windows XP, new versions of the Windows OS; namely Windows Vista

and Windows 7, introduce a number of new features and enhancements. Furthermore,

performance improvement was imposed as one of the key design goals for both Windows Vista

and Windows 7.

Conclusion

The main contribution of this paper is determination which of the three recent

Windows OSs has better performance in different environments. Other contributions

lie in developing the performance measurement process and performance evaluation

model for recent Windows OSs. They are used for the performance evaluation of

Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. However, they can be adopted for the

future generation of Windows OSs. Performance measurement is done with the set of

benchmark applications in three experiments. These experiments determine how OSs

performance varies in different environments. A huge amount of performance

measurement results allows us to evaluate various aspects of the Windows OSs.

Results are evaluated with performance indicators that are measurable, independent

and comparable between different versions of the Windows OS.

The obtained experimental results lead to the conclusion that, contrary to our

expectations, Windows 7 and especially Windows Vista do not provide a better

overall performance on the high-end computer system compared to Windows XP.

Some performance improvements can be seen in memory management and graphics

display, but other parts of these OSs have equal or lower performance than Windows

XP.

....

Our study results could be useful

to different types of computer system users, programmers and OS designers as they

indicate which parts of Windows OSs have most improvements and where the

bottlenecks are. Furthermore, they could be helpful for users who plan to migrate

from Windows XP on the newer version of Windows OS.

BUT (still in the Conclusion):

In addition, since huge majority of high-end computer systems support 64-bit

versions of the Windows OS, it would be beneficial to evaluate performance of 64-bit

editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 in the future work. The

main difference between the 32-bit editions and the 64-bit editions of the Windows

OS relates to the larger memory space on the 64-bit editions. Consequently, memory

management should be improved and processes should be managed more efficiently.

Furthermore, performance measurements should be provided with 64-bit versions of

benchmark applications.

Whether 64 bits OS's are actually "better" than 32 bit ones (and which among the 64 bit versions of windows OS's is actually "better" among them) is still an open question....

jaclaz

[submix8c]

Whatever floats your boat, whichever one "feels" good to you, whichever serves the functional purpose, whatever "works best' on the hardware it's loaded onto, whichever one "runs" the applications you want to use.

One's trash is another's gold. Relativity...

[Flasche]

Interesting indeed. I'll look deeper into those links, and those books. Though, a thought came into my mind. Windows XP is a really old OS. So it would make sense for it to be faster on newer supported systems. It has less resources. Its like the same reason why Me is faster than XP, less resources. Seems to be a no contest.