Extension to XP's life by Microsoft.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7795302.stm



Why they don't just admit that Vista is not really as good as they say is beyond me. Especially given that People keep requesting XP over Vista when buying a new lappy or PC. Using a loophole in MS's clause retailers are able to downgrade a Vista Machine to XP for customers.

MS are correct that Vista sold well but that's all. They don't say how many people tried it then went back to XP or returned it.

It is well known also that people do prefer XP. After using Vista for a year and a half I went back to XP about 6 months ago.

I, for one, would never want to go back to XP from Vista...

Same.

I wouldn't want to go back to XP either.

Personally I don't give a rip which OS is in my machine...

XP being supported until 2014 is all that matters to me. I expect the support deadline and the selling deadline for XP will be extended.

Good news for netbooks. ;)

I would never go back to vista from XP, had it for a while, hated it, went back.

Had Vista, got a new hard drive, went to Linux. Didn't work well with my machine, so went back to Vista. It really made me sad because Linux was pretty cool but it just wasn't practical.

I keep telling myself I'll dual boot it so I can have Linux back, but I can't really find a reason to, other than Linux is faster and has a better desktop environment.

And so far my second time around with Vista has been pretty nice actually. I think me going in a ripping out all the crap it came with that I didn't want really 'confused' it, and I haven't done that this time and its running very smoothly.

I like Vista and also would not go back to XP.

I wouldn't want to go back either, and my system isn't very fancy. single core and the series 7 GPU, but vista is SO much better than XP if you have a bunch of ram that lets superfetch run efficiently.

All my common apps start up instantly,
No wait on boot up after the desktop loads before I can start using it.
The screen is much smoother and windows more responsive
Don't have to optimize my hd every week
MUCH more stable
Better multitasking even on single core
Outlook recieving mail doesn't grind other apps to a halt
If it's slower than XP in games its not noticeable 2-3fps max
Copying over dupe images shows both thumbs in the dialogue (I'm an artist)

There are just tons of little things and a far more responsive desktop that makes my ageing computer feel like a much faster machine than in XP.

Amon, maybe you should have tried SP1 before going back. I heard it fixed 80 of the niggles. I have only had it for two months having only used the beta 2 previously. Wasn't expecting much especially with all the whinging on the net, was pleasantly surprised. My ONLY issue is that my 15 year old Wacom tablet with serial port has no Vista drivers. Thats Wacom's fault, it works with a registry hack in most apps.

my old and now dead box wouldnt be suitable for vista and niether would this 2nd hand jobbie

but i noticed the eeepc type webbooks when shipped with windows instead of linux were xp so im guessing they are partly to blame

XP is perfect for netbooks. I have XP n'Lited on my EeePC901 and it's a good fit. What's the point of installing a mega-bloated O/S which steals large chunks of the system resources?
Vista has too much of a bad reputation, and does not offer any MUST HAVE features to justify the switch for me. From the very start I always believed it to be the equivalent of WinME

In some ways I would call it an 'upgrade'
Besides that, don't MS still class it as a Vista sale even if the customer wants XP?

I do however applaud Microsofts efforts to make Win7 a more streamlined system friendly environment requiring much less resources to run. I believe Win7 will be far more popular than Vista
Win7 will be the new WinXP

I haven't found it necessary to switch any work or home computers to Vista yet. I'm sure I'll find a reason in a year or two.

Of course Vista is improvable but it's not worse than XP.

I noticed that there are mostly two categories of people who downgrade from Vista to XP:

1) companies which are using badly coded intranet software which is therefore incompatible with newer versions of the OS (very common with internally developed software which doesn't have to pass through shareware or commercial like betatesting).
2) various types of inexperienced people which can't get even around subtle changes, "mod" the OS by considering themselves OS guru's, or (mostly at the beginning) tried to use incompatible versions of drivers and common softwares previously bought or bundled with the computer.

And of course XP is necessary for dedicated computers which resemble more an advanced terminal than a PC, and XP is still there mostly for this reason and point 1.


You don't have to resort to a mysterious loophole for the downgrade, as the swap is readily available in the Vista license itself.


That's what usually messes up windows installs, among with softwares which automatize this kind of work. You have to know all the consequences of the processes you are going to stop, among with a very good knowledge of the windows registries. Otherwise you can face anything in between unpredictable behaviour and an unbootable OS both in regular and safe mode.

Usually I 'scare' novices about the dangers or doing this kind of actions without proper knowledge and it works pretty well (for example, a few days ago I had to repair a Vista system which worked perfectly for more than a year, and suddenly started rebooting ad infinitum... it came out that a friend of this friend of mine installed a registry optimization software suggesting to run it regularly).

guy down the hall whos rig is barely able to crawl xp 'cleaned up' his system once (titchy hard drive too 10gb or less id say) by deleting random files, most of which were in the windows folder

Vista doesn't use that many resources unless you mean ram, which is used by design. It's one of the major things that makes it so better than XP.

The superfetch does a good job at making sure all your most common apps are stored in free ram which is dynamicaly flushed if a progran suddenly needs it. Thats why it appears to use so many resources.

I don't know where you are located but here I can get ram for $10 per GB for DDR2 6400 ram.

Even 4gb of Corsair 4GB DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz Twinx Memory costs less than $150.

My puter being too old doesn't support DDR2 or DDR3 ram, But even 2gb of old 333mhz ram oc'd to 400mhz makes vista fly.

I really don't like Vista. All of my machines are back on XP. I even ordered my new Dell Precision (for work) with XP pre-installed.

I use both and i would like to have XP interface (vistas file-man interface is disorganised and annoying) with vistas approach to security (at least the actually sensible/useful stuff like system write permissions)
Given the choice of all 3 i still prefer Ubuntu.

I won't be going back to XP either. MacOS X and Linux from now on!

The main difference as someone mentioned earlier is that vista is much more responsive and doesnt freeze as much as xp. when vista freezes it turns the app that froze or the entire screen a shade of white and I just click on the x a few times and it exits. when xp used to freeze I couldnt tell what was frozen and I usualy had to restart my computer because ctrl-alt-delete didnt even work when xp froze.

Gotta agree, xp sucks. It's great when it's first installed, but from there it seems to go downhill. As the months pass you get an ever increasing variety of lockups, bsods, slowdown, and general os weirdness. After about six months I offer a prayer to my favorite deity every time xp successfully loads. Not long after there will be no boot functionality from xp, besides you probably wouldn't want it to boot anyway as the os has managed to slow to a crawl anyway. Time to re-install yet again.

Haven't noticed any of this crap happening since I went Vista over 12 months ago. One install and thats it. People who have problems with Vista are either fiddling under the sheets, trying to run it on a 386, or won't upgrade any cheap-ass Acme brand hardware they have hooked up.

Been using the same install of XP on my laptop since Mid 2005 with no problems. I don't connect that machine to the internet so that may help.

I don't have any problem with XP. So given all the negative news about Vista I don't see a reason to spend hundreds of euros on it.

Duh.. "I like XP better than Vista!". "Yes, but, that's because you prefer XP so that doesn't count".

Yeah it's about time for a new version of Windows! ... ;) I heard they're also working on Windows 8, scheduled to appear mid 2010.

http://xkcd.com/323/

It's bound to happen again..

@Matty - I'd say a fair share of my xp problems must have been due to internet usage as the various systems I've had are always connected and always on. If xp was more robust I'd probably look at re-installing it.

To be fair there are a few things that annoyed me about moving to Vista:

- FolderSize doesn't work and there's no alternative that's as tightly integrated. Now it's harder to keep track of large files.
- I had to lose/upgrade some hardware (StreamZap remote control, promise IDE raid controller, digital picture frame) as there were no 64 bit drivers. Can't really blame Vista for that though.
- I read a lot about file copying is supposed to be slower in vista than xp. Can't confirm that myself, or whether it's still an ongoing issue.
- Windows update really likes to update a lot, and they're large files. My windows folder is already over 20GB, although I also do the optional updates which probably doesn't help. I'm only on 512k/b download speed so some of these updates are a long haul.

Other than those things though, I couldn't be happier. Occasionally I come across something that doesn't run on vista, but %99.9 of the time there's an equivalent program which does the job fine.

I've only had experience with Vista Pro Ultimate x64 though, so I couldn't say whether it would be as nice if I were using x32 Basic or Home edition.

I don't understand people having problems with XP. My current install is years old and had only minor driver problems. And only maintenance I do is run defrag once or twice a year and even that is mostly not needed.

I have XP on all my computers and I can't find any reason to upgrade.

I didn't see much point in upgrading but installed vista on whim when I bought a new HD. I never expected to stick with it because of all the horror stories, but for me at least, everything runs so much better I'm quite impressed.

The better memory management and multitasking is such an obvious improvement in my general hourly use it isn't funny. I mostly run outlook, IE7, trillian, 3dsmax, photoshop, Bmax, Blide and Flow which play much nicer together now.

and apart from the bsods and lockups ( although theres been a few,but no biggie ) vista differs how?

it improved for artists, the thumbnail views, preview, overwrite with thumbnails for both images. Much faster GUI rendering than XP with aero. There are just tons of little things that on their own don't seem like much, but make a big difference to your experience.

the only thing I liked better in XP was integrated internet explorer. IE sucked on XP but I liked being able to browse my hd in windows explorer and type a url in the path and view a web page, all avaliable from the windows+E key

I actually don't like the new explorer, I'm having trouble adjusting from the classic view.

My Computer.
Views.
Details.

Now the same as XP.

Or, if you want the menu bar...

My Computer.
Organise.
Layout --> Menu Bar.

Now the same as XP.

Or if a folder is giving you strife and not letting you select files normally...

Right click folder, Properties.
Customise.
Use this folder type as a template: Documents.
Also apply this template to all subfolders.
Apply.
OK.

Now the same as XP.


More or less a non-issue since SP1, although indexing, defragmentation or windows defender doing it's thing randomly can slow file stuff down.


As long as I have the menu bar switched on I have no hassles getting around. The back/forward buttons were all I ever used anyway.

Well I haven't seen my box bsod or lockup on vista, although this was a common, regular (as in every day) occurrence in xp, and yes, I do the same things now as I did before.

You also forgot about xp slowdown which imho is a biggie. What I'm referring to is the ever increasing boot times, plus the os sluggishness/unresponsiveness. I have a truck load of memory and dual core cpu and xp is how many years old?

Here's what I see. I can have a fresh xp install and a month later it's less responsive than vista. What am I supposed to do there? Clearly memory is not a bottleneck, an increase in cpu speed is going to make little difference. It's plainly evident that xp is not even remotely capable of using the resources in a relatively modern pc effectively. That's easy to see as xp uses your swap space in preference to the 2GB ram you've got. Sure, there are patches/tweaks etc that can be done to improve xp, but I don't want to do that because A) I'm slack, and B)That's a good encouragement for bsods/freezes, and C) I don't have time to play propeller-head in that area, nor do I want to. I just want to use the OS, and not constantly need to hold it's hand. I have never felt the need to do any maintenance on Vista, because it does not bsod/lockup and any slowdown is minimal and temporary. That means I can spend my time doing other, more interesting things.

I'd be completely happy to say vista was a pile of crap/not much improvement over xp, if it was true. Maybe it is for some people because of reasons mentioned above, but not for me.

so was i, i was saying for this vista is more or less the same. When i first got vista it booted and shutdown in less than 10 secs. Now 1.5 years on, it now takes about 2-3 minutes to boot (inc pre and post login) and maybe 1-2 mins to shutdown.
'Yes its simply time to reinstall' says everyone but i shouldnt have to. One of my linux boxes thats on 24-7 for the last 3 years is the same every time.
windows by design is simply as cloggy as arteries on an elvis diet.

My vista takes ages to boot/shutdown also, but because there aren't any bsod's I don't need to boot/shutdown as often. The only time I need to suffer that is whenever there's some critical updates that need a reboot. I haven't noticed any major slowdown whilst using vista though. Occasionally, but only temporary. XP would start slowing down during use and remain that way unless I re-installed. It's almost like it gradually self-destructs the more I use it. Maybe it's just me though.

I'd like to use linux but then I lose compatibility with a huge range of software. I guess there's tradeoffs whichever way you go.

I agree, windows from 98 onwards is clogged up with too much stuff that most people hardly ever use or need. I'd love to see a windows compatible OS with no slowdown, no bsod, no lockups, and the ability to disable what you don't need.

I suggest you using an alternative file explorer, as there are far better ones out there (I'm pretty sure I posted some of them a while back).

As a rule if you don't like some parts which can be replaced, try looking around as there are usually good alternatives.

What I don't like about Vista are the parts which are not replaceable, such as the start menu... the parser idea is good, but on the other hand the menu itself can't even be ordered anymore as it is automatically sorted alphabetically, which makes it pretty useless to me since I divided the apps by category. It would need a major hoveraul, being always just a modded version of older versions instead of a new concept.

Apart from this there both small and important improvements, as the new memory management pointed out by AdrianT (very important and yet criticized by very inexperienced people who think by looking at the task manager that the OS is eating memory), which make Vista a good landmark and not just an aestethically updated version. I also like the new language management and folder roaming among other things. There is room for improvement but it's obviously gone forward and not backwards as some point out.

I have vista, i had not other option for this PC since the hardware only works with Vista >_______>
So im doomed to use vista :-(!!!

Doomed? Blessed! :)

LOL

As for alternate file explorers, I use Speed Commander and love it. I quit using Windows Explorer about 3 years ago and never looked back.

What is this XP slowdown people mention? Two computers, one three years old, one one year old, both run as smoothly and start up as quickly as the day I got them, and with continuous heavy use almost every day.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

Also liking the way Windows 7 is a "replacement" for Vista. It doesn't matter how good or bad the system is, the people have tasted blood now.

Its a well known problem. I defrag, i uninstall correctly, keep tray services minimal/essential and do all the things i should, and -still- it gets progressively slower and slower as apps, and updates are installed and/or removed. If i search the registry i can still see references to rubbish i removed years ago. The biggest bind for me is the way windows continues to phaff around for several minutes after login, making the pc practically unusable for a while as it loads services etc.
This should not be the way and vista lately seems to be starting to do the same old thing.

Oh wait you must be joking! I fell for that one didnt i ;)

Registries should have never been used that way by developers. My opinion is that Microsoft should have restricted their use in the first place, but it looks like they didn't imagine the registries would been used so heavily.

I agree totally. Application settings/info should be in the shared or individual user space and nowhere else (unless absolutely essential to its operation eg a security app or system mod).

I would say that most of the fault goes to the developers of the first installers, which then set a trend on how an installer should be developed despite the fact that they were using way unorthodox practices.

Also, because of this people started to use registry cleaners with too much confidence, and it caused a new whole range of problems too.

I suppose that if MS did know what would happen, they would have handled registries differently... the issue is that MS never enforced their guidelines in the slightest (things have changed a bit with Vista due to UAC), and I'm starting to think if it was a good idea or not.

http://www.ccleaner.com

Nope, wasn't joking. Really I have never experienced any slowdown. I have no idea whether the linked app helps with that, but it does contain a registry cleanup tool.

Thanks for the link, i may try it but my experience with 3rd party cleaners in the past has been quite bad.

Anyway, thats my point, you shouldnt need tools to clean it up. It shouldnt get in a mess in the first place when used properly.

Agreed, i dont know why the registry has to be in a huge monolith file anyway, the 'many file' apporach of other systems is much better afaiac. As for UAC, it would be nice if it actually had some options rather than just on or off, as -some- of it is actually a good idea and attempts to emulate the unix based idea of no writey where you shouldn't be writin'. The other parts like no execution accross a network is just pants (unless theyve changed it since i last turned it OFF).

Glad that I can stick to XP a little longer.
Plus I can regret that I bought Vista even more. :/

See what I was saying about the overconfidence of using such tools? :)
These tools shouldn't be recommended to anyone regardless of their experience.

Instead, for anyone experiencing slowdowns at start-up I suggest to check what is actually being started, and disable all the unnecessary stuff installed by a lot of companies including (but not limited to) Adobe, Apple and Google. It affects the system a lot more then registries, and often you aren't even aware of some processes which are not shown in the installed applications list.

An easy way is to install SpyBot, set it to "mode --> advanced", and then clicking on Tools --> System Startup. Then just disable what you don't need, which can then be re-enabled if necessary or deleted for good from the start-up. Here as well prudence is required (check with google any process which you don't recognize before disabling it) but it's a much more effective way of speeding up the system without too much risks.

At leasy XP is better than win2k which had the worst progressive slowdown over a much shorter period. For me the transition to vista from XP has been a lot like XP was from Win2k.

I have had very little experience with vista, so I can't bash it, but XP has been a very positive experience for me.

I just don't really see how vista is worth the value of it's price, especially with so many reported slowdowns, resource usages (requirement different is significant...and for what?), and general problems all together.

Is directx 10 really that much more amazing? Amd security-wise, I have never had a problem on my home computers running xp either, so additional security seems like a price to pay rather then an efficiency.

I would love to be drawn to vista, but gaming/development-wise is it really worth it as a non-basic windows user?

No... Don't know how I missed the post above mine. Sorry.

On the other hand I can say that I've used CCleaner for the last two or three years without breaking anything, and that it has an "analyse" mode, so you can give it a shot before committing yourself. But I don't know enough about these things to make a solid recommendation, no.

I will second your suggestion to use SpyBot though. That's a really nice, easy-to-use tool. But I would have thought most Blitzers are aware that they can, er, "optimise" their startup.

My computers too old, there are no graphics cards capable of DX10 avaliable for the motherboard. You can get Vista Ultimate for about $150 if you wait for the bi monthly special offer. At least thats as cheap as it gets in my local computer store.

I definately think it's worth that much, but I would hesitate to buy it at the recommended retail price, which seems ridiculously high to me :).

I will add : nVidia, Sun, HP and Logitech also.

The problem with registries is that even if you make a backup and only then screw them up, you might not have a chance to restore them either from regular or safe mode, which for most people equals to a forced re-install. Personally, I only edit registries by hand if needed.

Im using Vista here, XP died catastrophically with nothing recoverable from the system at all. Vista seems stable atm :)