Your experiences of Vista performance

bootneck02 · 28-06-2008, 07:52 PM

I am always upgrading my PC when I can afford it, I bought a cheap new PC the other day from Aria.com for £112 +PP and have already upgraded the CPU from 2.8GHz Celeron to 3.8 GHZ Pentium D, ordered a new graphics card to replace the on board one and a new sound card also to replace the on board one, I only need the new PC to use for my A+ technicians course. They haven't yet caught up with Vista yet so had to put on XP Pro oem. Just love mucking about with PCs and when I have completed the course I may know something about them.

Oh I forgot put another 80 gig hard drive in as well.

But I must admit I am more happy with Vista on this PC than XP on the works PCs and my other new PC ( just to keep on topic)

kevinzheng.101 · 28-06-2008, 08:32 PM

I upgraded my hard drive to a 120GB 7200RPM HDD. It was originally an 80GB.

**Digerati** · 28-06-2008, 09:58 PM

Quote:

I am always upgrading my PC when I can afford it

That's the way to do it, IMO. This computer started out as a Gateway 486 back in '93. At that time, I started setting up my filing system, Outlook email, contacts, and appointments, Office, my favorites, etc. Since that time, I have upgraded the case twice (soon to be a 3rd time), 4 motherboards, 7 or 8 CPUs, several hard drives, from Windows 3.11 to 95, to 98 to 98SE, to Me, to XP and soon to Vista. From Word 2.0 to Office XP Pro and soon Office 2007. I have been through 5 or 6 video cards, and just bought two 22" Widescreen monitors.

The only think original to the Gateway today is the seldom used 3 1/2 inch floppy. I decided not to put the 5 1/4" floppy in this case.

I don't ever build me a new computer - the one I have just constantly evolves.

bootneck02 · 29-06-2008, 03:37 PM

Yes I agree with you Digerati my first PC was a Advent with Windows 98, I upgraded to a HP Pavilion with XP. changed cased on it and started to build it up to what I have now second case different MB, and hardware only thing I have on this PC that was on the original HP is a DVD player writer. The 3.5 floppy is now in the new XP machine. I think PC's evolve into what the owner wants it to be as one learns what you can do with the technology and what you want the technology to do. I am into music so I have invested in a very good sound card and and speaker system and find the sound reproduction is better than the mid priced HiFi systems.

townsbg · 31-10-2008, 09:47 PM

On the first post [haven't read the rest] I'm surprised that Vista didn't run too well on a Core 2 Duo but if it was over loaded with crap then that could explain it. I wouldn't run Vista on a P3. I had enough trouble with XP running on a P3. I suppose if you turned off all of the fluff like the aero then maybe if you aren't running anything unnecessary but no less than 1 gb of ram. I think Vista runs decently on my computer but I have 2 gb ram & a 2ghz athalon 64 x2 dual core. I haven't had too many problems with it other than some driver problems, a wireless adapter problem, & it won't use my tv tuner. However I put most of my use on XP. I installed Vista myself so no extra stuff & I turn off services & extra applications that like to run on start up. I started my Vista experience with buisness but I just upgraded to ultimate. I have yet to totally play around with the ultimate features & I it looks like won't be able to use the bit locker drive encryption on my current computer. Haven't experimented with the media center either. Tried the 64 bit version one & saw that I would have alot of driver issues so I went back to the 32 bit. I however don't think that it beats xp on performance & it certaintly isn't easier to configure.

bootneck02 · 31-10-2008, 10:22 PM

:balloonAs I have said I like Vista I like the 64Bit version better and just recently tried it again but it suffers from the same problems such as drivers and software so am back with 32bit, I am planing to put a triple core CPU on the board as soon as I can afford one and put the dual E6600on my dual boot XP/Ubuntu PC:

I do not understand why people have not changed over to Vista, I think it probably because that it requires more resources than the old XP and bad marketing by MS. I am now looking forward to the Windows 7 coming out in 2010,

but I will have retired by then and it may be beyond my means then.

townsbg · 02-11-2008, 06:50 AM

I don't think thats it a bad system but on my hardware XP works better. I think that it is harder to use & configure than XP. What I don't like is how hardware intensive it is. I've heard it referred to as the modern day ME but I disagree with that. It just might be better with another service pack. I've been told that XP wasn't very good until sp 2 but I've only used Sp2 & 3 (which I don't see the point of other than to get a lot of the bug fixes/security updates done at once). I wouldn't have gotten Ultimate except that it was $65 for a legal upgrade copy & I probably wouldn't have Vista period except that I got the business edition for free through my school. It is very expen$ive. At this point I definitely wouldn't trade XP for Vista.

**Digerati** · 02-11-2008, 02:02 PM

Quote:

I do not understand why people have not changed over to Vista, I think it probably because that it requires more resources than the old XP

That's a lot of it, although that is a poor excuse. Since 2001 when XP, which was designed to support legacy hardware already, advances in hardware technologies and manufacturing techniques have brought mainframe performance closer to the desk top. Vista simply takes advantage of the hardware advances. Every new OS has, and should, do the same, and people should expect that.

Quote:

bad marketing by MS

They deserve some of the blame for sure, but most is due to lousy, irresponsible reporting by the IT media who drools over any slimmer of hope they can bash MS for something. MS never (and correctly so) pushed Vista as being faster than XP, and yet that is what the media slammed them for. Vista was created to address many of the security shortfalls in XP - which was created when NO ONE predicted the enormity of the Internet's rapid growth, or the proliferation of so many scumbags trying to hurt us and our children. Don't get me wrong, MS has done a lot to deserve careful watching, but XP was created to support legacy (and therefore less secure) hardware and software. Why? Because businesses and users slammed MS when they were forced to spend fortunes to upgrade all their hardware and proprietary software to support Windows 95/98, and they did not want to do it again.

Of course when you make compromises to support unsecure HW and SW, you expose vulnerabilities which badguys quickly extorted, and the press quickly jumped on to bash MS again. This time with Vista, MS, rightfully so, weighed security over legacy support. And what happens? The media bashes MS for not supporting legacy products. They can't win.

Also, the 3rd party software makers, including the major security players shuffled their feet and were agonizingly slow at putting out Vista versions. It took ZoneAlarm, for example, a year to come out with a Vista version.

A big reason many moved to Comodo, besides ZA getting so bloated.

And many hardware makers simply squandered time (waiting to see what everyone else is doing) coming out with Vista drivers for their current products.

Sadly, typical of what happens every time a new product comes out, early adapters tried to install a 21st Century OS on 6, 7, 8 year old and older, 20th Century hardware, and it failed, or could not keep up with the demands, especially graphics, or would not run their favorite 10 year old program. And they were very loud in their frustrations, and of course, the wannabe IT reporters jumped on the band wagon and slammed MS for that too.

Those with complaints scream the loudest and, as usual, the media (like lemmings) follow along and totally blow everything out of proportion.

Here's a perfect example I wrote from the Windows 7 thread.

Quote:

Note the PCWorld blog by PCW staffer Tom Spring from May 12th this year titled, "XP SP3 Bug Makes Some AMD PCs Crash: Is Your PC at Risk?" Clearly the title blames Microsoft, right?

But 6 paragraphs down they reveal the problem is really with HP's buggy image files!!!! Not Microsoft after all! That's just simply shameless MS bashing and lousy journalism - from a site that is supposedly a reputable IT site.

See the article here and note my comment at the bottom, then see their response. Oh wait! They did not bother to respond.

Sadly, PCW is only one of the many IT media sites that are not interested in responsible journalism. I worry now that C|Net has been bought by CBS, what will happen to them. ZiffDavis, notorious for haphazard, incomplete, and misleading reviews, must also be read with a suspicious mind. Sadly, these 3 companies are 3 of the biggest sources of IT information we have. I read them all and usually, their information is sound - but they are wrong way too often and is it most often because of lazy reporting and short deadlines - and failing to research the facts thoroughly before reporting.

Finally, many like myself, recommended users DON'T "upgrade" to Vista, but instead go with Vista on a "new" computer made with parts that have published, tested Vista drivers, or upgrade to current technology hardware, then go Vista.

So now they wait for their current PC to die - of the 7 computers in this house, 5 are at least 5 years old, and just keep running and running and running with XP SP3 just fine.

bootneck02 · 02-11-2008, 02:59 PM

Hi Digerati I am not a IT professional like you but what you say makes sense, when my wife and I got together I had to buy her a PC because she was always wanting to use my PC when I was using it

so I bought her a HP 118a UK which had a AMD CPU and when SP3 came out I tried to download it. The dam thing downloaded and got nearly to the end and the rolled back the whole process took about 1 1/4 hrs, I Googled the problem and found out that HP had some sloppy writing in its software in older models with AMD CPU's but there was salvation, a patch from HP

. I downloaded the patch and then a error message popped up telling me that the PC was not able to take the patch

. At that point I got a bit miffed

and went out and bought her a new base unit put on a OEM copy of XP Pro updated the Windows including SP3 and the thing flies now

. What annoyed me most was that the HP PC cost 5 years ago and came with XP was not supported by the manufacturer and cost £500

and the new base unit with no OS only cost £110 and capable of running Vista (but she who must be obeyed) would only have XP, it is what she is used to bless her.

**Digerati** · 02-11-2008, 03:18 PM

"If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" -anon