Windows Vista Versus Windows XP: Which Is Better?

well i have come to realise that it all depends on the specs of the system.


so all this whining n nagging will not change the fact that vista is xp's big bro. wit time we will get over the arguement. that time it will be like comparing xp n me today!!

or maybe iot will become like comparing windows 95 to 98 first edition?

till this day, 98 first edition is reviled for the ignominous step backwards it was.

Or perhaps comparing me to 98SE?

98SE is hailed as windows 4.0's finest hour, all too quickly cut short by the disaster that was me.

Vista is doing badly enough now for it to be forever stigmatised as the failed successor to xp. ANyone who installs it has nothing but complaints. 2000 also had many compatibility issues, but you heard 10 praises for every 1 problem. With vista, all we ever hear are problems problems problems, and the only good thing is the security we can't see.

I'm not sure vista was a good move for MS. Secure by design is an excellent concept, but why do that after maing so many users addicted to an easy to use OS? if we want a secure but hard to use OS, theres always linux, which is superior to VISTA in those respects (secure by desing)

what we needed was a new XP with major usability upgrades like instant search, resumable file copy, browsable clipboard, virtual folders, XML-based registry

Yeah, Vista at the moment is a load of crap. Full of unnecessary productivity inhibiting 'fluff'.

 most of u people dissing vista if one were to take a closer examination of u guys its either
1-u have never used or even seen vista before, u are just riding on the tider wave of the same ignorant "i can't afford it so it is shit" talk.
2-u have vista on a shity machine that does not meet the basic requirement to run it.e.g running vista on celeron based processors,512ram etc,or run premium vista on a system designated for vista basic.
3-u have vista on a good system but u are too lazy to do a search on google to get to now what applications are compatitble with and which is not.so u use applications meant for xp with vista, many don't even use the apps in compatible mode, u just go and install ,
then when your system givs u problem, who do u blame, vista,
i was one of the first person to buy vista when it came out, it came preinstalled with my laptop, but before i got it i read extensively on what and what are its does and donts, the results is an execellent system that has NEVER caught a virus, malware, spyware etc, a very stable system it doesnt crash, very fast, my boot time is less than 30sec is the day of my first use till now, there has been no system drag, in all, i hve a perfect system, before i install any application i will check if it is compatible with vista.if not i will try the application in compatibilty mode to xp, and run it as an adminstrator (if u want to know more about how to run application on vista in xp mode it here http://bigbrovar.wordpress.com/tag/vista/ ), most application will run fine from then on, some would still crash, well u can't blame vista for that, abi who ever developed it didnt do his home work well,
 WHY do u have to go through all this stress to install on vista? the anwser is simple, Vista is a radical change from Xp and any other previous windows, in XP for example, once u log in with an administrator account(which does not require a password) any application u install on your system is given WIDE POWERS manipulate       
 yor machine as its see fit, the application  can do and undo, this is not a bad thing is that program is a good one for the benefit of your machine, but if not, u are in trouble, that is why viruses like ravmon and brontok can would rubbish your registry,disable system restore, and hide folder options while nibbling away at your operating system,
with vista, things are very different, there is a permission level which has been inceased and an administrator privilege is similar to what u have in linux OS, the result is that no Application can wake up one morning and rubbish your system files unless u give is power of adminstrator, even then some program wont still run because the power of an administrator is even limited, this is a copy of the ROOT user in linux, so most programs that are used to the old way of life in XP file under vista, but things are improving and almost every program now have a vista compatible version, and those that don't have set date when such versions would be ready,
about the bugs, again many of them have been fixed by updates, even UBUNTU THE GREATEST OS IN THE WORLD has some bugs which are fixed by updates,
conclusion Vista is the Best os from the evil empire for now, if u feel diffrent , lets be logical , give me an area where u think that xp flaws vista and i will respond

@dakmanzero

you may have a point but in the near future Vista will rule. Afterall, normal Win XP was crappy. Until they released service pack 2 i was still using Win ME. So just chill for the next service pack and prepare to be amazed! BY the way, Vista has crazy voice recognition and control abilities. You can do almost everything by voice even play games, attach a mic and test it out!

I second that. Installing google sketchup in compatibility mode allows you to install, but the app does not go beyond the loading screen. installing PDMS in compatibity mode , you can install, but it crashes once the startup dialog starts loading graphics.

also, the requirements for AutoCAD 2008

System Requirements

The system requirements for 32-bit AutoCAD:
Intel® Pentium® 4 processor, 2.2 GHz Recommended
Microsoft® Windows Vista™, Windows® XP Home and Professional (SP2), Windows® 2000 (SP4)
512 MB RAM
750 MB free disk space for installation
1024x768 VGA with True Color
Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 6.0 (SP1 or higher)

The System requirements for Windows Vista or 3D modeling (32 and 64-bit AutoCAD)
Intel® 3.0 GHz or greater
2 GB RAM or greater
2 GB free hard disk available not including installation
1280 x 1024 32-bit color video display adapter (True Color) 128 MB or greater, OpenGL®, or Direct3D® capable workstation class graphics card. 
For Windows Vista, a Direct3D capable workstation class graphics card with 128 MB or greater is required.

so, to run an app like autocad on vista is more money down the drain.expensive os, more expensive hardware specs.

I don't quite understand it, but it seems vista has minimal support for openGL. so if your games/apps don't have direct 3d/direct x support,  no dice!

Lemmie join this OS fray. First, i hate anything to do with MS windows, why? First, it is very expensive to install and maintain. Its security is so flawed that hacking is very imminent. Furthermore, you have to buy it office suite unlike Linux which is inclusive. The best example where Linux beats Windows is in Servers. E.g, here in Kenya, 90% of all servers runs on Linux and it is fast becoming the preferred OS for desktop than windows. I can't compare XP and Vista because they r all insecure.

Check: www.realwebtek.com, www.mambo-foundation.org and www.mambolove.com

i  use  vista  n so  far  it  has  been  quite  reliable, was  expecting  the  worst  from  all  the  negative  coments  i  heard.

but  the  true  test  would  be  to  load  xp  n  vista  on  2  systems  with  the  same  specs,
then  n  only  then  cud  u  acces  n  be  sure  wch  is    faster/better

because  i  feel  an  xp system  with  1gb  ram  n 1-8ghzduo core processsor might  give  me  better  speed  than  what  am  presently  getting  from  the  vista.

but  vista  comes  tops  in  ease  of  operation  n  trouble  shooting, just  try  n  diable user  accts, that  way  it  wont    prompt  u  4  any  action  u  take,

i  recommend  vista  4  people  that  are  computer  savvy, its  not  very  suitable  4  the  man  on  the  strets  who  is  so  much  into  xp

Nah, I am not really blaming AMD, I was just curious since I have never used any system with AMD chip. It was out of curiosity that I opted for an Intel chip with Vista(With gave me even more horrendous results). From my little experiment, I found out my system with AMD chip performed slightly faster than my supposedly 'superior' gazillion core Intel System (with the exception of rendering speed, intel kicks it to the dump in that department with a very shocking wide margin).

Honestly the only reason why I am still wasting my time on Windows is some of my vital apps are lacking any Linux version, once they've been ported, I am done with windows, be it Vasta or Vespa.

and very xpensive, to me between mac and windows mac is a greater evil, locking your os to one hardware and forcing people to buy the hardware with a ridiculous price
, look at iphone, nybody that wants to use that phone would have to be enslaved with a deal on AT&T for 5 years,

comparing vista to xp to me is a bit like pitching win2k against xp side by side: essentially the same OS with a few tweaks here and there especially in the GUI. windows NT is forever windows NT however much the hype microshaft builds up. frankly im rather disaapointed because most of the promises made by M$ have not been implemented in the final release and i have been following the vista scene since its codename:longhorn days via paul's excellent winsupersite (www.winsupersite.com).
 the end result to me does not justify 6 YEARS of sheer hard work and five million lines of code! the truth is most of the heavy duty coding is visible in Direct X 10, while the rest of the vista engine is 90% NT (ie NT, 2K and XP) kernel. there isnt much substantial difference between xp and vista, from the kernel structure ( except a substrate in the hardware abstraction layer, which dakmanzero referred to earlier as impeding direct query to hardware. but thats the hallmark of NT systems against 9.x systems, isnt it?) up to the NTFS file system. i remember way back in 2002 MS promised a move from the NT file system to a database-like implementation of Yukon. it was supposed to make windows search more DB-oriented but sadly we have to contend with vista's index system which if not careful can bog down an already severely bogged down system.

vista too has its share of problems. the following are based on my personal experience and ive grappled with all versions except vista business.

1. vista starter is a WASTE of TIME, MONEY and COMPUTER resources. i can't imagine why they built it, why they charge for it, and why anybody would want it. you can't enable ICS, you can't do pretty much anything! boo!!!

2. vista basic is pretty much for people who have outgrown vista inspirat. nothing there. it ought to be free too, else gimme back my XP!

3. home premium has windows aero. ok, fair enough, but what does THAT do for productivity? indeed, if anything it makes u LESS productive.  if you have  the prerequisite 1gig RAM, aero hogs like 80% ALL the time! even having a second core makes little impact. i recommend it for people with a dual processor rig and 2 gigs of ram alongside tons of patience.

4. vista ultimate. for the life of me i can't figure why "ultimate" isnt a misnomer to most people as far as this version is concerned. it got bitlocker. big deal, except if you are a certified pedophile with tons of kiddie nude pix on your C drive and dollops of paranoia i can't see why encrypting file system shouldnt be enough to assuade your sense of insecurity.

5. vista seems to have an aversion-in the name of security-to queries to the graphics subsystem by third party (ie non-MS) processes. ASPI cannot be updated ( i was trying to plug in a video codec), openGL stuff cause crashes (?). again this is my experience so it could be peculiar.

6. @tezzazzpete: unfortunately, tex, (out loud) VISTA DOES DISPLAY THE BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH! yes it happened more than once and the culprit was something called transxp.dll. infact, in my experience vista crashes and hangs a whole lot more than xp does. just try killing the system from the power button (rather than shutting down) and reboot. sometimes if you do it more than three times on a system with broadcom wlan the wifi driver crashes. ive tried this on 4 separate occasions wit the same sad result.     

7. driver problems. vista comes wit 19,000 drivers inbuilt, they say, but my HP 24 series inkjet wont run. neither would  my AC97 based conexant AMC audio. lots of relatively old hardware make vista compel you to trudge the old online driver repository, or dust off the recovery cd and cross your fingers hoping it is compatible.

in summary, here is my take on the whole thing: tired of the endless hype around Apple's  OS X Feline series M$ decided to go for something that would take the shine off the old apple but they concentrated way too much on the GUI and found out that since they didnt make the hardware (unlike apple) they could foster that end of the problem to the poor graphic chipset makers ( support for direct x 10, 2 shaders per pixel, 128mb minimum Vram etc) and went along beautifying icons and toolbars. for six years all they did was adorn toolbars. meanwhile iPhone, on a modified osx leopard, was running Core Animation with a fluidity vista can only envy.

stick to your xp for now, until vista service packs one and two come along. if you can't do without the vista look go for a transformation pack like VTP or vista inspirat. contrary to what tezzazzpete said, these shellpacks don't take memory because they modify the system32 shell with vista resources.
 if you are scared of shell modification try stardock's window blinds, which DOES eat up memory (it stays resident in ram and has a big footprint) or TGT soft's style xp (which does not stay in memory) with tons of free vista themes at www.themexp.org. however my favorite is Windows X's Vista transformation Pack 6 (VTP6) which comes with sidebar, visual tooltip, toolbar throbber (that vista glow in toolbar buttons), vista sounds, log in and bootscreens etc. mix it up wit window blinds and you even get Aero style border translucence! glass2k gives complete window translucence. hell you can even download windows defender, media player 11, explorer7 and install office 2007!

(if you can't install media player 11 on a non-genuine xp, let me kniow)

incidentally the best xp experience  has to be 3DNA. theres nothing in vista to touch it. a 3D, Doom-like interface? believe it.

so, hope this little bit helps. vista is not all that a far cry from xp when it comes to nuts and bolts.

Vista is ok,but Xp is better.So many issues with vista,for example the Microsoft web access problem.

NOPE! its not blackcomb , that was the name that was rumored to be the next version of windows, even Vienna was used, but the actual name that MS have officially tagged their next release is simply windows 7, by the way since vista is the last major release for windows.then we should not expect anything major when window 7 comes out.

Damn Windoze and its evil Empire, me na linux i dey use, infact i have installed xp as an applicaton on UBUNTU, now i have vista ubuntu and xp, but UBUNTU IS THE ONE OS TO RULE THEM ALL

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=233   

when i mean last major release i meant last for  a long long time the next editons of windows like windows 7 would be  major upgrades to vista and not a major window release, for example the last major release before vista was windows 98,every other OS that came after were just major upgrades.even xp, but vista is diff its a major release due to the radically new stuffs in the area of security which is a complete diff from former windows,gui and other features addup but what clearly makes it a major release is the whole new security framework that was built with vista which is unprecedented in windows, MS themself always term it as a major release, but windows 7 is just goin to be an upgrade. http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/windows_7.asp     
 
although he said vista wont be the last major update for windows, it is clear from his statement that it would be  quite some time beforeMS come out with another major release,

about the name, the real and only name of the next release in windows 7, and blackcomb where formerly used but now the official code name is windows 7,  http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/408802.htmor       http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=233

mac os is the biggest evil on planet earth, i would never use an over priced  os that would lock me down to hard ware , for wetin, if i get something it should be totally mine and i should have the right to use and distribute,bend and edit,and add--only linux givs me that option mac cnt stand linux in anyway,