XP Vs Vista

[Neil Speirs]

What about both?

XP – shop
Vista – laptop

Prefer XP 🙂

[Gareth Hankinson]

Thats the way i do it…

XP – Desktop alongside the cutter
Vista – Laptop designing from home and out and about.

I prefer XP

[Lynn Normington]

don’t have a mac so I don’t know ??

not much help 🙄

Lynn

[Joseph Helm]

I’d go with XP Pro, then get a copy of Windows 7 when it comes out.

It’s more stable than Vista.

[Nicola McIntosh]

id go with xp with workshop cutters and printers for compatibility

vista for working online and in the house as i love it 😀

had a few friends try out windows 7, and not got any good reports back yet, as all their pc’s went dead 😕 waiting on some good feedback 😀

[Hugh Potter]

my two older kids got vista basic on their laptops dec 07. i hated it with a passion, always asking permissions and stuff. .

when i had this pc built they wanted to put vista on so i could get the most from the hi-spec processors etc. no thank you! XP Pro please!

[Richard Urquhart]

My ripping and cutting is done running xp pro, my design is done on vista 64 bit and networked thanks Mr Roland to the one running xp. ILove the speed of a quad core and vista 64 had no running problems, and works with signlab 8 and flexisign,

So its a mix for me
Rich

[Stephen Morriss]

I use XP pro on my work comp, never got on with Vista but it can use the hardware better, more ram etc as it’s 64 bit (think that’s right)
My 3 year old laptop has win 7 on and I’ve no problems with it, just slightly slower than XP but not like Vista and it seems to run Corel X3 etc without any problems, but I wouldn’t use win 7 on a critical work comp yet.

You could try XP 64, that’ll make better use of extra ram etc but not sure about compatibility with 32 bit programs.

Just out of interest I saw a good article about the free ride being over for software developers (it was the title) it was basically saying that the software developers couldn’t rely on faster processor speeds to improve their programs now and they were having to write them to multi thread to use multi core processors which from the look of the article is more involved than it sounds.

Steve

[John Wilson]

i’ve been offered the following pc at a knocked down price

http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd/product/seo/807769

Only about £150 off but they are saying that it just won’t perform as much under XP

I want it to run my plotter and printer plus various software

I’m fed up with having various different PC’s for different tasks

My Mac is my main design machine but sadly i can’t run my printer from it or my embroidery software (dual booting isn’t an option)

[Stephen Morriss]

I would think that it would run everything together under XP, my old computer was only a single core 1.8 ghz processor with 1.5 gig ram and it used to run Roland Colorip, the plotter from Signlabs and have internet explorer, email and corel draw open all at the same time with few problems, it used to choke a little if I was saving a big file in corel at the same time as printing but the printer just hung for a second or so then carried on.

If your not going to be designing on this computer at the same time it should be ok, especially if your running newer programs that can multi thread.

Steve

[David-Foster-]

Hi John

A bit of a beast that PC :lol1: Doesn’t look like it fits in an office environment, looks like it would be happy playing COD4 😉

Yes it’s a shame us Mac Heads have to use PC’s but it’s a necessary evil 👿

I have given up dual booting, much better to have just a dedicated PC for the plotters etc.

[Tomas Vidziunas]

You don’t need Vista, it doesn’t have any advantages compared to XP (except the looks, but you can get them on XP).
"it just won’t perform as much under XP" – Lie, they just want to sell more expensive operating system.
1. Vista does require more "power" but that is not a good thing it is slower than XP. It needs more resources just to run operating systems itself.
2. There can be compatibility issues with Vista. And there shouldn’t be any problems with XP.
I quickly added few parts (not Super PC, more like Average PC 🙂 )and that’s what I get (you can probably get cheaper than that):
Notice that there is much much faster CPU, faster and more memory (6 GB RAM), possibly fastest SATA HDD (VelociRaptor) + normal HDD (you get same total 650 GB). Everything more or less similar to what they are offering you. And you can see what brand parts you get, they are proper brands. There is not a word what brand part that t PC is combined of. And it is even cheaper than 950.
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4489/capturedly.jpg

Edit: Just noticed that you get a discount of 150, what leaves you with 800 pounds, still…
Edit2: Don’t forget that if you will use more than 3GB of memory you need 64Bit OS (doesn’t matter if its Vista or XP), and if you will use 64bit operating system you should check if all your peripherals (printers plotters etc.) will work on 64 bit OS, cause there can be problems with drivers.

[Tobias Redig]

quote Tomas Vidziunas:

You don’t need Vista, it doesn’t have any advantages compared to XP (except the looks, but you can get them on XP).
“it just won’t perform as much under XP” – Lie, they just want to sell more expensive operating system.
1. Vista does require more “power” but that is not a good thing it is slower than XP. It needs more resources just to run operating systems itself.
2. There can be compatibility issues with Vista. And there shouldn’t be any problems with XP.
I quickly added few parts (not Super PC, more like Average PC 🙂 )and that’s what I get (you can probably get cheaper than that):
Notice that there is much much faster CPU, faster and more memory (6 GB RAM), possibly fastest SATA HDD (VelociRaptor) + normal HDD (you get same total 650 GB). Everything more or less similar to what they are offering you. And you can see what brand parts you get, they are proper brands. There is not a word what brand part that t PC is combined of. And it is even cheaper than 950.

Edit: Just noticed that you get a discount of 150, what leaves you with 800 pounds, still…
Edit2: Don’t forget that if you will use more than 3GB of memory you need 64Bit OS (doesn’t matter if its Vista or XP), and if you will use 64bit operating system you should check if all your peripherals (printers plotters etc.) will work on 64 bit OS, cause there can be problems with drivers.

Some of the points here are flawed. For one, Vista is actually cheaper then XP x64. And checking if all your hardware is supported under 64-bit XP is a given. Check every time you buy an OS if your hardware is supported, same goes with Vista as with XP 64-bit.

As to the compatibility issues, there shouldn’t be any with Vista now. Systems been out long enough for everyone to have adapted to it.

Vista will always have more overhead due to it running more services in the background etc, but a modern computer wont notice that much. So what if the indexer uses 16 megs of RAM when you’ve got 4-12 gig in your computer. But installing Vista on an older computer will of course make the extra overhead more noticeable.

Upgrading now is kinda sucks aswell. You’ve got the new i7 Core systems which are almost down to a reasonable price, but not quite (IMO). And Windows 7 is nearing release.

Asuming all my hardware/software runs on Vista I’d still pick Vista over XP.

[Tomas Vidziunas]

quote :

Vista is actually cheaper then XP x64

– I think only Vista Home 64 Bit is cheaper than XP Pro 64 Bit

quote :

Systems been out long enough for everyone to have adapted to it.

– In most cases yes, but if your hardware is "discontinued" then…

I would use old Win XP License (if old PC goes to scrap) and get Windows 7 when it comes out later this year.