Hey Guys,

As i am getting my new PC soon The Thread

I have the option for XP or Vista and i'm not really sure on whihc OS i should choose

Price isn't really an issue so its mainly which would be better for me. I love my games and i'll be using the PC for a lot of gaming (i wont want to lose the ability to play my old stuff)

Also I am planning to network it to my old XP Home and will that be an issue if i use Vista

Voted XP. Reason: wait for the service pack of Vista before running it (personal opinion).

I would say stick with XP

They can be some real compatibility issues that could mess up your gaming

i assume that you intend to still plauy some of your older stuff - like Diablo2, Red Alert 2 and Generals

Stick with Xp - (hone over Pro)

Did you just stay stick with XP home over XP Pro? OMG.

Actually the initial launch of Vista isn't as bad as the launch versions of Win 98 and XP. Been using Vista for a few months now daily. Have had no major problems with it yet. The vast majority of my software works with Vista and I have drivers for my hardware. I am enjoying using Vista, but I also use XP (which I dual boot).

I would say go my route and dual boot. That way you can have the best fo both worlds!!

XP

(Home or Pro, doesn't really matter)

Pro is for business and networking functionality etc. Not worth paying double for it when you don't need all of the extra's that Pro has

Personally I would never install XP Home on any machine. May just be me...

Current vista out now: NO. It barely supports Office and you cant install any of your old programs (say goodbye to all ur games inc CnC3) and u cant network to Xp pro or older.
Stick with XP, better than being gay

I have office 2003 installed on vista. works without any hassles. Tried Office 2007 - Runs a little slow.

Networking is also a breeze. Used Vista on a gaming LAN recently and 98% of the PC's there were using XP Pro. Never had a single issue.

Um, CnC3 works fine on Vista 32-bit. Doesn't work on Vista 64-bit.

In all honesty, Going for Vista now isn't going to hurt you too much. Pretty much most drivers are available (albeit a little buggy still) and you've got DX10. If you go XP, you're going to be limited to DX9 (officially - apparently a DX10 wrapper may be available sometime), and you'll have to buy Vista later on to enjoy the benefit of it when it becomes mainstream. Look, you're going to take a performance hit with Vista, but if you're getting a decent machine, you're not really going to notice.

As for not supporting Office? Well, it seems to work fine at my office. Granted we're using Vista Enterprise, but I'm not aware of any problems.

Bleeding edge comes at a cost. Is Vista worth it, I can't say, but as much as I like XP, Vista WILL get going, and it WILL become mainstream Windows, so you may need to suffer a little bit now, and be more prepared that us XP guys later. I use XP64, which took almost 2 years to get a lot of basic tools (Daemon Tools) to work, and sadly it's still not fully supported. Do I regret using it? Sometimes, but I can play some games in 64-bit mode, and they look AMAZING! I can only imagine what DX10 games will look like, compared to the lowly DX9 version. DX10 games may be nowhere in sight now, but come Christmas, I can almost guarantee you'll see a whole bunch of them.

Simply put (in my opinion) :
XP - Best for the next 6 months
Vista - Best for the 4 years after that.

No issues.

One thing I didn't look at before writing this long post, was what machine you were getting. DX10 is of no use to you, as you're getting a Nvidia Gefore 7300 LE which is pretty much bottom of the line DX9c card. I would say you'd probably notice the performance hit of Vista, so I recommend XP, ONLY because of your GPU. Maybe save for a few months, and wait for the mainstream DX10 cards (Nvidia Geforce 8600/ ATiAMD 2600). The choice is yours.

Umm.. i'm getting a 7800 GTX for my machine.

So will that make any difference

Well, you'll not likely notice the performance hit, but it's still a DX9c card. You'll have no benefit from Vista, except maybe the enhanced security.

Voted Vista. There will be some growing pains, but it beats paying R1k now for XP, and another R1.5K a year from now for Vista.

I liked the feel and the responsiveness of Vista, and will be getting it soon. I used a "trial" version for the 30 days it allowed me.
What made me switch back was lack of EAX support, but I think a workaround is out now.

You can extend Vista's activation "grace" period to up to 120 days without violating microsoft's terms and conditions.

Click

I reckon i will probably be going for Vista now

Thanks for all the help guys

Recently just upped to Vista, no problems with it so far and it doesnt seem to be more resource hungry than XP was, I'd say go for it

Can someone who has Vista tell me if games like Diablo2, Generals RA2 and other old games will work for Vista

Also how do i do a dual boot system

Google is wise indeed:

List of Vista compatible games

Dual boot Vista

There are also plenty of apps to streamline the dual boot process, just do a search.

Well thanks for the links Rust! That list will come in very handy for me!

Pity about Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 (ogh well i have CNC 3). But mosto f my games will work on this.

Looks like i will be getting Vista for my new machine

I installed vista recently....the ultimate version.
So far I find it a nice holiday for my brain...new scenery, new things to learn and of course the tweaking.

Issues encountered so far:
-Gameport support nonexistent...(then again who is still using a gameport when there is USB?)
-Refreshing of DVD /CD drives. Won't detect CDs sometimes unless you select explore or it will prompt you to format the CD even though its read only. A firmware update of all my drives slightly improved this.
-Uses 530mb RAM when idle (Std Install). So I added more RAM and yes you can feel a difference.

Bottom line:
It is a good OS (dont you dare start flaming me fanboys) but there is no rush to upgrade winxp. If you got a new PC this year get vista else wait for the end of the year when there are more tweaks and better drivers out.

Hmmm...

I reckon i'll stick with my XP Home for the time being - i'll need ot work on my PC (its only a P4 with 1 GB RAM) before i can upgrade to Vista

BR - can you have a look at the PC's specs. I'm planning to order it and not sure which OS

* Intel Core 2 Duo 2.41 Ghz
* Intel Original 946 Motherboard
* Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX - 512 MB
* 2 GB DDR2 RAM
* 500W PSU
* 320 GB SATA HDD
* 19" Mercury LCD
* 16X LG Lightscribe DVD Burner
* Sound & Network Card Built In
* 1.44" Floppy
* Microsoft Keyboard + Mouse
* Antec Case

Any issues i'm likely to have with Vista

vista not all online game able to support it yet... so i still on XP

hey Blackrazor welcome back ya... been a while need more of your comments in here

I say you stick with xp. My friends say they don't like vista.

I bought a laptop with Windows Vista Business Edition and Office 2003. Never had a days problem with it.

Once you get around the new UAC and User Account Elevation Security features and tweak the system a little bit there are no hassles at all.

Going for Vista now isn't really a problem IMHO.

But hey, that's my personal experience with Vista.

Um.. so all the applications you installed are working?

Thats normally what Means....

Yes... everything I installed worked perfectly...

And even if it didn't there's always the compatibility options...

I guess vista wasn't so bad after alll

Hardly

Been running Vista for 4 months and no worries. I even managed to get Tiberian Sun to run on it (1995 game)!!

Its a great OS

Your friend? That's your friends opinion. We need your opinion

Once you get used to Vista its REALLY isn't as bad as people make it out to be...

I am learning to like and loathe various features of Vista at the same time.

But for the most part I'm happy with it.