Upgrade Time

[Dyne]

I'm going to be upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista Home Basic. So I will most likely be spending the next 48 to 72 hours off-line until it's installed properly. Otherwise, I'll be back as soon as possible.

I'm posting this here because I'd also like to see some collective feedback from users of both XP and Vista just to get an idea of what the general concensus is, and also to find out if there's any kinds of tricks or tips you could impart upon me either way...

Thanks to everyone who responds, serious or not. See ya soon.

[100_PERCENT ROEMER]

From what my friends have told me, Vista blows donkey cock.

[Chickenwarlord]

Vista is a downgrade. Switching is like trading in a nice home for a small apartment with invasive and accusatory neighbors.

[Dyne]

Well, then I suppose it's a bit late. It's installed and running surprisingly well considering my system specs.

Which are as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 2700+

768 MB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS

At least, that's what Vista is showing me...so...yeah. I need to grab a pair of 1GB DDR RAM.

[Pyrion]

Home Basic?

What, your system can't handle Aero?

[Pyrion]

From what my friends have told me, Vista blows donkey cock.

Have they actually gone about installing Vista, and if so, did they bother to at least try to tweak it much the same as is practically mandatory with XP?

Or are they just jumping on the bandwagon because it's currently "hip" to bash Vista?

[Kanthos]

I'm getting noticeably better performance under XP than Vista. I got my new laptop a few months ago and left Vista on for about 3 weeks before I went back to XP.

[Smoke]

There's a few performance increasing packs for Vista out now, from Microsoft themselves. Also, Vista's pretty much good to go these days, although in some cases you might wanna wait for SP1.

Some tips though:

1) Don't upgrade, reinstall. A lot of Vista issues are related to people upgrading when they should be doing a clean install.

2) nVidia drivers are pretty shitty at the moment, they should get better over time.

3) Remember how XP was back when it came out in 2001? Vista's a lot better than XP was when it came out, and it's still better than XP is these days at several points.

Anyway, here's a few links:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938979

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194

For all your performance-boosting needs.

I run Vista Business on my Macbook in a dualboot configuration, and it's been nice with me so far. I don't use it for too much yet though(Mainly because OSX does almost everything I need it to do)

[Effef]

Have they actually gone about installing Vista, and if so, did they bother to at least try to tweak it much the same as is practically mandatory with XP?

Or are they just jumping on the bandwagon because it's currently "hip" to bash Vista?

Thats the thing, there isn't really much you can tweak yet. I have been using Vista on this laptop for about three months, and with anything less than 2 gigs of RAM it is noticeably less responsive than XP. There are still some compatibility problems, though they are few and far between as of now.

However, the way Vista manages RAM is much better. It preloads the programs you use regularly into RAM, so they load much faster. This is also the reason Vista likes to eat up RAM.

[Schwaltzvald]

http://www.blackviper.com/

May help you with Vista...

Also you probably should have at least gone for Premium Home at the very least...

I don't really see a Vista "upgrade" being necessary until much later, especially with compatibility issues with various programs, popular and best-kept-secret-ones, are still being resolved....

[Dyne]

There's a few performance increasing packs for Vista out now, from Microsoft themselves. Also, Vista's pretty much good to go these days, although in some cases you might wanna wait for SP1.

Some tips though:

1) Don't upgrade, reinstall. A lot of Vista issues are related to people upgrading when they should be doing a clean install.

2) nVidia drivers are pretty shitty at the moment, they should get better over time.

3) Remember how XP was back when it came out in 2001? Vista's a lot better than XP was when it came out, and it's still better than XP is these days at several points.

Anyway, here's a few links:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938979

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194

For all your performance-boosting needs.

I run Vista Business on my Macbook in a dualboot configuration, and it's been nice with me so far. I don't use it for too much yet though(Mainly because OSX does almost everything I need it to do)

You, sir, are awesome. Thank you.

[Smoke]

http://www.blackviper.com/

May help you with Vista...

No.

Most of the "tweaks" with disabling services listed there have a VERY minor effect on overall performance in recent systems and are only useful if you're still running a sub-800MHz system with 128MB RAM and Windows XP. In some cases, performance can even get worse. There used to be a bigass topic on Ars Technica with benchmarks and everything in it, but it's sadly gone from there now due to old age.

Contrary to popular "power user" belief, there's nothing wrong with a bit of RAM actually being used, as opposed to keeping as much of it empty as possible. Memory management is quite advanced these days, and it's not like it needs to be empty. It is however recommended to quit some of the more RAM-intensive stuff when you wanna game, but that's only normal. Same goes for looking for more efficient software to replace bloat.

Also, anyone thinking about disabling the pagefile should be punched in the nuts.