Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Expected Tomorrow

[somanyholes]

might be of interest

http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/12/03/1917219.shtml

[Steve]

Thanks So ,I notice its a beta, It has a few hardware enhancements not available to myself although interested in the return from hibernation/wifi and the decrease in resources used by sidebar gadgets.Odd word in the tag list though

[Rik]

I wonder if the happy father will be handing out cigars?

[Sebby]

It's a shame that SP2 doesn't address the more important issues, most notibly poor performance on a lot of machines.

[Simon]

It'll probably make it worse, Seb! 

[Inactive]

You mean it could actually get worse?... 

[Simon]

If Microsoft put their minds to it, I'm sure it could be a lot better, In.  I fear, however, that their efforts will be concentrated on Windows 7. 

[Inactive]

I'm convinced that Vista is/was just a stop gap filler for MS.

[Rik]

Me too, always have been.

[Sebby]

I didn't think so at first, but once I read some stuff about Windows 7, I did.

[Rik]

I remember Me too well, Seb. Marketing exercise for the revenue stream and little else.

[cavillas]

When windows 7 is finally released it will just be Vista in a different guise.  I will not install SP2 Beta but will use the final release as by then all the debug code will have been removed.  Vista is a great OS.  After using it for a while XP seems very old Hat and slow.

[Sebby]

Indeed, another good example. That really was poor and unnecessary!

[madasahatter]

 Vista is a great OS.  After using it for a while XP seems very old Hat and slow.

Hear hear Alf - XP is sssooooo last decade. Shame on those luddites (So et al ) who refuse to accept change 

[Inactive]

That would be " change " for the sake of change then Mad ( nice to see you posting ) then.

I don't refuse to accept change, I just refuse to use it.

From your friendly luddite.

[cavillas]

I do like the extras that come with Vista.  I know you can get similar for XP from 3rd party sources but they just do not run as well as Vista's built in extras.  I only have a "lowly" celeron 432 but it is 64bit and it runs as fast as a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 so Vista does fly on this processor, I have no intention of getting a faster one now as it does all I need it to do from emails up to photo manipulation and more.

I would have not changed to Vista with my old machine but it came with my new machine and runs extremely well.  I did put XP pro on this new machine but it did seem so slow and cumbersome compared to Vista..

A luddited I am not.

[Rik]

Welcome back, Mad. 

[Noreen]

I would have not changed to Vista with my old machine but it came with my new machine and runs extremely well.

Same here, Alf, and I'd never go back now.

[Inactive]

Same here, Alf, and I'd never go back now.

Care to explain why Noreen?

I have computers with XP and Vista on, I cannot see any useful or significant benefits with Vista.

It just seems bloated to me.

[Noreen]

No I can't really explain, In, I haven't got enough technical knowledge. I just like it.

[Inactive]

Fair enough Noreen, I guess it is all about personal likes/dislikes.

[cavillas]

Like everything else it becomes personal preference.  I prefer Vista over XP, I have noticed an increase in performance an stability.  My machine has been running for many months now without turning off and no BSOD's or other problems.  It just runs better and the inbuilt extras work fine.  IE7 works in a protected mode also.  Just an overall better experience, it's hard to explain or quantify until used in its entirety over a period of time and put XP right out of your mind.  Just like the change over from £sd to Decimal, in the end you just stop recalculating in the old money values.

[Rik]

I don't know, Alf. I still can't get over the fact a Mars bar costs 7/7d.

[cavillas]

Mars bars cost that much   Glad I can't eat them anymore than, otherwise I would be broke by now (and extremely fat)

[Glenn]

There are over 10/- at work

[Rik]

Extortionate, Glenn.

[cavillas]

There are over 10/- at work

Don't buy tham at work.

[David]

  Welcome back Mad....sorry for going off subject.. Good to have you back  

[cavillas]

And another welcome back Mad.

[Inactive]

Like everything else it becomes personal preference.  I prefer Vista over XP, I have noticed an increase in performance an stability.  My machine has been running for many months now without turning off and no BSOD's or other problems.  

Alf, I can honestly say, that in the over 3 years that I have had my XP machine, I have never had one BSOD.or any other operating system problem, as far as I can recall.

[Rik]

Same here, In.

[cavillas]

I built my machine back in 2001 and have had xp on it ever since.  Added things and took away things.  It ran faultlessly from beta to sp3 but like all good things the machine died because of old age, it comes to us all.  So when the new machine came with Vista I was dubious at first but persevered and added 2GB memory and fell in love with Vista, I am fickle that way  I do not detract from XP but just find Vista better in all aspects for me.

[Inactive]

TBH Alf, I havn't found any item of significance on Vista, that is of any real benefit over XP.

Vista is just bloated, not very user friendly in it's default state ( constant pop up windows and hidden close down button etc. ). Just my opinion of course.

[Steve]

I think since SP2 came out XP takes a lot of beating but obviously it took from 2001 to 2004 to get to that stage and in those intervening years it was by no means perfect. Likewise with Vista, SP1 has stabilised and speeded up a quirky OS, I think a lot of the original problems were down to poor oem drivers i.e ATI and Nvidia.

Personally for me the choice depends on the hardware spec of the machine i.e quad core or core 2 duo,3Gb ram and a dedicated graphics card I'd use Vista as I like the GUI, anything less and I am convinced XP gets the job done a lot faster.

[cavillas]

NO No NO you're all wrong I tell you.  My OS is better than your OS.  Yah Yah Yah

[JohnUK89]

For me the only reason Vista is on my machine is that Uni work demands is (silly authentication protocols that only Windows and OS X can actually use). Of course I got my copy for nothing, thanks to MSDNAA, but if I didn't need to run it for Uni I wouldn't. Linux is my thing

That said, if you have the hardware (and by that I agree with the Core 2 Duo/Quad, 3-4GB+ RAM, Dedicated graphics card) then Vista runs quite well. My old Athlon 64 X2 system had difficulty running it smoothly, and that had 2GB RAM and a 7-series nVidia graphics card. XP was the better choice for that machine by far, in terms of Windows. I still prefer Linux over XP any day

[Inactive]

To each his / her own as they say.

[cavillas]

I do find that my Celeron 432 with intergrated graphics card plus 2Gb memory does run exceptionally smoothly and quickly.  There is no breakup of videos, flash movies etc and music plays smoothly also.  When doing photowork with photoshop I can easily manipulate 500Mb images with no problem.  It is just personal preference in the end and no OS is better than any other OS to any individual user.

I preferred DOS to windows 3.11 at the time as well.  I did play around with other OS's but settled for MS stuff as it is just more widely supported.  Like having a Cortina rather than a Skoda all those years ago.

[Sebby]

For me the only reason Vista is on my machine is that Uni work demands is (silly authentication protocols that only Windows and OS X can actually use). Of course I got my copy for nothing, thanks to MSDNAA, but if I didn't need to run it for Uni I wouldn't. Linux is my thing

That said, if you have the hardware (and by that I agree with the Core 2 Duo/Quad, 3-4GB+ RAM, Dedicated graphics card) then Vista runs quite well. My old Athlon 64 X2 system had difficulty running it smoothly, and that had 2GB RAM and a 7-series nVidia graphics card. XP was the better choice for that machine by far, in terms of Windows. I still prefer Linux over XP any day

Well said.

[vitriol]

As some will know I'm an ardent supporter of XP, but when I bought my new laptop it came pre loaded with Vista Home Premium, I resisted the temptation to put XP straight on it and so far I've had no problems with Vista.

On low end hardware though I would definately say XP murders Vista performance wise.  Give Vista some go go juice though and it runs pretty effortlessly. 

The "extras" in Vista tbh I don't really use.  The sidebar with the gadgets is of no use to me so that got turned off straight away.  The aero interface is nice but it is something that I could live without if I had to.
I would agree to a certain extent that Vista is a little bloated when it comes to the size of the install. My primary hdd partition is 111GB in size and currently have 80GB free, thats pretty bad especially since I have no music, no videos, about 10 pictures and have installed about 15 programs.  Where has all my space gone MS?

Overall though I'd say that I'm happy with what I currently have.

A blisteringly quick XP desktop (Core2Quad, 2GB Ram, Geforce 8800GTX) that monsters any game including Crysis.  A Vista laptop (Core2Duo, 2GB Ram, X1250 Radeon graphics) that is zippy for general surfing, accounts, older games, chat etc......

Both OS's have pro's and con's, at the end of the day if they do what you ask them to, quickly and don't BSOD or crash then there's little grounds to complain.

[D-Dan]

If I can add something for those that are waiting for Windows 7 (and I'm not a proponent of Vista - that is relegated to PC2 while my main machine is still XP - though both dual boot Ubuntu - which must say something about the underdog), but W7 is likely to be more of a Cloud Computing environment, hence the emphasis on Windows Live applications, of late.

Now, I don't know about you, but for me it's bad enough that we let MS take charge of our OS (out of necessity in many cases), but I'll be damned if I'm going to trust them to look after my data, too, which is where the next version of Windows is going.

I really hope that Ubuntu 09.04 makes that final leap so that I can stick with XP as required, and change my main OS.

Steve

[Inactive]

Oh joy, thanks for that Steve.

[D-Dan]

You are very welcome