I built my new computer two months ago and put Vista on it to run the new DX10 games (Crysis being one of them, but I'm seeing a lot more games being released as DX10 only). I'm running an E2180 with 2 gigs of RAM and an 8800GT. I am very happy with Vista and will never go back to XP. The speed is great for me, maybe I'm not doing the "right" things to slow it down. The stability is far supirior to XP for me, but once again, maybe I'm not doing the "right" things to crash it. I am going to get SP1 when it automaticlly updates, but I'd be happy without it.

Vista on a quad core, 4gb ram machine with 7200rpm 750gb drives still runs like a dog and has graphical user interface bugs which XP does not have.

I will happily, happily avoid this OS - forever.

Oh really/...so let's see you tell the TR guys that they are wrong then.
Talk is cheap Z-Man....
As for the "little new functionality" perhaps you can remind me of how well Media Center works in XP.
Then give us a rundown on the DX 10 performance.
Follow it up with how XP security does in comparison to Vista.
Finally a few words about how the old prefetch setup of XP is superior to Superfetch oughta do it.
ps don't forget a quick rant on how much better disc management is with XP
in comparison with Vista's ability to adjust partitions on the fly.....

SP1 installed and working fine.

I have run this same computer on xp and Vista is <gasp!> my prefered choice. Vista is running just as fast as xp ever did(if not faster). Guess i must have done something wrong since everyone says that Vista is unstable and slow.

I didn't notice it mentioned anywhere.

Just a warning for folks running a Phenom revision B2 CPU...

Vista SP1 installs the TLB fix and even overrides any bios option to disable it, seriously reducing Phenoms performance.

As Cyril said, SP1 is worth upgrading too, but if your running a B2 Phenom you may want to check out Forums/Processors for a way to turn the fix off again and regain full speed.

Cyril, as usual, is correct in his articles. But speaking as someone who does not game very much at all anymore, there's really no compelling reason to dump Windows XP.

I think the question this article fails at addressing is: Is Vista finally faster then XP?

Very few people actually care about Vista RTM Vs. Vista SP1. If you have Vista, you're going to get SP1 no doubt. Most of us are holding onto our copies of XP for a lot more reasons then improving a bit of performance over RTM.

I highely doubt that I will be upgrading to Vista anytime soon and I pitty people whose only option soon will be to get that put on their new PC. It almost makes me wonder if this won't increase piracy as there will no longer be a legal way to obtain a copy.

The only reason I've ever seen to upgrade to Vista is DX10 and as of right now, the next OS will come out before games with noticeable differences using DX10.

"Really, now's as good a time as any to switch".
The Tech Report

At least TR got it right.

I deleted a long tirade I had written about Vista.

I've been installing it for about 5 days in between working and "living". I've had some "problems" with it. Today for giggles I decided that since so many things have problems with 4 GB of RAM I'd try with 2GB and what do you know, EVERYTHING went smooth and easy. I put the RAM back and tested the crap out of it. No problems with WMD or memtest86+. I turned the voltage up to 1.85V to see if that helps. I'm just happy enough to not spew profanity for a few hours. If I have to limp back to 2 GB I might as well have XP on it. Waiting for more errors...

I was laughing at you guys for how easy you made it sound to throw first Vista on a new computer and then SP1. Now it doesn't seem so ridiculous.

Those bar charts would be a lot easier to interpret if Vista RTM was always the top bar and Vista SP1 was always the bottom bar.

This is pretty basic human factors stuff. You should know better. Geez.

"This just in - bloated OS brings world whole new level of FAT"

Meanwhile, exFAT brings support for file sizes of up to 16 exabytes and more than 1,000 files per directory, where FAT is limited to 1,000-file directories and 4GB files.

Seriously, that's a pretty neat upgrade. I hope it makes it into XPSP3. But wouldn't using it render thumb drives unreadable in most other OSes, thus defeating the purpose of thumb drives (easy data portability)?

I don't know guys.. Been using a bunch of oses since i've started playing with computers.. in 2005 i decided to finally try out OS X when the cheap and affordable Mac Mini was announced. OS X has its quirks and problems, but damn, even on hacked x86 versions, it's still freakin more stable then Vista :s and in regards to speed, it screams. Seriously, you might hate Apple as a company or maybe hate SJ's guts, but if you have the change, give it a go to OS X. I see no reason not to like it as a main OS on a daily basis.

I hope MS will put out a good followup to Vista because competition is starting to heat up even on the Linux side.

Adi

I hate vista , I will skip it all together , If my lappy had drivers for xp i would change it up

I said I'd "upgrade" when SP1 hit. SP1 hit. I'm not upgrading. I don't need to. XP works fine, and SP3 is on the way.

This report pretty much mirrors my experiences. SP1 showed minor improvements to Vista's performance, but not enough to raise Vista's performance above mediocre. This is on a new laptop with a T8300 CPU, and 4GB of RAM.

After several weeks running Vista Business SP1, I went back to XP Pro. The difference is night and day. I'll wait for SP2 before trying again; in the meantime, I look forward to XP SP3.

What the heck does RTM mean?

Does anyone else hate the default color for hovering over menu items in Vista? It's this really pale blue that is extremely difficult to see.

I also can't stand the lack of an "up directory" button in explorer. Yes, I know about the breadcrumbs feature, but that's far less useful when the window you're in doesn't show the whole breadcrumb trail...

This whole horrible mess (so reminiscent of Win ME) will hopefully eventually get resolved when 'Windows 7' eventually sees the light of day.

Considering Windows 7 is based on Vista, are you simply expecting it to become just another version of XP?

I'm just happy that one can now control the lame network throttling that it does when you play any sort of media. That was just so annoying.

"Really, now's as good a time as any to switch".
The Tech Report

But what if you have an important application that doesn't have a version that runs under Vista. z-man

I have exactly that issue. I use Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and other Adobe video packages for desktop video editing for my clients. This application does not run correctly under Vista. Adobe's solution.... upgrade to the latest versions, upgrade price ~ $700. I have ZERO current need for the bells and whistles in the latest version. My example is a microcosm of the issues faced by many in 'upgrading' to Vista, especially government and business entities with custom built programs. One of the many, many blunders in developing Vista was not providing a 100% backward-compatible XP mode. I confidently predict that the life of XP Pro will be extended beyond the current June 2008 retail, Jan 2009 OEM dates, especially for any large business/government customers. This whole horrible mess (so reminiscent of Win ME) will hopefully eventually get resolved when 'Windows 7' eventually sees the light of day.

so i keep reading different things about sp1, some say its great and have benchmarks to show that vista is now much better than xp, and others say it sux.

Anybody know why sp1 still hasn't come up on my windows update? I thought it was supposed to by now, I don't feel like downloading it otherwise.

"bring to the table"

Please stop using this metaphor in reviews. It died in 2001 and is starting to smell funny.
Thank you.

Nice overview, but please, next time, arrange the graphs so that the order between what you compare is the same for all of them. They are not very easy to read now, even when color-coded. Minor issue, of course…

SP1 still does some of the same stupid crap though. Sometimes I will delete or move something and may take several seconds even though its small like a picture. Other times I can delete or move something larger and it does it instantly. Its almost as if it gets confused sometimes and simple things like that have NEVER been consistent with Vista where as on my XP machine that has never happened.

Also the longer I leave my Vista comp on the longer it takes to open simple things like "add or remove programs" from the control panel. My XP machine is very old and weak yet it is on for weeks at a time and everything is snappy and responsive on it as for as opening up or folders or transferring files. I dont hate Vista but Im still not impressed with it.

lol.............pathetic if you ask me that sites are slamming vista

How about benchmarking network performance with the new registry entry for modifying the multimedia network throttling behavior.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948066

I want XP vs Vista comparation.

I find it ironic that Damage just got stung by the file copy problem after installing SP1.

For me, SP1 had a dramatic improvement to network file copies, and I'm almost happy with Vista.

Pre SP1: XP push or pull to Vista ~40MB/sec if initiated on XP (that's what I'm used to.) Push or pull initiated on Vista was ~25MB/sec w/fluctuations.

Post SP1: Vista can Pull from XP at a steady ~60MB/sec!! Push and XP initiated are unchanged.

Does anybody have pointers/links on improving network copy post-SP1? All my googling leads to pre-SP1 probs/fixes, and somebody asking if SP1 will fix it.

Another vote for XP benches to embarrass Vista, SP1 or no.