Vista: Worst marketing idea since "New Coke".
Posted on 11/27/2007 1:54:17 PM PST by Zakeet
Windows XP trounced Windows Vista in all tests, regardless of the versions used or the amount of memory running on the computer, says Devil Mountain Software.
In the latest Mac versus PC ad, that put-upon Windows guy quietly concedes he's "downgrading" from Vista to XP. He may have good reason: new tests show that the older XP runs common productivity tasks significantly faster than Microsoft's newest operating system.
Researchers at Devil Mountain Software, a Florida-based developer of performance management tools, have posted data from their most recent Windows performance tests -- and Vista, even after it's been upgraded to the new Service Pack 1 beta package, is shown to be a laggard.
"The hoped for performance fixes [from Vista SP1] that Microsoft has been hinting at never materialized," said Devil Mountain researchers, in a blog post summarizing their results.
The researchers compared patched and unpatched versions of Vista and XP running Microsoft Office on a dual-core Dell notebook. The results revealed the time taken to complete Office productivity tasks such as the creation of a compound document and presentation materials.
Devil Mountain researchers ran a mix of tests comparing existing versions of the operating systems -- the original Vista and XP SP2 -- and versions that had been patched with the latest updates -- Vista SP1 beta and XP SP3 beta. Tests were also run on machines with 1 Gbyte and 2 Gbytes of memory.
Windows XP trounced Windows Vista in all tests -- regardless of the versions used or the amount of memory running on the computer. In fact, XP proved to be roughly twice as fast as Vista in most of the tests.
(Excerpt) Read more at informationweek.com ...
I wasn’t trying to start an argument, I was just pointing out that people’s experiences vary on each and every platform depending on what they’re trying to achieve. I’ll use whatever is best for the job at hand. Apple comes at a premium price but it has a very loyal user base.
Regards,
Flash
PS: Full disclosure, I’m a software developer and I’ve worked for Apple, Texas Instruments etc. on all sorts of hardware.
This should give you a pretty good idea:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/guidedtour/
Well Microsoft just lumped Win98 and WinME together and stopped supporting them both in July 2006 rather than dropping Win98 support in 2004. They still dropped all Win9X support. Win2K support will be dropped as early as July 2010.
Actually, you might see some improvements with Service Pack 3 because it might support the internal CPU architecture of the Xeon CPU better than with Windows XP SP2 (remember, Windows XP weren’t designed for Xeon CPU’s with their larger on-chip memory caches).
I noticed in Sunday’s paper a few 3 gig PC’s advertised. At reasonable prices too.
I despise Vista. I use it at work sometimes..... If I have to get another personal computer at home, it’s going to be a Mac.
I had never used a Mac and then two weeks ago just went online and bought a beautiful 24 inch iMac, all decked out. Other than a few personal quirks, the transition has been marvelous. Computing the way it should be!
I can see whacking 98 and ME support, but there are a lot of servers chugging along with W2K. I doubt they’ll drop it soon.
Depends on what you plan to do with it. The Quadro card is for vector programs like Solidworks or Autocad. It will still play games, but behave like a tier lower card.
The 8400M GT isn't bad. Will play most games, but it really isn't a superb performer in games. If it's something you do on occasion, it'll work. If you don't play games at all, either are fast enough for anything you might do.
I am a gamer, if I were to get a laptop, it'd have to have the 8800M GTX. My desktop has an 8800GTX that cost me about $650. I suspect the upgrade on graphics would cost about the same extra for a laptop.
Perhaps Microsoft could construct one of their famous "outside the box" questions for prospective employees that somehow puts forward the feature/benefits of Vista. I'm still running Windows2000 on my home network, except for this machine (WinMe), which I am working on.
My college-aged kids have XP laptops and my business laptop is XP.
Vista: Worst marketing idea since "New Coke".
I bet the next version of Windows Server will feature a mode that doesn’t support Windows 2000 clients just as the native mode for Windows Server 2003 dropped support for WFWG, Windows 9X, Windows NT 3.51, and Windows NT 4.
So I don't want to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars for a card I won't need, but by the same token I want to avoid buying a decent laptop with a crappy Intel card that was installed as an afterthought.
When I bought my first computer, a Mac 4/40 I thought I really had something. I never did get the 5 baud modem for the internet. My first internet was on the HP PC I bought with the 28 8 modem and a 2 gig Hard drive. Thought I really had something good but the Mac’s graphics were still the best and I used them both for several years till the Mac died.
Thinking back, the 4 meg HD 40 meg memory was state of art and with printer cost me $2400.00. The first HP was half that with printer and windows 95. On my 3rd HP now, and kinda like XP, but the memory bleed is taking it’s toll on the speed department.
I am really thinking about getting a MAC again........I just hate the thought of replacing all my software like MS Office especially and the Power Point. We shall see.
I know a guy that bought a new laptop with Vista and then set it to dual boot XP/Vista.
Win 2000 can’t run most DOS protected mode programs either. It also can’t be loaded over Fat32, which is necessary for most engineering stuff.
I have been a PC (and Mac) expert for years and have done consulting at companies large and small. I have been telling anyone who will listen to stay the hell away from Vista. I myself will never upgrade from XP.
“I’ve actually found a couple cards that are better than the standard junk you find, but I’d still like to know if they’re worth the additional cost. If anyone’s curious, they are the:
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT, and
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M.
Way too many letters and numbers for me. :)”
These two cards have very different purposes. The quadro line of cards from nvidia is genearlly geared towards 2d & 3d rendering for industry uses (such as cad work & 3d design). The GeForce line of cards is typically geared towards video games. Both can do what the other does but not as well as its geared focus. So if you are a video gamer go for the geforce line if you are about business go for the quadro line.
Also the 8400 series is a directx 10 video card(the newest 3d toolset from microsoft that only realizes its full potential with vista. Only the very newest of games support directx 10 features). The 8400 is the lowest end video card of the 8000 series. The 8800 being the highest end. To make things even more confusing each card usually has an acronym like (8800gt, 8800gts, 8800gtx, etx.) to denote how fast within each series the card is.
Tell MSFT you are switching to Mac if they don't make DX10 compatible with XP.
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