Review: Windows XP [the advantages of upgrading]

Coding Sanity ^ | December 14, 2007 | codingsanity

[antiRepublicrat]

I have finally decided to take the plunge. Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP, and this afternoon I will be doing the same to my laptop.

Look & Feel

Windows XP has quite a cartoony look and feel compared to the slick look of Aero Glass, this is mostly offset by the lack of strange screen artifacts caused by malfunctioning graphics code. You know, almost like static on the screen. This was a once or twice monthly occurance on my laptop, and happened on my desktop whenever I logged in, and also whenever I played a 3D game after leaving Vista running for a couple of hours. I also miss the "orphaned windows" I got on Vista, dialog boxes that would not go away, in a sense they became part of the desktop, since you could drag a selection from within them, despite the fact that the Glass would render the selection below them. Such crazy graphics bugs appear to be a thing of the past.

Performance

Well, here there appears to be no contest. Windows XP is both faster and far more responsive. I no longer have the obligatory 1-minute system lock that happens whenever I log onto Vista, instead I can run applications as soon as I can click their icons. Not only that, but the applications start snappily too, rather than all waiting in some "I'm still starting up the OS" queue for 30 seconds or so before all starting at once. In addition, I have noticed that when performing complex tasks such as viewing large images, or updating large spreadsheets, instead of the whole operating system locking down for several seconds, it now just locks down the application I am working on, allowing me to <gasp> Alt-Tab to another application and work on that. I am thrilled that Microsoft decided to add preemptive multitasking to their operating system, and for this reason alone I would strongly urge you to upgrade to XP. With the amount of multi-core processors around today using a multitasking operating system like XP makes a world of difference.

In addition, numerous tasks that take a long time on Vista have been greatly speeded up. File copies are snappy and responsive, and pressing the Cancel button halfway through actually cancels the copy almost immediately, as opposed to having it lock up, and sometimes lock up the PC. In addition, a lot of work has gone into making deletes far more efficient, it appears that no more does the operating system scan every file to be deleted prior to wiping it, and instead just wipes out the NTFS trees involved, a far quicker operation. On my Vista machine I would often see a dialog box from some of my video codecs pop up when deleting, moving or copying videos. No more, now all that is involved is a byte transfer or NTFS operation.

Automatic Updates has also gone through a performance facelift in that it no longer hogs your bandwidth when you're surfing, a nice touch.

Device Support

XP comes with some impressive device support. In fact, every peripheral I've collected over the years works perfectly with it. Many have the device drivers preinstalled on XP, making their installation a snap, but for the rest it was easy to find device drivers on the Web. In addition I found the drivers quick and reliable, a far cry from the buggy, slow and sparse driver support in Vista. I'm glad to see that with their new flagship OS, Windows XP, Microsoft have finally learnt from the mistakes they made with the Vista launch. In addition, support for mobile devices seems to be significantly improved.

I've also found that XP seems much lighter on the hardware than Vista, when it's inactive the hard drive very rarely spins up, a major advantage for me, since I often sleep near my laptop. No longer do I have to try and ignore the continual hard drive drone, but can now sleep soundly just like my computer. I never did figure out exactly what Vista was doing with my hard drive the whole time, but I'm sure it degraded its lifespan with all that spinning.

Reliability

All I can say is "wow!". You can see that a lot of work has gone into making XP more reliable than its predecessor. The random program crashes, and hangs appear to be a thing of the past.

Internet Explorer 7 is much more reliable on XP as well, and has so far not crashed once whilst viewing GMail, when it used to do this several times a day. In addition, I can now actually close the thing down normally every time, instead of sometimes having to kill the process. Error collection seems to be far better as well. Instead of a dialog taking a minute or two to collect the information it needs, the dialog comes up and is ready to send error data almost immediately. I am sad to see the back of the Solutions tool though, it may have hardly ever delivered any valid solutions, especially for the standard random crashes, but at least you knew that something under your control was tracking that information. Please, Microsoft bring it back.

Speaking of which, I notice that the Reliability Report is also gone, again a sore loss, I really enjoyed charting the downward spiral of my Vista reliability, there were those occasional humps that got you all excited, and then the graph would continue its steady sojourn downwards. Of course, the fact that it only appeared to pay attention to a tiny fraction of the actual problems was a bit of an issue, but I'm sure they could have resolved that for the XP release. Ah well.

I also am pleased to note that Ctrl-Alt-Del does actually have an effect nowdays. Many times in Vista, I wished that they would make this more reliable so I could kill off the inevitable hanging Windows Explorer process (as a matter of fact, this is the situation I find myself in right now), in XP it actually does something as opposed to being part of the usual Vista eternal hang. Speaking of which, please excuse me for a few minutes, Windows Explorer has now been 100% hung for 5 minutes, despite my asking Vista to restart it, and despite me pushing Ctrl-Alt-Del several times over those 5 minutes. So I'm going to have to hard-reset my laptop. This process, by the way, is also something that amazingly seems to almost never be required in the clean and sparkling new XP.

Right, I'm back, thanks for being patient. I mentioned how much quicker you could start using programs from a boot in XP, I must admit that, appealing though that feature is, you won't actually find it that useful. XP almost never appears to require a reboot, so you hardly ever take advantage of a wonderful improvement like that, which otherwise would save you at least 15-20 minutes a day.

Gaming

This is another area where Microsoft have really excelled in Windows XP. Games are significantly more responsive, get much higher frame rates, and are far more reliable than in Vista. If you're a gamer, the upgrade to XP is mandatory. Whilst there are a few games that won't work as well in XP than in Vista, you'll find that on the whole XP supports almost all the games you'd want to play. In addition, it's vastly increased reliability means you'll spend much more time killing things than restarting, a welcome change I can assure you. You'll also find that non-XFi soundcards with EAX are much improved by their support in XP, which can really add a bit of excitement to your gaming experience.

Multimedia

Multimedia support on XP is vastly better than on Vista. Whilst content-creators had insisted on all sorts of intrusive features in Vista that made the multimedia experience a living hell for Microsoft users, thankfully with XP Microsoft were able to insist that their customers needs came ahead of the content creators outdated business model. It's nice to see a corporation like Microsoft stand up to the cyber bullies at the MPAA and refuse to assume that its loyal customers are criminals. In any case, the DRM built into Vista was broken shortly after it's release anyway.

Conclusion

To be honest there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft have really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly.

Well done Microsoft!

[gondramB]

>>Remember, this is by people who make a living programming for Windows.<<

There is one key thing Vista does better than XP - XP does not effectively use more than 2 gigs of RAM while Vista does.

Of course Vista needs 3-4 gigs to runs as well as XP does with 2...:)

[org.whodat]

I was thinking of copying and storing my version of Vista for later but I have a feeling as many do in the blogosphere that Vista will go the way of Windows ME.

Alway throw trash in the trash can, somewhere I read it was over with sometime next year.

[ShadowAce]

[ThomasThomas]

But the name Vista is a better name in several ways. It just seems to roll off the tongue unlike XP. And everybody knows if your working with Jr High boys you you need to avoid saying the letter ‘P’. It just starts them down a path you don’t want to follow. You spend the rest of the day trying to change the subject. Then the letter ‘X’ extreme this, extreme that. Everything needs to be extreme something lately. But they named it XP, we just don’t need to go any futher.

[ShadowAce]

You’re right. I did enjoy this—mainly because I’ve always thought the move from Vista to XP is an upgrade.

[antiRepublicrat]

It just doesn't seem right.

Everyone is assumed to be guilty, you have to prove you aren't.

[antiRepublicrat]

There is Windows XP 64-bit. Vista 32-bit has the same memory limit, exacerbated by the fact that your video card memory counts against your 4 total GB limit.

[tubebender]

Signed up tomorrow to post today? Congratulations...

[martin_fierro]

Windows XP has quite a cartoony look and feel compared to the slick look of Aero Glass, this is mostly offset by the lack of strange screen artifacts caused by malfunctioning graphics code. You know, almost like static on the screen.

You are there.

[pepperhead]

Lucky for me I didn’t have to upgrade my Vista compatible computer to XP since that is what it had when I got it.

[pepperhead]

Vista's main drawback is being a resource hog. Of course, Microsoft needs bloatware so PC makers can sell ever more powerful personal computers.

They wouldn't do something like that now would they? ;)

[bannie]

It’s hard to find everything!

[Tribune7]

LOL

[arthurus]

I am still staying with W2000. MSFT has intimidated me out of using their newer releases with all the threats they made to take over my machine and eliminate programs and files they don’t care for or shut me down/ruin my box altogether by remote control. MSFT seems to have some megalomaniacal aspirations. MSFT said twice, when XP was released and now with Vista that if you have their OS in your box then MSFT owns your software (from any source) and your box, too. They did not seem to follow through with XP but I don’t trust them at all now. I do not do games so that is not a reason I might have to have XP or Vista.

[texas booster]

I am tempted to upgrade my new copy of Vista to XP.

Has anyone successfully received a copy of XP from HP and received the required drivers so it runs smoothly?

[dennisw]

bttt

[Repeal 16-17]

I have a feeling as many do in the blogosphere that Vista will go the way of Windows ME.

There's little in Vista that justifies paying "upgrading" from XP to Vista. Microsoft is already working on "Windows 7." Vista should be called Windows ME 2007.

[papasmurf]

The Proper Upgrade Path

The fastest way for most people to get Ubuntu is by downloading the CD Installer. The CD Installer is nearly 700MB. If you don't have a fast internet connection you may want to consider requesting a CD.

• Download Ubuntu
• Buy Ubuntu on CD
• Request free CDs

Which release do you want?

Desktop Edition Ubuntu 7.10 - Supported to 2009 Ubuntu 6.06 LTS - Supported to 2009Server Edition Ubuntu 7.10 - Supported to 2009 Ubuntu 6.06 LTS - Supported to 2011

The "LTS" version of Ubuntu receives long-term support. 3 years for desktop versions and 5 years for server versions.

• Kubuntu - Ubuntu with the K Desktop Environment

• Edubuntu - Ubuntu for Education

• Ubuntu Server Edition - Ubuntu for Servers

Recognized Derivatives

These are derivatives that use Ubuntu as their foundation and contribute signficantly towards the project.

• Xubuntu - Ubuntu with the XFCE desktop environment

• Gobuntu - A flavour of Ubuntu that strives to be completely devoid of software, drivers or firmware with restrictive licenses

• Ubuntu Studio - Designed for multimedia editing and creation also have a torrent download, metalink download, and LivePC download available as well a script that will convert your default Ubuntu to Ubuntu CE or update your current Ubuntu CE installation to the latest version.
  
  

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[Duke Nukum]

That’s a good point, I never took time dysfunction into account when considering Vista vx. XP.

[Duke Nukum]

That's DOWNgrading. Isn't Vista supposed to be the latest and greatest Microsoft OS?

I made that same mistake, obviously some sort of time dysfunction is going on and time isn't happening chronologically anymore.