XP is fast because it is one of the most insecure operating systems ever released. Anyone with a TI-83 calculator and a USB cable could hack into XP's coding and wreak havoc on the OS. Even after SP1 was released, nearly every XP computer on the planet got infected with the Sasser virus that caused windows to shut down every 3 minutes. XP's coding was "hidden" behind a very clear sliding door that was not locked and left wide open. With nothing to keep XP secure, of course it was fast. SP2 was released and put small pad lock on the outside of that door.

Bottom Line: Vista is designed to protect its coding and the user's data first, and then be a program starter second. Unfortunately, this increase in security means an increase in hardware requirements in order to get the same performance as XP. A core-2 processor and a full bank of ram will give you the Vista security with XP speeds. If you can't or don't want to afford this, then stick with XP. No one is forcing you to switch.

Have you ppl bashing vista even tried it?

didn't think so. needs more ram.... well obviously if it didnt need more ram it probly would be xp 2.0. its an upgrade not a side grade to xp, ull need a more powerful computer for every newer version of any OS.

also to whoever said is DX10 better than DX9, it is... much much better and it looks so fantastic!

if ur content with having a system to browse the net dont upgrade but if ur someone that likes to have the most powerful and newest stuff then get it, its worth it

Vista remains very much untested when compared to "proven" Microsoft operating systems such as Server 2003 and XP Sp2, and the UAC is unbelievably annoying for administration. Add to that numerous problems with drivers and program compatibility and yep, Microsoft REALLY released a winner with Vista. SP3 for XP is almost here anyway and will improve that system to Vista's standard for security (the only thing I even like about Vista), and my old Emachine XP machine runs the same applications as Vista with a gigabyte of ram only a little bit slower than Vista does on 2 gigs. I'm sorry, but if an operating system alone requires such massive amounts of disk space and RAM just to function minimally, it's not worth my time, and I'll just stick to XP when i need to run Windows-based applications.

Personally, I think Microsoft needs a performance reset. As I've said in previous posts, I think software in general, and Microsoft software in particular, is getting slower at faster rate than hardware is getting faster. And this problem acutely affects Vista.... (Pingback)

http://dataland.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/performance-reset/

I'm a thirty year veteran OS user and programmer. I recently bought a new laptop for my father who is a stroke victim so that he could work on his language recovery using software that the therapists recommended.

Of course, the system I bought (a GateWay) came with Vista. I figured it would be no big deal, since Vista had been out for more than the usual six-month problem period for a new OS. Wrong!

Two and 1/2 weeks later and many blue screens of death later, I've found myself seeking to install XP on that laptop (only to find that Gateway has made it a real chore to do due to driver issues). I'm going back to XP.

Microsoft - You should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves! Shame! This is the single worst OS I have ever seen in my opinion.

I've got my father using my laptop for his speech lessons while I begin the fight to return to the more stable XP.

Computers were *supposed* to be easy to use.... What happened? At this rate, I am finally beginning to consider Linux and Mac in a new light.

You got to be kidding. Anyone who thinks Vista works fine the way it is now obviously doesn't do much with their computer. If all you use your computer for is to play games and download porn, well then I guess Vista is fine for you. Try doing something productive with it and I'm sure you'll have a change of heart real fast.

I'm one of those people who have one of those "average systems" and I'm here to tell you that Vista works horribly.

Try copying a file from an external drive to your HD. See how long it takes.

Try running a real application like Sony Vegas or Adobe Premeire Pro and tell me Vista works fine.

I could go on and on but just do a google on vista and you'll come up with 1000's of documents related to Vista issues.

The bottom line is: Vista sucks.. and I don't think any SP is going to help this OS.

My advice: Stick with XP or go to Apple for a more stable OS.

No it's not. Microsoft has been working on OS code for decades now, it should be able to give us an OS that is lean and mean.
And it would be in its best interest as well, if Microsoft didn't have so many fingers in so many different pies. The Wintel coalition is driving OS coding practices to the ground.
I fail to see what good reason Microsoft has for not giving us a Windows where you install the core OS and then go through a list of additional applications you would like to have.
I know its been done, I've seen it somewhere already. Where was that ? Ah yes, Linux.
Microsoft should adopt the Linux installation interface. That way, anybody wanting to benchmark Windows would just install the core in minimal configuration, and give the numbers for that. Any other combination would have to be benchmarked separately, ensuring that Microsoft could always claim having made a faster OS.
But of course, Microsoft would first have to admit that its OS can "do without" a certain number of things, like (the abomination named) Active Directory, or (the malware supplier) IE, or even (the virus installer) Outlook.
Don't see that happening any time soon.

much repeated, often lamented microsoft fanboi credo: Our code can't suck, thus your hardware must.

Delivered fresh with every macabre generation of fanboi, this metric never grows old. Nor true.

Fanboi's, pull your head out of the sand.

A laptop with a gig of RAM is not an effective platform for testing Vista on; neither is using Word and MAPI as benchmarks.

On the other hand, based on a personal sample size of 1, the RC SP1 build is more buggy, slower and more processor hungry than the previous build. It's unusable for day to day work. Hopefully this will be fixed...

I love this inquierer stories. A Inquierer employee writes a Artikel where something is going to be flamed.

Maybe its Vista, Maybe its Linux, Maybe its MacOS.

And all the fanboy kids are going to comment this.

"Vista is bloatware" --> from a Linux user

"Look ma, i have SP1 !!!1oneoneone"
--> from a gamer with XP, disappointed from the fact he can't get his dx10? 

"http://www.digg.com/microsoft/Why_Vista_should_have_been_an_expansion_pack"
From someone who really like to post sites where the title of the article is in the link itself. So that stupid people have a fast look, so they don't have to read the article.

I didn't see well argued stuff in the comments, no intelligent comments, nothing, were are the Apple Fanboys, i miss them?

Maybe they don't comment, because Leopard has higher requirements as the previous release (as Vista).

Greetings

"vista needs 2 gigs of ram to run as well as xp with 1 gig"? 
Lets get off the 'higher numbers in the desktop build is better' bandwagon here for a second. Aside from the ram producers needing to make money, there is no logical reason for an average home user or ecspecially a business user to require 2 gigs of ram in thier computer.
Looking back a couple of years, even hardcore games ran fine on 1 gig of ram. That was pumping out 100 or more frames a second on the graphics front, loading large levels off the hard drive, the cpu dictating what the AI enemies were doing, the speakers playing music and sounds, and the network downloading other players location info, new maps, chats, and the like. All this without the need for 2 gigs. And these games looked a hell of a lot more impressive than vista.
Now I'm sure someone will point out that a game vs OS comparison isn't fair because the OS needs to do security tasks and disk maintance and such. This is true, but lets face it. Vistas number one goal seems to be to look pretty with the areo glass interface, and security second(annoy you every time you try and do something with a warning message isn't really secure after the users stop paying attention).
Given that the average home user isn't a gamer(sorry guys, we are a small part of the computing population, not the huge majority), and only does web surfing, email, file downloading, making dvd movies, and playing music or videos, what justification do you have for 2 gigs? Its worse in the corperate world, where employees should be working with word documents, spreadsheets, internal email, and in some cases special programs wrote for that business. Some places need thier employees to surf the net, but lets face it, most employees who surf the net do so for personal reasons on company time, and rarely for work related things. Given the limited tasks done by these machines, why would you require 2 gigs? You don't.
The "Vista needs 2 gigs!" argument is old, stale, and crap. Like the man said, its just a program launcher!

"Vista requires 2 gigs of ram when comparing it to XP using 1 gig of ram. 2 gigs of DDR2 "

You dont see the laughable problem there?

When people test Vista and XP, they should do this:

1. Build two systems, each one based on the recommended system specs of each OS XP and Vista.
2. On each PC, install the corresponding OS, and only the first version (this includes the very first XP).
3. Install latest drivers for hardware, nothing else.
4. Install a couple of games, maybe even 3DMark06.

Test performance that way. The fair test is to see how Vista is fairing against the very first XP (no SPs or nothin').

There is a way (and the ONLY way) to make Vista fast and responsive. Just convince Voleware to dismount de DRM infection and voila! Problem solved! In fact this could be so good that Vista would also lose about 500MB or more in useless code that works for nothing but scare the users away... xD xD

I don't no why people dont like it, I have a lot of games installed and have had very very few problems, and Iam running vista 64bit. I can say with out a doubt its more stable and pretty much better all round then XP. 

Everyone that complains about it has probably never even tried it, and I doubt even have half a brain thus thats why they cant make the simple jump up to vista.

... if Vista NEEDs 2GB and a Core2 Duo to run can someone tell us why they certify machines with a Core Solo and 512MB RAM for Vista? And sell machines like the Samsung Q1 Ultra that come pre-installed with 1GB (upgrade to 2GB is apparently possibly... if you void your warrenty and butcher the device), a processor that would struggle in a pocket calculator and a HDD that appears to consider "always thrashing" a good thing?
Make the developers, project managers and their entire management chain run the OS on year old lower end of the "certified" spectrum hardware ... I'd love to see Balmer doing that for a week (even assuming he touches a machine rather than have minions)

The problem which Vista faces is that for most people XP is 'good enough'.

There is no perceived compelling reason to switch to Vista, thus the pain in terms of financial outlay for the new OS and hardware uplift, are seen as an unnecessary waste.

This coupled with the fact that with Vista, Microsoft seems to have changed things for the sake of change (the 'display options' being a perfect example of this), making an learning curve which is, again, unnecessary.


Hmmm every company can afford it can they? You take that $70 for the ram per machine (not including laptops etc.)and times that by say 15000 machines in a large companies estate and then factor in the engineer/labour costs of fitting all those sticks of ram and its a big chunk of your IT budget. On top of installing a new OS and then doing all the testing to make sure your 5000 "business critical" apps run on it. I dont think you've been involved in a major IT rollout have you?

As a previous poster said, its just an application launcher, should only need a few Mb to run in. This attitude of defending Vista because it runs 'ok' in 2Gb is appalling. Most technology gets smaller, slicker, faster as it evolves why not Windows? Give us a custom install to leave out all the stuff (most of it) we dont need.

The luddites can have their XP, and the Jobsian and Torvaldian splinter groups will never see the light. I like Vista. It's shiny, it's pretty, and with 3GB of RAM, it runs pretty damn good. Vista runs every piece of software I have but one (Adobe Audition) and every hardware peripheral I threw at it as well.

I might have given this some credibility, but since all your articles revolve around touting open source and attacking proprietary companies -Microsoft being the obvious target, I can pretty much discount the validity of this article and the related anti-microsoft blog!

WTF is up with the fanbois today?

XP runs fine on 512MB for the home user, so 1GB vs 2GB is a bit skewed for comparison purposes. Win2K runs fine on 256MB or less. Dos based Windows did well on 64MB or less. Again this is for home users.

So in the 12 years since W95 came out, there has been more than a 30x increase in just the minimum memory specs.

Somebody want to explain to me why I should shell out for a bleeding edge, half broken, DRM infested piece of bloat which offers NOTHING NEW??? What can Vista do that XP cannot? Avalon? Pffft!!!!

Why do you think they tried to make DX10 a Vista only offering? MS needs games to sell it's latest piece of crap.

FYI I run W2K on everything but my lappy, and if MS still gave it full support it would beat XP and Vista for EVERY SINGLE THING I NEED IT FOR.

Redmond needs to either put Windows on a diet or offer something truly new and useful. And the fanbois need to get back on their meds to stop these hallucinations of Vista being worth crap.

I wonder how many of the comments on these articles are from people getting their weekly cheque from Microsoft ;) Most everyone not being paid by MS who've tried to use Vista knows it's akin to trying to ride a pig.

Well, at least it didn't get any worse...

You don't need SP1 to see a major performance improvement with Vista. Just apply all the pre-SP1 hotfixes that have been released so far and the system will become way faster and more robust overall.

what do you expect ?? MS should have called it for what it realy is, "marketing strategy patch" not service pack.

"Look ma, i have SP1 !!!1oneoneone"

With vista SP1 they'll hook the occasional naive luser^H^H^H^H^Hadmin that's decided never to do a major upgrade until a product matures a bit and gets a SP1 appended ti its version number.

However, that won't last much, as the early brave lab rats will have experienced it for themselves and will (hopefully) live to tell us their stories and spare us from the same horror.

Vista has poor performance in what application exactly? Vista requires higher resources than XP. Its only natural that things run a bit slower, but a very average system with 2 gigs of RAM can handle vista just fine.

Come on, who ever wants Vista at all?
For games? No....
For DX10? Why? What has DX10 that DX9.0c doesn't have? Seriously....anybody?

Heck even OS/2 doesn't more in 64MB ram...Vista 2GB to run smooth...it's a program launcher for crying out loud!

F*** VISTA!

I'm of the mind that this is more a test of Office 07 than an Vista OS test. We know two things for sure, Vista is bloated code, but Office 07? Double bloated.

So lets dump the office test and test the Vista OS, because I have done my own testing with games and non-bloated code like Cinebench and LAME or Divx encoding and as long as you have actually optimized Vista's services (just like we all had to do with XP) that the performance of Vista v.s XP is about the same, and with some very recent driver updates from nvidia I actually see the Vista unit performing better than XP.

I truly see the "Vista is slow" claims as people who just don't really know what they are doing.

... for DRM! 

If it's not that that's crippling XP Bloated Edition, what is..?

The test compares a Vista running 1 gig of ram to XP running 1 gig of ram.

A little bit behind the curve there. Vista requires 2 gigs of ram when comparing it to XP using 1 gig of ram. 2 gigs of DDR2 (the ram used on the test system) will set you back somewhere betweeen $50 - $75 for name brand, low latency, 2 x 1 gig dual channel, matched kits.

Forgive me but every business I've ever known of can afford that upgrade. Microsoft doesn't hide the fact that Vista needs more ram either. Go build a PC and see that any and every system builder is recommending 2 gigs even for home systems.

Maybe if everyone crawled out of the stoneage and used computers that don't have floppy drives they'd see that vista runs well on recent computers. It's a new operating system designed to run on new hardware. Everyone complained when XP came out and their pentium 2 systems had troubles running it. If you have a computer worth computing on Vista is leaps and bounds over XP.

We'd happily move our 800 computers to Vista if it worked reliably with Novell (as XP has for ages).

But it doesn't, so we won't.

Vista is bloatware and it seems Microsoft is not able to make it better with SP1...

Only some Microsoft fanatics seems to prize Vista like some above my comment ^

http://www.digg.com/microsoft/Why_Vista_should_have_been_an_expansion_pack

Actually "me", SP1 isn't just a name change to get people to buy the OS - at all. The current pre-release version of the SP has exactly 480 fixes in it. All 480 are actually real problems too, not just changes in the version number of Vista. I have the Excel Spreadsheet that has them all listed out in detail.


The thing most posters are ignoring when defending Vista for the business use is to make a case for the upgrade.
There is nothing offered in Vista to demand, require or even want to do a migration.
- Not all legacy software supported
- Not all legacy hardware supported
- Significantly higher hardware requirements
- More training for your IT staff
- No new business functions
- (Apperantly) Less stable than XP
- DRM issues
- Issues with Upgrades (New licence?)
- New licensing scheme that is worse than XP.

Vista's performed flawlessly for me since I installed it at launch. Not sure why the lack of an improvement by SP1 is that big of a deal. It didn't need it.

Microsoft is going about this all wrong. The way to speed up an OS is to get rid of the bloat, not add to it or change it. Releasing a SP or patches adds files and changes code. To make it more efficient, one must remove code, not add to it. If anyone saw a performance boost after SP1, it surely wasn't as significant as say...installing XP on the same computer.

Someone above said something about it (the OS) being a "program launcher". LOL - that's about what an OS is, besides an interface between the hardware and software. Vista is nothing more than a 10+GB program launcher. It IS pretty, though.

Doesn't surprise me at all. When SP2 came out for XP a lot of the programs I ran before began to chug, including Windows apps and games.

I had a brand new laptop with Vista Business with Aero On with 512MB ram vs a 4 year old laptop with 256MB Ram with Ubuntu and Beryl turn on. Guess which one was more responsive. The Ubuntu was very useable, where as the Vista was completely unuseable. Actually the Ubuntu computer seemed faster than the Vista computer with Aero off It is amazing that MS has so much bloat in their code base. Maybe it really is just poorly designed and coded. Or maybe that is the benefit of OpenGL vs DirectX. I don't know, but I find it amazing. But unfortunately I have to support MS Vista.

What's slow about Vista is actually Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer). Testing Office and low level services is besides the point because that is not what's wrong with Vista.

XP with WindowsBlinds looks every bit as good as Vista but actually runs at a decent clip on a 2 year old computer...All the people that posted before me about "new" computers and Vista need a head check. You shouldn't need to upgrade a 2 yr old PC to run a new OS. Areo should not need a new graphics card to run....

2GB of memory costs $50. Excuse me while I don't care if XP does better on 1GB or OS2 could use 64MB. You know, Windows 98 was so much faster than Windows 2000 for a time too. And wow, remember the outcry against DirectX?

How soon we forget. Get with the times people.

I used Vista for about eight months on a bit aging computer. I wasn't pleased with the fact that games didn't run as smoothly as they did on XP. And some games didn't work at all.

Anyways, apart from that, Vista is superior to XP in pretty much every way. It's very stable and never crashed even if a game crashed for some reason. Now that I'm using XP again, I've already had numerous BSODs and crashes because of games crashing. Sometimes XP won't boot at all. I never had this kind of problems with Vista.

It's hard to choose which one I would prefer using. The stable and reliable Vista, or the quick and nimble XP?

performance in winV isnt bad if you have at least a 2.5 ghz cpu (dual-cores best) and at least 2-3 gigs of ram
i believe the problem is with the Drm crap checks that winV does like 30 times a sec (i read someplace)
i like vista (but) you need a fairly fast pc to run it .
i have problems playing videos , but with many free video players (Vlc etc) its not much of a problem

To all the people saying "come on, it's a new OS, cut it some slack", I say "Bullcrap".

Vista lost the most attractive feature (WinFS) during development and for all intents and purposes it's Win XP II. Yes, the core of the OS was rewritten, but the pretty sparklies and padding that Microsoft add for the "average joe" bloat the system to the point of uselessness.

A DRM service that chews up 25 meg even if you don't have a HDMI compatible vid card or a Blu-Ray/HD DVD player??

An indexing service that undisables the service after you've switched it off?

DX10 is restricted to Vista for exactly what reason? The Crysis hack proves most of the DX10 stuff (when you have a DX10 card) runs better under XP (I have tested this, the only feature that doesn't work appears to be per object blurring, and that would work if DX10 was installable on XP). Wow, landlock the gamers by making DX10 a "must update" and then stick it with a bloated OS that clock for clock performs far worse on a Core quad 3.2 Ghz with 2 Gig of ram...

Security increases? That's great. It's so secure that it's bloat is leaving many businesses (including the one I work for, 1200 PC's) with no option but to stick with XP until MS twists our arm with lack of support. Hopefully by that time we'll be able to bring our base desktop up from 512 meg of RAM (fine for XP) to the 1-2 Gig required for Vista...

So please spare me the whole "new OS" song and dance. 2K/XP were major advancements over 98/NT that didn't require exponentially greater systems to run worse than the previous incarnation. Vista is all Windows dressing (pun intended).

Azmo

I have, obviously, used XP for years, and it is on my PC and my laptop. I bought a new 17" Dell lappy for my wife - it came with Vista.

It is a resourse HOG, and I cannot understand WHY. On bootup, it eats 730 MB of RAM. OK, I had to buy 2 GB to run it - but why?

An operating system is, honestly, the computer equivalent of a traffic light & "debate moderator" & "librarian". When a single application is running, THAT is the main purpose of the PC. When multiple are running, all the "operating system" has to do is multi-task the apps... as briefly and quickly as possible.

Vista has no real-world OPERATING SYSTEM advantages over XP (which, itself, takes much more resourses to do what OS/2 could do back in 1994 - PRE-EMPTIVE multitasking).

Vista is going to be removed from my lappy (what a waste, I wish I didn't "HAVE" to pay for it) and XP installed with all its known tweaks, etc.

Turning off the special graphics of Vista won't improve you're performance. Even Vista Basic runs at the same speed as Vista Home. (According to reviews) I'm sure that a lot of workers have 512MB in their office computers. Microsoft said Vista's release date was 2005, with a new file system Not delivering on either, is pretty bad.