windows vista V windows xp

[piratecat]

hiya, i am going to have to invest in a new pc soon. had a virus the other day, my pc is ancient and too slow with only 12gb disc etc...

getting conflicting advice, as is usual onthese matters. one pc guy saying he loathes vista?

Yet its pretty impossible to walk into pc world and get one with xp on it.

Then another local retailer siad yes visat is rubbish if you put it on your older system that had xp. He sdaid it's a bit like when xp came in and took over 98, and if you had an older pc you had probs.

ANY adive would be most helpful. eg, where to get a reconditioned with windows, or should i just go for a new one. It's for home use, so music burning, dd plays games etc.. oh and for on here!!!

[lou33]

i keep getting told vista is rubbish, but i have it and i dont understand why everyone thinks that

mind you i remember being told xp was rubbish compared to the version before as well

the pc i use came with vista, so maybe thats why i havent had any issues with it

[Saggarmakersbottomknocker]

ds's laptop came with Vista. I don't have problems with it as such; I just don't like it.

[Macdog]

Dell do this laptop with xp

[Macdog]

xp is generally only found on professional pc's now. Vista is the norm for home pc

[coppertop]

Dh's laptop has Vista. Mine has XP. Dh is always complaining about his, mainly because it takes so long to do anything. Mine's a year older than his but seems to boot up and shut down about ten times faster.

[piratecat]

on a new prof pc you mean? so that's mega bucks?

lou, what pc have you got, or have you a laptop?

the secong guy today said vista is fine when bought in the pc it's meant to be in iyswim?

another consideration is that i have a thomson speedtouch 330 modem, for my internet connection ( my pc is very old). how and will i be able to stay with my ip? wel i have t cos i am on contract, but how do i get the modem to work on a new machine that might have an in built modem.

also if i am nt making any sense please forgive and enlighten me, as i don't know much.

as you can probably tell!!

[lou33]

its a compaq desktop, about 18 months old roughly ( i think)

[MissusH]

our new laptop has Vista, old one has XP.

Vista is a pita compared to xp - so far vista has "lost" our dvd drive on more than one occasion which dh had to sort (not my area of expertise!), we have had several blue screens of death and the laptop fails to boot up on a regular basis.

Microsoft have issued a service patch but dh has yet to discover what it actually does...

In our experience xp is more reliable..

[onager]

A new PC will have an ethernet port to plug a modem into. However the speedtouch you have plugs into the USB port and needs drivers written for that operating system

I googled speedtouch 330 and vista and there don't seem to make drivers for vista that will allow you to use the speedtouch on it. I did see workarounds using XP-64 drivers and making registry changes, but I don't know if they work.

If you go with Vista you can probably get a better modem from your ISP or just buy one, but I think this is what you can expect with Vista. Constantly trying to find a way to bodge things so they work.

I'm sticking with XP until they get vista working properly.

[onager]

Oh and a vote for XP. One of my PCs (XP) runs 24/7 because it hosts websites, FTP server and downloads torrents day and night (so it's getting well used). It only gets rebooted when I make changes and has never rebooted/closed down on it's own in the two years it's been running. Windows98 was lucky if it got through a whole day.

[Grammaticus]

I don't much like Vista, and it seems to come with Works intead of Word, which is bobbins. But as you say - hard to find xp now, vista is what microsoft want to sell us.

[Littlefish]

I've just had a new PC which should have come pre-loaded with Vista. However, we changed the order and specifically asked for it to be loaded with XP rather than with Vista. I use XP at work, as does DH and I regularly transfer work across from one machine to the other.

I haven't heard great things about Vista and compatibility with previous systems, so we're sticking wtih XP.

[Reallytired]

I hate Vista, although I have it on my computer at home. We use XP at work and there is absolutely no intention of upgrading to Vista.

I think a lot depends on how confident you are with PCs and how much you want to do. Vista is fine if you want to do little more than look at mumsnet. However its much harder to get to lower level things with Vista than XP. (Not impossible though) Microsoft is keen to stop a stupid user from doing damage, but it is frustating for an advanced user. You would have to be pretty determined to run a command line enviroment. (Ie. find the equivalent of the dos prompt)

There are somethings like about Vista. Ie. I think it handles multimedia better than XP. I also like the gadnet bar.

Also Vista is far more memory hungry than XP. The gadget bar at the side is quite fun.

[EachPeachPearMum]

Vista is just dire- takes forever to connect to wireless network, random strange crashes etc.
You will find it impossible I imagine to find a new machine with xp though- M$ have stopped suppliers from using it now.
Go for a linux laptop (much cheaper) or a mac!

[EachPeachPearMum]

OK- don't know why on earth I assumed you were getting a laptop sorry! But the above applies to PCs too

[Reallytired]

EachPeachPearMum, have you installed Vista service pack 1. It does help to fix a few of the bugs.

My Vista box is quite stable, but I agree its not as stable as XP.

[EachPeachPearMum]

yes, we did that, its still rubbish!
I stopped using that laptop and internet on a macbook now!

[girlandboy]

I use Windows ME on the PC at home
I use Windows XP at work
I use Windows Vista on the laptop at home

I like them all!

They all have strengths and weaknesses, BUT vista is very different to the others and takes a little getting used to, but I like it and have had no trouble with it at all.

[RustyBear]

I work at a junior school where we are currently looking at replacing our ICT suite & we will be sticking with XP,mainly because we also have 2 sets of new classroom laptops which are XP & it would be too confusing for the children to keep switching. All the suppliers I've contacted so far can do the downgrade, though one of them was planning to charge £50 per machine for it!

However, I have Vista on this laptop & on a desktop at home & have recently bought DS & DD Vista laptops. I wouldn't say Vista has any more problems with the wireless network than DH's work laptop which is XP, or my older XP .
Where a Vista machine does really struggle is if it has too little RAM - Although MS say 500Mb will do but recommend 1 GB, I'd say 2Gb is the absolute minimum.

A lot of problems with Vista are with compatibility - I've heard from a few people with accounting programs who have problems running them on Vista. And I often get parents at school asking advice about their computers & saying they hate Vista & it turns out it's actually Word 2007 they mean, not Vista at all.

I work on documents at home on Vista with Word 2007 and at school with XP/Word 2003 without any problems - you can download a compatibility pack which will open docx files with no problem

The thing about PCs coming with Works instead of Word isn't really a Vista thing - lots of suppliers were doing it before Vista came along - my last XP laptop had it

[Reallytired]

RustyBear,

Doesn't your school have the microsoft schools agreement? It allows you the choice of Vista, or XP and to install Microsoft Office (either 2003 oe 2007) for about £30 a machine per year. The only snag is that you do have to buy a version of Windows. We usually buy the cheapest and then build our own image. (Ie. the last machines we bought had XP home on) Misco and Dabs both sell desktops with an XP downgrade at a reasonable price.

Once we have built our image we use a really old version of Norton Ghost and Freedos to image it. I have also been looking at FOG a freeware version of Norton Ghost.

Prehaps the biggest problem with Vista in a network setting is getting to to work with group policy and Windows 2003 server. I think it would be hard work to a mixture of XP and Vista on a school network.

[RustyBear]

Yes, reallytired - none of the schools in our borough have tried a mix yet & I don't really fancy being the first!

I'm really only just beginning to get to grips with group policies - especially since our last network was set up by Elonex just before they went bust & their installer seemed have his own unique brand of group policies that no-one else uses, so introducing a new OS into the system isn't something I want to try.

Our LA is looking at a borough-wide deal with MS, but I don't know where they've got to with it yet. Is the £30 a year just for Office, or does it include other MS software? Because we currently pay about £40 for office & wouldn't want to change the version too often (the kids might cope, but I'm not sure the teachers would....), so that would be for about 3-4 years. But if it includes Server & Exchange software too, it might be worth thinking about - but luckily I'm not the one who has to do the financial side of it.

We'll probably be using Ghost to copy the image, though I was talking to a tech at a local infant school recently who used Acronis True Image & put the image on an external hard drive & then just copied it to each workstation, intstead of using Ghost from the server.

[GunpowderTreasonAndLemon]

I have Vista and haven't had any problems (except when I firt got the machine an intermittent problem with bringing up the Control Panel - can't remember what was causing it but I Googled for the resolution ). It's been far more stable than XP was in terms of crashes and wireless connectivity. I don't like the new versions of Office, mind you - I'm sticking with Office 2003 for as long as possible.

[onager]

Funny and perhaps true. Upgrading Vista to XP

[piratecat]

lol, wondering if i should just stick to this bug infected bit of rubbish xp then!!

maybe it will hold out til 2010, when windows are doing another new one, so i have heard.

[Reallytired]

RustyBear,
The microsoft schools agreement of £30 year includes Microsoft Office and the operating system. We use Office 2003 so you would not be forced to Office 2007. The only problem is that its a yearly fee rather than a one off payment.

You can get licences for Server and Exchange at really low prices through the schools agreement. I don't deal with that side. I wish we could have exchange. We are stuck with RM for email. [Need vomit icon]

We copy store our images on a nas box. Our network is not up to doing multicasting. I also partition the drive with GParted and keep an image on each machine. The school I work at has a large number of different machines and it helps to know which image goes with each machine.

I found that I had a few problems with Ghost and SATA drives. I partly got round it by using Freedos to boot the machines. Unfortunately Freedos does not recongise USB. Also Freedos does not work well with SAT DVD drives.

If you got ghost 8 or later you could use Bart PE instead of Freedos. (The Bart PE website has instructions on how to make a windows live CD) Our version of Ghost is too old. Bart PE looks after the networking side.