Windows XP still worth it?

[MakerOfGames]

Hello everyone , its been a little while since I've posted here and I have an interesting question for you.

As of June 30, Microsoft has discontinued retail sales of Windows XP. Extended support for SP3 of the OS will last until 2014. I have Vista on my laptop and it's not performing like I want it to. So, the question is, with XP now "on it's way out" is it really worth it to buy XP SP3 for $90. I am very close to giving in as Vista Home Basic likes to give me fits from time to time. I know XP just works. Do you think its a wise investment to buy an outdated OS?

[Trougedoor122]

what do u use your laptop for???

[AndyCR]

There are a few things to check first.

Does installing SP1 fix most of the issues?
Will Microsoft give you a copy of XP free in exchange for your copy of Vista? (I've heard of them doing so in some cases, so it can't hurt to ask.)
Would buying a bit more ram fix the fits it throws for less money than a copy of XP (and with money going to more deserving hands, since it would be Microsoft's fault you had to pay them more for XP to begin with...)? Vista gave me trouble with 1GB of ram. After upping it to 1.5 for $35 it runs pretty well.

You might try a few of those before paying out the nose for XP. You may also want to try to find a used retail copy.

[MakerOfGames]

Well I have an Aspire 3680-2682 which I maxed out on all upgrades. It is maxed at 2GB of RAM has a 200GB 7200RPM 16MB cache HDD, and I even ripped the whole laptop apart to replace the celeron M 1.8GHz(533MHz FSB) processor to a brand new Core 2 Duo (T7400) 2.13GHz 4MB L2 cache running at 667MHz FSB.

Even with all these upgrades Vista isn't making me completely happy. I have Service Pack 1 for vista Home Basic which came on my laptop and that was when I first started to have doubts of keeping Vista. After a 3 hour installation progress of SP 1 Windows crashed and almost killed itself forcing me to do a system restore and try again. Second attempt did work without any problems though. I have had a few glitches with my built in wireless card having connection issues. Home Basic works, but I have found slowdowns with large file transfers and have found that there has been no noticeable speed increase with SP1. I am tempted to buy XP to see what kind of a performance gain I could achieve.

I have looked into getting a free copy of XP for a downgrade but MS only does that for Home premium and higher editions. Vista would probably run better if I had better mobile graphics, as I am stuck with intel integrated i943GML. Either way I am just trying to maximize performance on my laptop. I guess I really don't have too much to complain about but I am a little disappointed at the responsiveness of my system for the hardware it has.

I guess I should just stick with Vista for now.

[bernie]

Have you thought of using win2k pro SP4, It's as good as if not better than winxp.

[Graywolf]

Have you thought of using win2k pro SP4, It's as good as if not better than winxp.

That's what I use, also. Of course, it means I have to pull a few tricks(crack installers and such) to keep my system up to date, but hey, for me it's worth it.

And, about XP... I've seen it on eBay at 20$-30$.

Edit: I can't believe that word(***** installers and such) is censored... It has plenty of meanings that aren't profane or offensive.

[paradoxnj]

Here are some suggestions:

1. http://www.tweakvista.com - Take their suggestions

2. Use the Vista Experience tool. It rates your machine in all areas (Memory, Disk I/O, Graphics, etc..). Here is how to use it.

3. Dedicate a small USB key to Vista for ReadyBoost. A 2GB one will be perfect. Here is how to do that.

4. Make sure you have a shader model 2 graphics card or above. If you don't, turn off AeroGlass.

Vista is really not that bad once you get used to it. It's rather intuitive.

Just a note to the MS haters out there...I am no lover of MS, but I do recognize why Windows is the King of OSes right now. It's because they listen to everyone and implement their suggestions (that and a very aggressive marketing campaign). Vista's core was designed by Microsoft, but all the features such as ReadyBoost and all the visual stuff were designed by companies like HP, Intel and Dell. People complained about slowness, Microsoft listened and fixed quite a bit of it with SP1.

People just hate Microsoft because they make you pay for their OS. I guess you should hate the gaming companies too because they make you pay for their games. I am all for free software, but the companies that make the software need to keep their heads above water too. Think about the people who actually wrote the software and their families. That is their primary source of income. If all software was free, where would they work?

In addition, there are complaints that Vista forces you to buy a new PC. That is not entirely true...while Vista is more hardware intensive, the hardware manufacturers push your hand also. Hardware companies drop support for old hardware to force you to buy new ones or they make you pay for extended support. This is why everything has a 1 year warranty on it. Also, when a new game comes out, do you not have to upgrade your video card to get the best looking graphics that it has to offer?

One more thought...if Microsoft made Vista for the computers of yesterday, how would technology ever move forward?

MoG, I suggest you form your own opinion of Vista after you have tried as I suggested above. I bet you that you will be more than satisfied.

[MakerOfGames]

I guess I will keep Vista because it does work. As the saying goes, don't fix what isn't broken. I really don't have the money to buy XP anway. I have tried to tweak Vista via msconfig and I have turned off every unused service and start up program. I have even disabled most of Windows features(under add remove programs "turn windows features on or off"). Only real problem I have with Vista is that after modifying the registry from installing or uninstalling a program or turning programs and features on or off is that Vista takes forever to shutdown and start up until I take an hour to defragment my system. Vista isn't all that bad, but some hardware functionality issues and glitches have made me rethink using it.
My laptop does have more than enough to run vista as my Windows Experience Rating is:
Processor: 5.1
Memory(RAM): 4.7
Graphics: 3.2
Gaming graphics: 3.0
Primary Hard Disk: 5.4

Guess I will keep it then as the problems are only minor and not too frequent. Thanks for your suggestions.

[Agentarrow]

how many hard drives does it have? If you have two you can dual boot, having one Hard drive run on XP and one on Vista. then you just put your XP stuff into the XP hard drive.
anyway. One main reason why Vista has people with so many problems, is because Vista no longer makes use of MS DOS. (Microsoft Disk Operating System) and many programs, especially those designed for win 95-98 need this to run. XP was given MS DOS as a means of backwards compatibility, but now Microsoft has gotten rid of it as an operating system default, which would break old ties and allow them to create better operating systems in the future.
The problem isn't that Vista is created poorly, it's that Microsoft no longer wishes to dwell in their past.

[paradoxnj]

Uh...use of MSDOS stopped with Windows NT and Windows 2000. The problem is that Vista is using a new driver model as opposed to WDM. The drivers and underlying technology is not complete. SP1 fixed a lot of that stuff.

[Agentarrow]

if MSDOS stopped use in NT and 2000 then why does it come with XP? but thanks for clearing that up. I always thought it was MSDOS.

[steven8]

if MSDOS stopped use in NT and 2000 then why does it come with XP? but thanks for clearing that up. I always thought it was MSDOS.

No, the command line tool is a 32 bit dos emulator, I believe.

I'll tell you something. I've run programs dating beck to the mid 80's without dosbox or anything straight in winxp. I click the executable, and windows deals with it. I've played all kinds of great stuff, including Sherlock Holmes text based adventures!

[paradoxnj]

if MSDOS stopped use in NT and 2000 then why does it come with XP? but thanks for clearing that up. I always thought it was MSDOS.

The command prompt is not MSDOS. It's a command prompt or a shell as Linux users call it. MSDOS was a complete operating system. The command prompt is just a command interpreter. Vista has one too. Just type cmd in the search bar in the start menu and hit enter.

I'll tell you something. I've run programs dating beck to the mid 80's without dosbox or anything straight in winxp. I click the executable, and windows deals with it. I've played all kinds of great stuff, including Sherlock Holmes text based adventures!

The best part of that is that it didn't require glibc v8.6.7.5309 to run it and you didn't have to compile it unlike some other OSes.

[steven8]

The best part of that is that it didn't require glibc v8.6.7.5309 to run it.

Nope.

[MakerOfGames]

I will still stick with just Vista as I should save that money for more important things. My laptop has a large HDD so I have dual booted Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with Vista on two separate partitions that uses GRUB boot manager(it installs with Ubuntu for non-linux users) to choose which OS I want at start up. I will probably just end up using Ubuntu more often then .