Rolling back to XP

[weisguy]

Well,

I've given it a week. After living with Vista for 7 days, I've got to say I'm going back to XP and spending tomorrow undoing what I did *last* Saturday. Aero is pretty, but I'm longing for the crisp, fast responsiveness of XP. I am reminded of the expression: "You can't polish a turd."

Vista is just plain dog slow. Applications are often relatively sluggish to launch. I have 2GB of RAM, a dual-core 2.2 Ghz machine, and SATA hard drives but no matter what I do it just isn't as fast as XP.

Peerguardian and SafePeer do not work yet for Vista

I'm getting audio/video unsynchronized when I watch live TV on GBPVR. In no way am I slagging GBPVR. I've got to say except for that, GB-PVR has been one of the MOST reliable things I've seen working on Vista. I just don't want to take the time to figure it all out. Could it be the Vista-native hauppauge driver? My codec? Argh. My old GBPVR setup wasn't broken but I tried to fix it anyway. Stoopid me.

Unbelievably invasive "are you really sure you want to do this" mentality laced through the OS. Most of it I've been able to turn off, however the overhead is still there. If you know what you are doing with respect to system administration, Vista's security "enhancements" are pure annoyance.

Lack of a decent ATI Radeon driver.

UltraVNC server cannot yet be used as a process.

Horrible, horrible sleep support. (Microsoft has even ack'd this one.)

How is everyone else doing...?

Until SP1,
Brian

[jim08127]

Even on XP no matter that my hardware is plenty good, I always turn off the eye candy for better performance. After reading a few reviews I figured out already that Vista in its shipping form wasn't going to entice me much. I assume MS will release more goodies to go with it as they can though.

[David]

I just installed Vista this morning on my workstation (not my GB-PVR machine). I bought a new hard drive so that I can go back to my working XP at any time. My wife, technophobe when I married her, will no longer tolerate down time.

I am just playing for the moment, and debating if I should bother getting media to try 64 bit. I have a dual core x64 system. Vista indicates that my ATI x600 AIW card is what brings my system score down to 3.7.

[Ted the Penguin]

I have heard this from a few places:
In releasing Vista, Microsoft succesfully made more people want to use OSX

I just installed Vista this morning on my workstation (not my GB-PVR machine). I bought a new hard drive so that I can go back to my working XP at any time. My wife, technophobe when I married her, will no longer tolerate down time.

resistance is futile
it always works out that way, you get them to like technology... and they try to get you to like the nonsensicle shows they watch on TV... ok well my girlfriend failed, but it wasnt for lack of trying

I am just playing for the moment, and debating if I should bother getting media to try 64 bit. I have a dual core x64 system. Vista indicates that my ATI x600 AIW card is what brings my system score down to 3.7.

ignore that, it does not matter. your card will still render aero plenty well. any card that is not DX10 gets a crap score

[stu8080]

Ive had a pretty good time with Vista to be honest, my ATI drivers were ok untill a recent update which improved things a great deal (Radeon 7.2).

My only gripes were crashes with Windows Live Mail Desktop (needs a snappier name!) and Photo Gallery, but these were patched a few weeks later, and my X-Fi card, for which Creative have only just released vista drivers that work as they should!

I have an Opteron 146 (AMD64 +3500), 2GB RAM, X1900GT, 80GB HDD and it runs much faster and more stable than XP ever did.

Aero and Dreamscene are nice touches, but its its stability and things like the search feature that i like the most.

I dont run GBPVR on Vista though as my HTPC just isnt up to it and it wouldn;t bring any immediate benefits with the setup i have anyway.

[soccerdad]

I am about to pull the trigger and start building a dedicated HTPC. I need an OS. zipzoomfly has XP home for $89 and Vista basic for $92. It will be dedicated to HTPC with GBPVR of course. Is there ANY advantage to Vista besides it eventually will become the standard? Are there any DRM issues with Vista at this point?

[Bathman]

I installed a copy on my spare 1gig Ram. Athalon 2200 with radeon 7500. What a dog it runs like a snail. I'am sticking with XP.

[stu8080]

Need 4GB of Memory
Quad CPU Core
1/2 to TB HDD

Thats a bit excessive! If you want Aero it needs a DX9 graphics card, and ideally 2GB RAM, but 1GB would be sufficient.

I wouldnt have payed the current price for Vista, its not worth it. Instead i bought a copy cheap from a friend in the MSDN program - he got his free for beta testing it. He's old school and wants to stick with XP.

I have a friend who obtained his far less legitimately, and runs it on a P4 with 512Mb RAM and a Nvidia 6200. Whilst it runs ok, its quite sluggish and i wouldnt be able to use it for long before it went out the window!

[tunanugget]

I am about to pull the trigger and start building a dedicated HTPC. I need an OS. zipzoomfly has XP home for $89 and Vista basic for $92. It will be dedicated to HTPC with GBPVR of course. Is there ANY advantage to Vista besides it eventually will become the standard? Are there any DRM issues with Vista at this point?

if u buy xp home, don't u automatically get vista upgrade for free in the mail?

[soccerdad]

if u buy xp home, don't u automatically get vista upgrade for free in the mail?

I have no clue:confused: I would be buying an OEM copy so I am not sure. Anyway, it looks like XP is still the way to go. Thanks for all the opinions. Keep em coming if there is any more we should know.