XP vs Vista - the usual pro and con

Discussion in 'Windows XP General Discussion' started by Aunty Jack, Dec 20, 2014.

  1. Aunty Jack

    Aunty Jack

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    XP vs Vista Starter or Vista of any version.

    Hello from Aunty Jack,

    Yes, XP vs Vista. I have seen many comparisons and many opinions as we all have. What suits one may not suit another.

    These are my thoughts only from the perspective of an ordinary user.

    I have a habit of changing OS from time to time for the fun of it. Installed Vista Home Basic for a while and then Vista Starter because Home Basic chewed up resources on my 10 year old Dell. Vista Starter, quite viable as on OS , "prettier" than XP but really, that was about it. Despite Vista Starter being 32 bit only and with very low system requirements - problems. Icons disappear and it takes two tries to change icons. The biggie, overheating the CPU and motherboard. This may apply to Dell machines only or to any older PC. The heat the standard CPU fan and the six inch fan I fitted tried to move out of the case was astounding. So hot it heated the wall behind the system box (clamshell case) and the standard fan (thermostatic, variable speeds depending on temperature) was almost like a siren rising and falling even with no programs running. Temp reached (CPU) about 78 degrees celcius and climbing just using Google Chrome. Turn PC off fast.

    With XP, a steady 46 degrees celcius.

    Vista is a little tempremental about installing some ordinary programs. Freemake Video Downloader and the Video Converter are a case in point. Until the "unblock" option in properties is used, no way will Vista install perfectly safe programs. XP, no problems.

    Sure, I tweaked Vista for best performance and set a lot of Services to disabled or manual as usual and ran the usual set of clean-up/tweak/defrag utilities (everybody has their favourites). Always, after a good "clean out and clean up" I was left with about four useless files and about 10 to 12 Mb of junk files. With XP, zero and zero.

    On a newer high spec PC Vista can be very good and in a way I prefer Vista over Windows 7 despite the much shouted about Vista "bloat".

    My "muck about and see what happens" PC is a 2004 model Dell Optiplex GX270. A great 3 Ghz processor (Intel 4), 1 Mb Ram, video is Intel 82865G. Perfect for XP and many Linux distros but just a bit short on RAM for Vista. The mobo will take 4 Gb RAM but 10 year old SDRAM chips are impossible to find here in OZ.

    The choice is easy - XP for older machinery.

    So, back with XP Professional but, me being me, I will probably be tempted to slip a spare hard disk in the PC case and try yet another OS for the fun of it.

    Cheers from Aunty Jack.
     
    Aunty Jack, Dec 20, 2014
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  2. Aunty Jack

    Jojo

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    I don't use Vista anymore, but do have W7.

    Though I have two HDs with an OS on each. Switching between the two using my BOOT menu. I do this because all OSs seem to have a habit of trying to sabotage others they are aware of, such as happens with Dual Boot.

    Also, anyone using Vista should view this important and instructionful short information film.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC4vz6IbdtY
     
    Jojo, Dec 21, 2014
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