Your opinion on loading XP on a 2008 Dell vs keeping Vista

[dennis osipiak]

I want to purchase a new Dell XPS 420 Quad core. I need a lot more speed and

memory than I have now for my photoshop work.(I've upgraded my memory once and

don't care to add more, plus I need much more speed.) With so much negativity

re:Vista, I wondered what problems I might encounter if I reformatted a 2008

computer purchase and then added XP as my new operating system. (My copy of XP

is about 4 years old I think) I know I can download the various service packs

that Windows has needed again for XP, but I wonder how much of Vista optimizes

the Quad core technology and other features of the new computers. I know XP will

cause fewer conflicts but it seems counter intuitive to put a 2002 engine into a

2008 car. Can XP take full advantage of whatever the 2008 computer design has to

offer?

[garrison_k.]

Order your Dell with XP? Vista will be dead in a year or two and we'll have Windows 7.

[marc_rochkind]

If you can get drivers for your peripherals for Vista, I think you should use Vista. It's better than XP, but less compatible because the industry never really committed to it. But, each case is different. If your peripherals work (printers, scanners, etc.), then go for it.

 

In time, Vista is going to get better, and XP is going to get dead.

[kelly_flanigan1]

<a href="http://photocamel.com/forum/blogs/jdart/37-xp-versus-vista.html">XP versus Vista on photocamel</a>

[outdoor_guy]

If your system comes pre-loaded with Vista, you may have some issues finding XP drivers for some of your hardware. Windows XP while is a great OS, it is dated and may not take full advantage of the quad-core processor. Vista on the other hand should handle the quad-core technologies better and you will find better suppport for it.

 

While it may be frustrating at first, try Vista for a couple of months and see how you like it.

 

Michael

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here I often buy new boxes with latest OS; then just swap out the HDA and place XP; win2000; NT4 embedded; server etc. VISTA is better just like are current 3 presidential candidates are the ultimate 3 human leaders of all time.:) For many folks buying the latest things and saying older items are garbage helps the economy.

[bgelfand]

We have been running Vista for about 9 months on my Significant Other's desktop. It is a rock solid system; I checked the logs lately and we have had NO failures.

 

Of course, I built the desktop specifically to run Vista. It has no "Bloatware" on it.

 

The people who ran into problems with Vista:

 

1) Tried to upgrade old machines without doing a clean install. This has always been a recipe for trouble whether it is upgrading to Vista or upgrading to XP.

 

2) Tried to upgrade old hardware that was marginal for Vista. By the way, a few years ago people who tried to upgrade their old Windows98 machines to XP ran into the same problems, and we heard the same complaints about how XP was a "resource hog".

 

3) Did not do their "due diligence" and, as Marc pointed out, insure that third party hardware had Vista compatible drivers or the versions of software they were running were Vista compatible. I have very little sympathy for these people.

 

Photoshop CS2 and CS3 run quite well under Vista; earlier versions do not.

[kelly_flanigan1]

<a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/mad-hatters-quad-core-2-duo-server-goes-sixteen-ways-198190.php"><img src="http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2006/08/6800-thumb.jpg"></a>

[Ed_Ingold]

By most accounts, Vista IS "bloatware". You can still buy XP until the end of June, perhaps longer if the protests continue.

[bgelfand]

Hi Kelly,

 

No one said XP was garbage. It is a good operating system, at least it is once SP2 came out. By the way, do you remember the "know-it-alls" who refused to put SP2 on their XP system? <GRIN>

 

If I had purchased a new computer that came with Vista, as Dennis has, I would not remove it and install XP. If I had an old computer with XP, and it met my needs, I would not install Vista on it just to have Vista.

 

Me, I still run Windows 2000. I will probably upgrade next year, and if Vista is the current operating system, that is what I will install.

 

By the way, what was your post of the Task Manager suppose to illustrate?

[walter_degroot]

didn't some companies offer to sell newer systems with windows XP installed rather than vista??

some may prefer to stay with what they are used to, of certain periphials, at that time, did not yet have vista-compatible drivers.

 

the big companies should be able to tell you if a video card or a quad core cpu is compatible with xp, or not.

 

this is not a new problem, as things and os-';s changed, some things either became obsolete or did not work properly.

there was SETVER so older programs could work with dos 5.

newer os would not even fit on the older drives,

the hard drive size limits, made older motherboards prectically .useless. a 286 vonly could adress 16m of ram and this was not enough to run any windows beyond 3.11 with any speed. Old bios recognized 17 sectors in the cmos drive table.

 

The history of computers os full of these "roadbumps"

sometimes microsoft has added to these problems,

Just like Kodak has better ideas about film formats.

anyone buy a $100.00 aps camera for $3.49 lately? I did

[bgelfand]

I don't know about APS film cameras, but there are many very expensive APS size DSLR cameras being sold today. <grin>

 

Dell offered new computers loaded with XP to its large business customers. Many companies require that all their computers run the same operating system and were not ready to migrate thousands of computer to Vista without extensive testing. That is a wise precaution for a company with many computers, but does not apply to most home users.

 

That is not to say a home user should not insure that all his critical software will run under a new system before purchasing, but for the home user such a check should take only a few hours of research on the Web.

[garrison_k.]

"Dell offered new computers loaded with XP to its large business customers."

 

They still offer it to anybody. It isn't plain as day on their site, but I just ordered a quad core for a friend last week with xp.

 

Not sure why anyone would intentionally load Vista if they had a choice? All the hardware manufactures make sure their stuff works on XP first, not Vista. XP service pack 3 will be out soon, the beta testers claim it runs even faster. The industry knows 'Windows 7' will be out shortly as it's at milestone 2 and has been submitted for anti-trust evaluation..so no one is paying much attention to Vista. It's a flop with no clear advantage over XP.

[bgelfand]

Hi Garrison,

 

"Not sure why anyone would intentionally load Vista if they had a choice? "

 

I chose Vista for my Significant Other's computer because it was the current operating system. Third party vendors - Adobe for one, Apple for another, and many others - will usually support the current Microsoft operating system, Vista, and one release back, XP. Cases in point, neither CS3 nor the current Quicktime is supported for Windows 2000 but both are supported for Vista and XP.

 

Like you, I suspect Windows 7 will be out within a year or so. At that point I suspect the releases of CSx will be supported for Windows 7 and Vista, but not for XP.

 

The advantage of Vista over XP, for me, is very simply a longer life for my computer.

 

When Windows 7 is released, I expect we will be having this same discussion about how bad Windows 7 is vis-a-vis Vista, or for some die-hard, XP. <grin>

[kelly_flanigan1]

Whats funny is how with a triple boot computer there thats running dos/win98se; win2000; and XP there are movies and videos that microsofts player wont run; but they will with the older players in win2000 or 98se. The same video thats ten years old now the XP wants to phone home for approval.<BR><BR>In a dual boot XP VISTA box the box runs slower with VISTA; is a more bloaded OS. In a way modern bloadeded OS's are for folks who like big government; more taxes; get off with a larger federal budget and more IRS forms; ie bload and waste. <BR><BR>Maybe VISTAs replacement will require 4 gigs to boot; require a DNA sample; and folks will LOVE the bload and warmth of the better OS.:)<BR><BR>Brooks; entire VISTA is bloadware; for a given config it requires more ram than XP; win2000; or NT4. Thus with a typical 2 gig box you have less ram; more crap running with the more modern bloaded OS. So called uprading of a fine running photoshop box that runs well with win2000 or xp to vista is a downgrade often; is like slow as crap in the computers I have experimented with. Thus with vista one really needs more computer since its such a non-green trendy bloaded OS. Like a 500Lb man versus a 150lb man on a moped; the ballooning OS runs slower.<BR><BR>

[garrison_k.]

I can appreciate that, Brooks.

 

Kelly, and everyone, had a chance with Ubuntu yet? The more I use Ubuntu, the more I loathe MS and Mac. And Adobe. Ubuntu is a movement, a community aiming for a windowless society free of all the things we've talking about here. Open source, anyone can contribute. The entire OS can run off of a 700meg CD! It's linix and bomb proof. Anybody can try the 'live cd', just download it, burn it, boot. Choose Ubuntu. It wont effect your system once you quit. But it's amazing how it finds all the drivers, finds it way onto the net, and it's fast! Even when using the live cd it just runs off of ram. You can continue to use the live cd all you want (talked friends and family into doing this for online banking etc) but you can also install and then choose to dual boot, or just wipe off windows all together. It's just how computers should be. Hassle free and small. It runs on almost anything too. One fellow on the forums blew the dust off of a 286 he had and it accepted Ubuntu. Google it and try it.

[bgelfand]

Hi Kelly,

 

There is no argument that Vista takes more resources. But XP took more resources than Windows 2000, which took more resources than NT4, which took more resources than Windows 98, which took more than Windows 95, which took much more than DOS (the operating system that would never need more than 640K <grin>) ... You see where this is going.

 

As I wrote, if you have an older box that is running XP, don't convert unless you need Vista to run an application.

 

On the other hand, if like Dennis (you remember Dennis, the fellow who started this thread; the one we have not heard from for a while <grin>), you are purchasing new, Vista capable hardware with Vista preloaded, I think it would be a mistake to spend even more money and back off to XP. By the way, the cost to upgrade to a Vista capable box is much less than the cost to upgrade to an XP capable box when XP first came out.

 

As for DRM, which is now part of all current operating systems, that is a topic for another discussion, and has nothing to do with Vista vs XP.

[bgelfand]

Hi Garrison,

 

I agree, Linux is a much more efficient operating system than Windows. I just finished installing an older copy of Red Hat on the box that use to run Windows 98, the one that was replaced by the new computer with Vista. I understand that Ubuntu is a very nice distro, although I have no personal experience with it.

 

However Linux has one big drawback for me - a lack of applications that I use.

 

As far as I know, Photoshop does not run under Linux. There may be an equivalent, but I have invested too much time learning Photoshop to want to convert.

 

The Home Inventory, CD Library, Book Library, and DVD/Tape Library programs I use also do not run under Linux. Believe me, I will NOT convert and run another wall-to-wall inventory.

 

Microsoft Money does not run under Linux. I am not about to try to recreate over 10-years of financial data.

 

Camera Companion, which is a data base for the shooting data from my F100, does not run under Linux.

 

Nikon Scan does not run under Linux.

 

For my purposes, Opened Office would suffice and replace Microsoft Office; it does run under Linux.

 

However, the software that synchronizes my cell phone and my old PDA to Outlook will not run under Linux or with Opened Office.

 

These are the applications I use daily. Until they all run under Linux, or any operating system like the next release of Windows, I will not consider that operating system for my main system.

[garrison_k.]

"- a lack of applications that I use."

 

Yes, same here, Brooks. Most often I feel forced to use windows...But for the majority of computer users that just use email, word, and the odd spreadsheet, Ubuntu is a great alternative and of course isn't just limited to those few apps.

 

I'd only consider loading Vista 64 if I had to load Vista. Adobe's promised 64 bit for windows on the next release. I'm running the beta 2 64bit version of LR on a XP 64 box and it's substantially faster.

 

Owning four copies of XP, I had no issues with my constitution when a geek friend offered me a copy of Black XP 7.2 to load for laughs on an old P4 I stopped using years ago. And leave it to the hackers to make it right. Built on server 2003, with a stripped down version of XP and some cool functions of Vista intertwined, it's actually the best windows OS I've used.

[bgelfand]

I agree, for Web surfing and light Office use, Linux is a viable answer. In fact, I will use that to try to give our old computer away. I do wish there was a good anti-virus program for it, though.

 

I, too, would like to run the 64-bit version of Vista when I convert. However, lack of drivers will probably restrict me to the 32-bit version. Nikon has all but stated they will not release 64-bit drivers for the Coolscan V, (or 5000 or 9000 for that matter). I could use Vuescan, but I do like being able to use the TWAIN interface and scan directly into Photoshop.

 

I will not feel too restricted, Right now, I am running CS2 under Windows 2000 on an 8-year old box that has a 1GHz Pentium III and 512 Megabytes (half a Gigabyte) of PC133 RAM. I get reasonable response time, but I usually have only one or two images opened at the same time. However, full Coolscan V scans of a 35mm color negative produces large files to work on.

 

The version of Black XP that you have sounds interesting.

 

I would be very interested in seeing a bench mark of Lightroom beta 2 64-bit to Lightroom beta 2 32-bit. Comparing it to Lightroom 1.x is comparing Apples to Oranges.

 

Writing of 64-bit Photoshop, you may be interested in this post by Scott Byer, one of the senior Photoshop developers, on the subject:

 

http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/12/64_bitswhen.html

 

This post was made made over a year ago; hardware has changed.

 

I think the big break will come with the release of Nehalem and the transition to DDR3 memory.

[garrison_k.]

"I think the big break will come with the release of Nehalem and the transition to DDR3 memory."

 

Along with solid state hard drives :)

 

"Writing of 64-bit Photoshop, you may be interested in this post by Scott Byer..."

 

Adobe announced a few weeks ago that CS4 is going 32 and 64 bit for windows but only 32 bit for mac. The Vista64 LR beta version 2 loaded fine on my XP64 box and, cross fingers, hopefully CS4 will as well. I don't want to go Vista64 for more than 3 gigs of ram. But then Windows 7 will be around by then too. Times they are a changin' and think it's all designed to just cost us $$$...

 

Cheers Brooks,

 

G

[gerber_van_der_graaf]

Consider to move out to the GNU/Linux OS: its definitely more stable, reliable and faster, doesn't need virus scanners, reads/writes much less to the Harddisk (so your HD will last longer) and is quite userfriendly when installing and using nowadays. A good and popular distro is Ubuntu, but Debian rocks concerning reliablity and stability, though uses slightly older software as they do not release a new distro beacause of marketing issues. A drawback of GNU/Linux is that not every electronics manufacturer publishes the required information for writing the driver software (like Nikon scanners). But concerning this, Windows Vista also seems to lack many (printer) drivers for your periferies as well.

 

GNU/Linux has given back the control to the user over the entire system; you can explore, change and extend any part of the software, which is the best guarantee for getting reliable and good working software. This is the most strong point of it.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here I hae a couple of 64bit XP boxes; one has 8 gigs of ECC ram. It has PS CS2 and PS7 on it; and PS 5.5.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Maybe when Windows 7 comes out in 2010 we can buy all the current Vista cheerleaders "Win Me 2" tshirts to remind folks of their past love and flame:) What if windows 7 cuts the cord to those with old obsolete 32 bit boxes?.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Maybe when Windows 7 comes out in 2010 we can buy all the current Vista cheerleaders "Win Me 2" tshirts to remind folks of their past love and flame:) What if windows 7 cuts the cord to those with old obsolete 32 bit boxes?.