Should I Stick With Vista Or Get Windows 7?

[rpgsearcherz 5]

My personal recommendation is go to Windows 7.I've been against Vista since it was still in Alpha/Beta stages. It has always given issues and has always been a resource hog to me.Even with only 2 gb's of 800 mhz ram I am able to run Windows 7 *faster* than I was XP. When gaming, I'm finding Win 7 to be much better/faster as well. There are actually high-end games I can play on higher settings with 7 than I can with XP.I was scrolling through options and whatnot and it seems Win 7 just has better memory management, plus better caching and other things.Until I see something to force me back away from 7, I'm sticking with it. With Vista I couldn't last more than 12 hours without getting aggravated and doing rollbacks to XP again.

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

I find it funny that Windows is already coming out with a new OS and yet a ton of people and companies are still on Windows XP, since they don't care for Vista.I'd say for your case, go with Vista since you get all the versions for free. I haven't seen much of 7 to give you a good idea of what it's like. For me I'll stay with XP though.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I find it funny that Windows is already coming out with a new OS and yet a ton of people and companies are still on Windows XP, since they don't care for Vista.
I'd say for your case, go with Vista since you get all the versions for free. I haven't seen much of 7 to give you a good idea of what it's like. For me I'll stay with XP though.

As weird as it is, like I said in my last post, Win 7 is actually faster than XP.

Try it out if you get the chance, you'll probably be amazed like I was.

I actually spent weeks researching it because it didn't make sense to me how it was "faster" but after trying it, it really is (on crappy PC's even).

[mahesh2k 0]

As weird as it is, like I said in my last post, Win 7 is actually faster than XP.

I just want to confirm this. You find windows 7 faster on old machines ?. i mean pentium 4 one's. with RAM 256-1GB ?. I find it vista having hard time on those machines. But XP performs nicely on those machine. My one machine is running on 512 RAM, Pentium 4 2.0 ghz processor. So i wanted to confirm if i upgrade to RAM say 1 GB, is windows 7 will give good performance on that old pc ? What are your observations about old pc configurations for windows 7 ?

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

I guess I'm not the only one here with an ancient computer. I'm running a Pentium 3 on 512MB RAM, which is the maximum that the motherboard can handle. I'm going to stick with XP until I get a new computer, since Vista or 7 probably won't run on it (without overclocking the RAM). Surprisingly I have been able to run a few programs that require 1GB RAM on this computer, while it only has half of that. The only problem is that operating systems might not work unless I have the necessary amount of RAM.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I just want to confirm this. You find windows 7 faster on old machines ?. i mean pentium 4 one's. with RAM 256-1GB ?. I find it vista having hard time on those machines. But XP performs nicely on those machine. My one machine is running on 512 RAM, Pentium 4 2.0 ghz processor. So i wanted to confirm if i upgrade to RAM say 1 GB, is windows 7 will give good performance on that old pc ? What are your observations about old pc configurations for windows 7 ?

That's actually a very good question. Based on my preliminary research (before I tried Win 7) it supposedly runs better on older systems as well. But I'm not sure "how old."

For my personal usage, I have every setting on the highest, including 3d backgrounds that change every 10 seconds, transparent taskbar, transparent screens, and everything else.

Even with all of that running, I'm at around 600 MB's of ram used up. (This also includes Java, IE, and everything else I have running right now).

So really I'm not sure about it being good with 512 MB's but with 1 GB you should be more than fine. Even running some MMORPG's I've been at 1 gb and below.

I think you can still download the beta for free if you would like to test it that way. That's what I did because I was ready to reformat again anyways (to clean out my system) so I decided if it sucked I would just reinstall XP again.

It's really hard to judge other people's PC's because there are just so many factors:

HDD speed/free space
CPU speed/clock speed
MB speed
RAM amount/speed
Video Card ram/speed/type

And some other factors.

The best thing I can really say is to give it a try if you can for free and then make your decision based on that.

I think XP is really still okay for most things, especially as I was still using it up until recently. I'm just loving the new look of 7 and how everything is organized.

[mahesh2k 0]

@repgsearcherz, thanks for the information. I'll have to check out Windows 7 RC for that now. It's good to hear that it will work with low ram like 1GB. I mean with vista even 1GB is not enough. It takes lot of RAM, even if we disable aero theme and revert to classic. I don't know where it takes up so much resource. That is why i unable to upgrade last time. I read winsupersite blog, so most of my views are formed cause of that blog. Also i'm yet to try their XP mode virtualization. I heard that it is limited to some versions and not for all version, is that true or is it rumor ? also i heard ultimate and professional edition of windows 7 have very few differences. is it ?.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

@repgsearcherz, thanks for the information. I'll have to check out Windows 7 RC for that now. It's good to hear that it will work with low ram like 1GB. I mean with vista even 1GB is not enough. It takes lot of RAM, even if we disable aero theme and revert to classic. I don't know where it takes up so much resource. That is why i unable to upgrade last time.
I read winsupersite blog, so most of my views are formed cause of that blog. Also i'm yet to try their XP mode virtualization. I heard that it is limited to some versions and not for all version, is that true or is it rumor ? also i heard ultimate and professional edition of windows 7 have very few differences. is it ?.

I haven't used XP virtualization yet as I haven't had a need to. Only one program had issues and it was just because I accidentally unplugged my external drive while running the program. When that happened it failed to run and Win 7 automatically decided in the future it will try XP virtualization on it to help make it work better.

As for it being limited to different versions, I'm unsure. Also, about Ultimate and Professional, I think the big changes are in the "safety" of it. You should be able to pull that information up pretty easily on Microsoft's website though. Just search for "Windows 7 version comparisons" or something like that.

[rayzoredge 2]

Just an FYI, Windows XP Professional SP3 actually performs better (for the most part) over both Vista and 7, but the margins are something that you might want to look at.

For example, XP takes forever to shut down compared to Vista or 7. But everything else inclusive of normal use, to include gaming, warrant no real excitement as far as PC performance goes.

XP and 7 actually operate somewhat on the same performance level, but 7 "feels" zippier. A lot of people report this and don't know why, considering that benchmarks prove that they are rather comparable, with XP in the lead (but by a few negligible seconds on certain tasks).

This information is based on what I've read a while back, so some current numbers are in order... [January 2009]

Apparently, Windows 7 wins in the networking department, but all other differences as far as performance goes is rather menial at single-digit percentage gains and even losses to Windows XP. (Vista users, however, have plenty to gain switching to 7.) But you have to remember that Windows 7 brings a lot to the table, like DirectX 10 support, Aero, and other fancy features as well as security-related interests and other good-to-have things like ease of networking.

Kind of funny to actually think about Windows 7 as an upgrade and next step up from Windows XP... which is good, considering that we couldn't stick with the 8-year-old operating system forever. (No, I never actually considered Vista an upgrade path.)

Edited September 18, 2009 by rayzoredge (see edit history)

[rpgsearcherz 5]

Just an FYI, Windows XP Professional SP3 actually performs better (for the most part) over both Vista and 7, but the margins are something that you might want to look at.
For example, XP takes forever to shut down compared to Vista or 7. But everything else inclusive of normal use, to include gaming, warrant no real excitement as far as PC performance goes.

XP and 7 actually operate somewhat on the same performance level, but 7 "feels" zippier. A lot of people report this and don't know why, considering that benchmarks prove that they are rather comparable, with XP in the lead (but by a few negligible seconds on certain tasks).

This information is based on what I've read a while back, so some current numbers are in order... [January 2009]

Apparently, Windows 7 wins in the networking department, but all other differences as far as performance goes is rather menial at single-digit percentage gains and even losses to Windows XP. (Vista users, however, have plenty to gain switching to 7.) But you have to remember that Windows 7 brings a lot to the table, like DirectX 10 support, Aero, and other fancy features as well as security-related interests and other good-to-have things like ease of networking.

Kind of funny to actually think about Windows 7 as an upgrade and next step up from Windows XP... which is good, considering that we couldn't stick with the 8-year-old operating system forever. (No, I never actually considered Vista an upgrade path.)

In terms of the networking, I haven't messed with it yet. I only upgraded one of our PC's to Windows 7 because I won't fully "trust" it until I've used it extensively without issues. But this network thing it has internal is quite interesting... It's supposed to automate the entire networking process, including networking printers and other devices.

Along with this, the internal CD burning wizard is a lot better than the one in XP. You can burn "Flash-like" dvd's or CD's (where you can copy/paste/edit/etc. files on the CD/DVD itself if it's rewritable, instead of having to burn/erase/burn/erase). To test that out I made files, edited them, made new folders, transferred files from one folder to another, etc. and then took the disc straight out and tried it out in an XP system - 0 flaws at all with it.

As for your lack of considering Vista an upgrade, I still to this day consider it a downgrade. In fact, when I bought my last PC from HP and I was talking to customer support I had to get XP drivers and they asked why I don't put the original Vista back on it. My reply: "I am *upgrading* to Windows XP."

To me, Vista was worse than XP in almost every possible way.


Windows 7 may prove to be failsauce in the future (near or far), but as of right now I've had no issues.

[dragonfang00 0]

since MSDN is also available on windows 7 then you should probably get a windows 7. it is much faster and can perform much better than windows vista since vista is known to eat all resource and can cause spikes in the performance of the machine.

[akira550 0]

is the free upgrade to windows 7 still available? because my friend had it and i am so impress how this OS run because it's much less hunger than Vista.. because Vista needs big system requirements while the vista eat so many spaces.. anyone of you know how can i upgrade my laptop into that OS? please thanks i will dual boot with my linux because i am still a linux loyal

[BCD 1]

I would surely go with Windows 7. It had received lots of bug reports in the RC testing phase, and I suppose it has most of the bugs cleared out of the way (atleast as a first release), compared with Windows vista which had lots of bugs in its initial release.Since windows 7 needs a complete re installation instead of upgrading, you may need to backup all the data and software's installed on your PC. Also, there might be problems with the drivers, even though Windows 7 comes with many drivers. For example the default video drivers were not working with Second life and had to update to the Windows 7 drivers from Nvidia. So if you have some graphics related applications you might need to have a look at the compatibility issues with drivers.

[primerfoco 0]

Windows 7 is faster than XP in bootup and shutdown time. However, Xp is faster in some games than Windows 7 (RC). Go with Win 7.