Poll: WinXP vs Win7

[hairyspin 1]

XP is ancient, it hasn't been supported in a long time, and is now 2 generations old. It was good while it lasted by it's gone gone gone.

 

 

Something odd is happening, I keep getting XP (creak, creak) updates and patches coming off the net. From some oufit called - lemme check - microsoft: anybody heard of these guys????

[markl 1]

Most peole I know in Sydney are still using XP.

 

I was at out local shop who sells PC last month and they said most people who purchased a PC with vista who played games were back within 3 months for XP. This included parents as well as people who purchased their own.

 

They said they "hoped" most new PC ownwers would stay with win7 but did not expect many existing owners to make the swap straight away. No real benifit for most people.

 

And the Australian Govt is not jumping on board for Win7 that quick either.

 

Cheers MarkL

[JimAttrill 24]

I went from XP pro 32-bit to 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Apart from some hassles getting TrackIr to work - both TrackIr and OFF manager have to be run in administrator mode otherwise they can't see each other - I am happy with 7 so far. This is on a AMD 5200+ cpu. This is my only OFF machine. I didn't want to use either XP or Vista 64-bit as a lot of people have issues with either.

 

Butttttt I also run an old IBM T20 800 mhz laptop with max 512Mb memory which just runs XP pro, and a Fujitsu-Siemens Centrino laptop with XP pro, and as of last week an ASUS Intel 3000 dual-core which seems happy on Vista Home Basic (except it won't talk to my Lexmark Z705 printer even though I have downloaded the the 'vista' drivers).

 

And at work I have an old crappy P4 with XP pro, though I am about due for an upgrade to something decent.

Edited December 1, 2009 by JimAttrill

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

 

All that aside, I have to admit that I've used Vista for the past 1.5 years, and like it WAY better than XP. Sure, it's got its problems, but it's so much better than XP in so many ways that I can't understand at all the fear of it amongst folks here.

 

Have to disagree with you on this one BH

 

I spent more time taking Vista off peoples machines in my Job, than I spent putting it on...It's the Worse O/S I have ever used..and on a par with ME... and has received rightfully bad press (IMHO)

 

The fact that Win7 has arrived so quickly speaks volumes!...It appears to me, that Win7 is merely a very expensive Service Pack for Vista!...A desperately needed one at that.

 

XP (for me) works perfectly well, even with new games...so why fix what ain't broken?

 

I am hearing excellent reports about Win7...and will more than likely just bite the bullet, and upgrade when my next full format comes due,,,but Vista is dead in the water, and will be remembered by Microsoft (and computer users alike) as a monumental f*** up in years to come I believe

[Maxiku 0]

I'm running Win7 64bit (Ultimate edition) on my desktop and Win7 32bit (Ultimate) on my laptop.

 

OFF runs absolutely fine on both of them, and Force Feedback (as least using my Microsoft Force Feedback 2 joystick) works absolutely fine in all games I have tested it with.

 

I agree with the comments on Vista. Many things on Vista were better than on XP but it had so many annoying issues that I went back to XP until the Win7 beta was released.

Since then I've stuck with Win7 and never missed XP.

I've also found it easier to get some old (Win 98/ME etc) games to run on Win7 than Vista.

 

I've seen a few comments about people waiting for the "Win 7 Service Pack" - but Microsoft have already stated that Win7 will run live updates so that there will not be any need for service packs.

They might change their mind (it wouldn't be the first time for Microsoft) but for now they are stating that Service Packs are a thing of the past.

 

 

 

[JimAttrill 24]

A point of Windoze history here: Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and ME were gui's on top of Dos. (nb: no services) 2000 was the first user-friendly version of NT (and remember that NT basically came from DEC, not M$) XP was a rehashed version of 2000 Vista was a rewrite of the whole thing, supposed to take over from the NT platform. 7 is back to NT, basically the front-end of Vista grafted onto XP. Look inside 7 and you will find files with names like 'NTOSKRNL.EXE' which give the game away. So it is no wonder that 7 is as fast as XP, because underneath it is XP.

[flynn 0]

Buzz... wrong... Vista is based on the same core technology as NT, 2000, XP etc. These OSes are iterations of the same concepts and there are improvements with every generation of OS.

 

The main problems with Vista come down to public perception based on a large number of users attempting to run it on inferior hardware. You have to have at least a 128Mb graphics card or the GUI will be sluggish. It also turned out that rather than be virtually guaranteed a much higher level of security from malware people didn't like UAC and couldn't spend the 2 minutes it takes to find out how to turn it off.

 

It utlimately comes down to suitability of matching between hardware and OSes. If you don't have an XP capable machine don't run XP. If you don't have a Vista capable machine, don't run Vista. If you don't have a Win7 capable machine etc....

 

I will probably switch from Vista to Win7 at about service pack 2 when it is stable and the drivers have been debugged, but wild horses wouldn't drag me back to XP or any other historic OS.

[themightysrc 5]

"I have it installed on my wife's laptop, and I despise it."

 

Snap! well, at least, my wife bought a laptop with Vista on it, having been used to XP Pro. At first, she gave it the benefit of the doubt, but now, 2 years on, she loathes it with a passion. Give that it's got double the RAM and processor power of my lowly Ubuntu setup, Ubuntu still blows it into the weeds for performance. If only OFF ran on linux!

 

I'm on XP Pro still on my own gaming rig, but given that W7 hasn't had dreadful reviews and is spoken of quite well by techies of my working acquaintance, I suppose my next machine will tun W7 64 bit to get the full benefit. By then, I hope, I'll have cast aside my current machine for something that actually handles PCI-E (!!) and doesn't creak and groan running OFF.

 

As an aside, I work for a local authority, and it's noticeable that we still run corporately on XP Pro: the ICT department looked at Vista for the hoi polloi and decided - wisely to my mind - to give it something of a wide berth.

[JimAttrill 24]

<br />... Vista is based on the same core technology as NT, 2000, XP etc. These OSes are iterations of the same concepts and there are improvements with every generation of OS. <br/>

 

No. Vista was supposed to be 'new', and it was. M$ stuffed it up big time and have now reverted to the XP platform with 7.

 

To show how 'bloated' Vista is, boot your machine and see what memory it is using with only services running. My wife's laptop with Vista is using 1.4Gb memory when doing nothing, compared to XP pro at 500Mb or less.

[Dimus 0]

Well, many different views here...

 

I'll just say that I got Vista 32 home premium on the rig I bought last year. It was a package deal that I could not break so I had to reluctantly take it. I must say that after deactivating UAC, the rig runs with no problems whatsoever and I use it for OFF, FSX, Il-2, ROF, in addition to my wife who uses it for her work. However, I do believe that Vista is a resource hog and most probably 7 will unleash the potential of my rig so I'll seriously think about it when I decide to upgrade it.

[Von Paulus 8]

The main problems with Vista come down to public perception based on a large number of users attempting to run it on inferior hardware.

 

My experience tells me different. Even with good hardware Vista doesn't work well.

My perception is the one who builds, sells, repair rigs and talk to customers. Vista is worse than Me.

 

After I used Win7 for a couple of times, I knew immediately that it was going to be a winner. I know this might not sound too analytical / racional but that's the way the things work after 20 years in this line of business.

Win7 is more stable than XP with SP1. There's that growing myth that it's perfect, which isn't the case. But I'm migrating much more quickly than I could imagine at the beginning. I predict will have my dual partition with XP for more one year.

As far OFF is concern, I really don't have a chance, it simply runs better, in my case, with Win7. I know it might sound strange, but OFF was the main reason why I bought Win7 so quickly.

[flynn 0]

Indeed, many views.

 

The new ideas in Vista included basing the GUI code around DX10 (i.e. bringing games technology into UI rendering), adding SuperFetch for dynamic improvements based on program usage, changing DLL caching to remove DLL hell (phew!), unifying the driver model, making the networking subsystem work responsively and intuitively, adding ReadyBoost to allow paging to solid state devices, fixing Search so that it is efficient and available widely in the GUI, adding versioning to the hard disk system (yay!), generally improve the GUI in about 1000 places, I could go on... I wonder how many of these are core pieces of Win7.

 

If you don't like it and you want to stick with XP for 500Mb of overhead that's fine, I like it and I have 700Mb of overhead with Vista, 1.3G of free physical RAM, with a 4GB page file on SSD.

[Bandy 3]

I know I'd appreciate a rock solid answer, as to the support of Force Feedback.

 

Siggi has mentioned that with Windows 7 . . 32 Bit, Force Feedback is non-existant

 

So then my only chance at grabbing the brass ring is Windows 7 . . . 64 Bit ?????????????

 

As mentioned in the other post, Win7 Pro x64 and force feedback is perfect on my Logitec Wingman. THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE OF THE OS, BUT YOUR JOYSTICK MANUFACTURER! Perhaps I am just lucky that Logitec has provided good driver updates, especially 64 bit ones!

 

Another poster mentioned TrackIR problems. Again, I have had no such problems with the 64 bit drivers available from Natural Point. No problem with plug-in-play on my CH rudder pedals either. This OS transition for BHAH has been painless, and I cannot say that for my other flight sims.

 

Win7 (at least 64 bit) boots at least as fast as my Mac OSX (I run both on the same 3 year old Mac Pro workstation) and runs BHAH terrifically fast, seeing double the maximum fps that I saw under XP 32 bit, and I haven't really had time to tweak 7 yet for all those unnecessary background processes!!! I expect even better performance to come...

 

My bottleneck is the hard drive, and in fact Win7 has a hardware evaluation applet (name escapes me) that will rank components of your computer on a scale of 0 to 7.9 (why 7.9? I don't know, I would have gone with 11 a la SpinalTap ) to suggest areas of improvement. My 3 year old rig ranked all 7.2 to 7.5 with the HD low at 5.9, so I'll save up for SSD. Christmas is coming, maybe...

 

REALLY trying not to sound like a poster-child for Win7, because I keep Windose on my computer only for simming (no anti-virus required) so my overall needs are very different. However, if your computer can run a 64 bit OS, then there is no reason to wait at least from my experience. Also Win7 Pro or higher (NOT home version) has XP 32 bit emulation for those programs you cannot do without.

 

There certainly is an adjustment to the OS, and some don't deal well with change, but so far I am very impressed and for what it's worth recommend making the jump.

 

Just a few cents thrown in...

[sandbagger 1]

I think its worth pointing out that OFF is not 'shackled' to XP, but in fact runs on Vista OS as well. I and other members of the OBD team use Vista. Also the team at OBD keep their eyes open for new OS and would always 'look into' this area.

[OvS 8]

I think its worth pointing out that OFF is not 'shackled' to XP, but in fact runs on Vista OS as well. I and other members of the OBD team use Vista. Also the team at OBD keep their eyes open for new OS and would always 'look into' this area.

 

on top of this, I think Pol and Winder or Rex are running it on Win7 and it's working fine, so yeah, we're not shackled to any particular OS.

 

Good conversation though guys, lot's to learn. I didn't know that Win7 went back to XP technology. I really think they went too far with Vista with securities. It messed a lot of people up that really had no idea how to operate a PC other than pointing and clicking. That's most of the complaints I hear from friends that I fix PC's for. The usual quote is that they're expected to be Admins or something, when all they want to do is turn in on, download music, surf, and play games.

 

I guess M$ realized this and went back to the more user friendly route of XP's technology?

 

OvS

[rabu 9]

Found this interesting discussion over at Tom's hardware and this post in particular about UAC on Vista which I too thought was just a hassle, at first.

 

aviadra 09-18-2008 at 02:03:13 PM Show message - 0 + At first UAC can surprise you, and there for annoy you. Y would I need to confirm the action I just asked for. And I’m no exception to this line of thought. However, I almost immediately remembered how Linux’s sudo command works and realized… aha!… Microsoft is trying to give the windows user the functionality advocated for YEARS by Linux fans. Not only that, but its actually doing it better then linux does for the most part. That is because in linux u usually only get an access denied and u need to re-issue the command using the sudo command, in windows

 

with UAC u get prompted.

A lot more information about y UAC is a good thing and actually helps to keep windows secure, even for administrators, can be found in Marks Russinovich's presentation about it in MSs TechNet site:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spot [...] FE86205DB5

 

For the people who don’t know who mark is, Mark is the creator of the famous ERD commander and the sysinternals utility suite.

 

Aviad Raviv (MCSE)

[Von Paulus 8]

OFF topic: Is there already a ERD version for Win7?

[OvS 8]

Found this interesting discussion over at Tom's hardware and this post in particular about UAC on Vista which I too thought was just a hassle, at first.

 

aviadra 09-18-2008 at 02:03:13 PM Show message - 0 + At first UAC ....

 

Which is all cool Rabu, if you're a systems admin and can understand the logic behind what it does. But for the rest of the non-NASA types, it is and was and will always be a total annoyance as he himself pointed out.

 

<Delete> ... [Do you want to delete this file?] Yes... [Are you sure you want to delete this file?] .... YES... [File deletion requires Administrative permissions. Are you the Administrator] YES!!! ... [This is your last warning, are you sure you want to delete this file] .... YES!!! YES!! F'N DELETE THE GOD D*&M FILE ALREADY!! ... [Cannot delete file as it is presently being used/opened by an existing user, contact your local Network Administrator for assistance.] ... MOTHER FUC--- !!!!!!

[Siggi 10]

Which is all cool Rabu, if you're a systems admin and can understand the logic behind what it does. But for the rest of the non-NASA types, it is and was and will always be a total annoyance as he himself pointed out.

 

<Delete> ... [Do you want to delete this file?] Yes... [Are you sure you want to delete this file?] .... YES... [File deletion requires Administrative permissions. Are you the Administrator] YES!!! ... [This is your last warning, are you sure you want to delete this file] .... YES!!! YES!! F'N DELETE THE GOD D*&M FILE ALREADY!! ... [Cannot delete file as it is presently being used/opened by an existing user, contact your local Network Administrator for assistance.] ... MOTHER FUC--- !!!!!!

 

[Bigfish3 0]

XP Pro with SP3 and I'll upgrade just as soon as either (a) OFF stops working with it - say around Phase 99?, or (b) MS come up with a better sales pitch for changing to Win7/giving them money than "it's more intuitive...".

[Guest Eject]

The same happens with Vista (32) and Win7 (32).

Only the 64bits OS can address more than 3GB directly. And yes, Windows XP Pro (64) can adress more than 3GB.

 

Danke Von, u r correct. Miy XP Pro SF2 is the old 32bit. Btw. I m planning, seriously, to use the new WIN7 in a new Notebook that is much more powerful with 500Gigs HDD, a max of 8MB DDR3 -- repeat -- DDR3 Memory. It's a LENOVO 500 something....do u think it will be a bit hard time (for me) to familiarize myself with the WIN7? Some people I met and discussed the OS (VISTA, XP Pro and WIN7) said that WIN7 requires LESS resources. Is it correct? I may have to read the review someplace in the Net. Thanks mate.

Edited December 1, 2009 by Eject

[Olham 164]

Been flying on XP 32 so far - will now try Vista with my new rig and see what I get.

Dimus, what is UAC, that you deactivated?

[OvS 8]

Danke Von, u r correct. Miy XP Pro SF2 is the old 32bit. Btw. I m planning, seriously, to use the new WIN7 in a new Notebook that is much more powerful with 500Gigs HDD, a max of 8MB DDR3 -- repeat -- DDR3 Memory. It's a LENOVO 500 something....do u think it will be a bit hard time (for me) to familiarize myself with the WIN7? Some people I met and discussed the OS (VISTA, XP Pro and WIN7) said that WIN7 requires LESS resources. Is it correct? I may have to read the review someplace in the Net. Thanks mate.

 

I hear its less than Vista more than XP... but not much more.

[+Polovski 414]

Windows 7 64 is the one to go for especially if you are buying new hardware, allows use of more memory over 4GB, and bonus is not quite VISTA. Pretty good, just some annoying quirks regarding permissions but otherwise slick..

[rabu 9]

Which is all cool Rabu, if you're a systems admin and can understand the logic behind what it does. But for the rest of the non-NASA types, it is and was and will always be a total annoyance as he himself pointed out.

 

<Delete> ... [Do you want to delete this file?] Yes... [Are you sure you want to delete this file?] .... YES... [File deletion requires Administrative permissions. Are you the Administrator] YES!!! ... [This is your last warning, are you sure you want to delete this file] .... YES!!! YES!! F'N DELETE THE GOD D*&M FILE ALREADY!! ... [Cannot delete file as it is presently being used/opened by an existing user, contact your local Network Administrator for assistance.] ... MOTHER FUC--- !!!!!!

 

Hehe.. ya, if there really were that many nag screens I wouldn't put up with it at all. I just get one on the Vista 64 at work, I hit the yes button and I'm done with it.