Yes, XP is ten times better and shouldn’t be retired. Sometimes I think they change things for the sake of change. Microsoft should have know better than put out Vista, with all the problems it had with established software. When I bought a new computer, I insisted on XP.

Hi Douglas,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Regards, Ron

They’re both versions of NT, no huge differences internally.
They killed performance somewhat with end-to-end video encryption, and made BSODs a bit more likely with “tilt bits”. IMO a long-term marketing plan to be “the only piracy-safe” OS. I’d guess the actual developers hated having to do that.
Oh - want a DIY comparison? Get out your trusty stopwatch and copy some files, first in one OS, then in the other, on, say, a multi-boot system, or in virtual machines with identical resources allocated to each.
The choice between OS versions is certainly a matter of personal preference. My own preference is for reasonable performance. If MS wants to p*ss away a bunch of cycles on my PC for their own advantage (marketing to media companies) I want them to pay me for those cycles.

Hi Bob,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and comments. They are appreciated.
Regards, Ron

Its difficult to compare the two because they are _not_ the same internal Bob states. They’re completely different kernels, different underlying frameworks (the network stack in vista is new, the interface for video cards is separated into user land, the sound layer is completely new, etc.) which makes comparison difficult.

Should they be compared? Yes, but with the understanding that XP is a stable code base that has been constantly worked on for seven years. Vista is new, in so many ways, and because of that most drivers and software packages have had to have been modified or updated to run properly. Developers take time to get it right, or at all (NVIDIA and HP I’m staring at you!).

I believe Vista is a strong update of XP and puts them on feature parity with OSX and Linux in terms of security, bing and future expandability.

Having said that, all three of my machines run it, as do my girlfriends and I would not go back to XP.

Hi Chris,
Glad to hear you are enjoying Vista.

Of course the 2 operating systems should be compared, as many people use XP right now, and they are being asked to switch to Vista for no other reason than Microsoft has made it.

I have a laptop with Vista (because there were no XP drivers for that model), and 2 desktops with XP. I don’t have problems with either machine, excepting the regular prompts from Vista-”You just clicked a button, did you really want to do that?”

Of course people will look at comparisons with a preference for 1 OS or the other, but they should be compared as they are direct competitors now. If I have XP now, why should I care about Vista, what does it solve for me that is a problem with XP? Vista does require more horsepower to do the same things as XP at the same speed, so it costs me more.

Hello Pal.
Good points.
Thanks for stopping by.

I think it is stupid that microsoft are using that much time on XP instead of vista.
Vista is a ½ program, and not yet done, and by powering XP, fewer and fewer people will upgrade.

Hi Tech,
Good point. I’m one of those who has chosen not to upgrade.