Vista vs. XP

300 Words into replying to some comments made by Rarst on my post yesterday about Microsoft I decided I may as well publish it like so as a new post… that’s what happens when you have the power of authorship =P

No I don’t want to make this too serious and I hope I don’t seem like I’m ranting, I just felt that since Rarst’s views are probably shared by a few of you we could open up the discussion even more.

“In my opinion Vista has bad reputation for a number of reasons… And they better fix those reasons, not reputation”

I think that Microsoft has fairly clearly been doing this, by first spending 2 years working on Vista fixes, compatibility issues with partners and finally releasing SP1 this year. Now it’s time to work on reputation, which brings us back to the new Microsoft campaign.

“[Vista] IS slower. It can’t be faster by design. All people saying it is faster are either comparing it to really crappy XP install or are using self-hypnosis.”

I really think this is purely a perceptional thing now. There are plenty of third party tests which have grudgingly shown Vista to be equal or superior to XP on identical hardware. This can only improve with time as well. Here is Ed Bott’s view:

“If you bought a bottom-of-the-line, loss leader system in 2004, you may find it unacceptably slow. But any mainstream system purchased after early 2004 should be just fine with Windows Vista.”

 

“Tons of internal DRM crap that slows some critical tasks like file copying to a crawl.
Crappy performance on notebooks (on normal notebooks, not upper-class that pack more hardware than average desktop). High system requirements (if it could work on XP-level hardware adoption process could be way more smooth)…”

I’m pretty sure these are some of those Vista myths that where circulating around a year or so ago. You know that DRM is completely optional right? And I have personally encountered it only twice in 7 months. While Vista did require higher system requirements when it came out, so did Windows 95 AND Windows XP. A few years later and the hardware has caught up, everyone’s forgotten about it and we’re ready to complain over the next resource-hogging eye candy OS.

Btw on the DRM thing again, again, Ed says:

“Much of the DRM code in Windows Vista is a a straightforward upgrade of the infrastructure introduced in Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10.”

 

Vista does put programs into non-responsive mode far more rapidly then XP, but it also recovers from this significantly better. I rarely ever have whole system crashes like I did with XP.

“I am not Vista hater for the sake of it. But I am greatly disappointed with it. It is boring upgrade stuffed with crappy features, slower and with higher system requirements. Not something I want to replace my XP with”

I understand upgrading to Vista may not seem worth it, but if you are purchasing a new computer what possible reason could you have for not simply getting the vastly superior OS? I also think this shows a little lack of foresight as Vista provided the necessary architectural changes to create far greater Windows versions in the future. Increasingly we are seeing Longhorn concepts being incorporated back into Windows.

Rarst also requested some specific examples of Vista’s improvements over XP, here is what I can think of off the top of my head:

• Streamlined and improved start menu including Windows Search
• Integrated search in Windows Explorer
• Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Media Center
• New and improved applications including:
  • Windows Mail
  • Windows Photo Gallery
  • Snipping Tool
  • Media Encoder
  • Windows Calendar
  • Movie Maker
  • DVD Maker
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Windows Contacts
  • Windows Meeting Space
  • Windows Defender
• Windows Aero of course, and some improved customizations options
• Security improvements:
  • Windows Defender
    • Start-up blocker
  • Windows Firewall
  • UAC (perhaps a little over the top, but still a good thing!)
• Improved Control Panel navigation
• New Parental controls including
  • Account permissions (blocking specific programs)
  • Time tracking, limits and reports
  • Games rating controls
• Administration and troubleshooting Tools
  • Error tracking and reporting
  • Event log
  • Reliability and Performance monitor
  • System health report
• System maintenance tools
  • Regular Background defragmenting
  • File backup and restore
  • Improved Hard Drive partitioning
• Improved audio, now individual programs can be adjusted, for example low volume system sounds and high volume media player
• ReadyBoost
• Improved sharing capabilities
• Improved wireless connection (I’ve been seeing XP users have far more trouble connecting to Wireless then I ever have)
• Better performance management for laptops

And that’s about enough for now.

Vista is certainly not perfect, there are still plenty of annoying things, but it definitely is an improvement over XP. Some things I cannot forgive with Vista however include painfully slow right click context menus, the locking of files so they cannot be deleted and the removal of the progress bar in the defragmenter. Thanks to Rarst himself I discovered Unlocker which can fix the deletion problem, so thanks! =P

 

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