convince me of vista?

R

RadiationBoy

Weaksauce
Joined
May 8, 2002
Messages
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Hey ya'll i wanted some input from some [h]ardforumers.

i just bought a lenovo t400 model 2765-t2u with 2 more gigs of ddr3. here are the specs:
- Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 2.53 GHz Processor
- 6 MB L2 Cache, 1066 MHz Bus speed
- 4 GB DDR3 (PC3-8500, 2 chip) RAM Max: 8GB
- Intel 2GB Flash Turbo Memory Accelerator
- 160 GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive
- 14.1" diagonal WXGA+ (1440 x 900, 200 nit) (LG display CCFL backlit)
- Integrated 1.3 Megapixel Webcamera
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD Video Card
- ATI Mobility PCI Express x16 Radeon HD 3470 with 256 Dedicated Video memory
- Ultrabay DVD±R/RW Drive
- Intel 5100 802.11a/b/g/n
- Wireless WAN GPRS/WCDMA/HSPA, GPS, AT&T contract required
- Bluetooth 2.0
- Intel Gigabit Network LAN
- ExpressCard 54/34 Slot
- PCMICA II Slot
- Fingerprint Reader
- 3 x USB 2.0, IEEE-1394, Headphone out; Microphone-in, VGA, RJ-11 (Modem), RJ-45
- Approximate Unit Dimensions: 13.2" (W) x 1.3" (H) x 9.4" (D)
- Approximate Unit Weight: 5.4 lbs
- 9 cell batt
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so here is the deal, it came running xp sp2 and i was going to go ahead and do a clean install of xp just to free up some diskspace, i'm not much for the bloatware that comes on new machines although i was impressed by the install of xp that shipped with this machine.

BUT the question is should i switch to vista? i really like xp but i've never ran vista, frankly i haven't seen a reason too. there are two features shipped with this laptop that are vista only. they are the intel turbo ram and the switchable graphics. the switchable graphics does work with xp but you have to reboot and change it in bios, not a big deal but i bet i wont do it much.

as far as the turbo ram goes i hear it doesn't really do much anyway. anyone know differently?

does anyway one see any real advantages to running vista? i'm not a huge gamer, and considering this isn't exactly a gaming machine i probably wont start, i play mostly older games anyway.

-rad
 
Do you feel like learning a new OS? Because honestly, that's the only motivation I can see for installing vista.

Some might argue it's more secure; it's debatable. Get yourself a decent AV ( nod32...ask for it by name! ), and you should be good to go.
 
Well, if you already own a copy of Windows Vista, I don't see any reason not to install it.
 
If it were me i'd put Vista x64 on it. But it's your laptop, I shouldn't have to convince you of anything. Since you are wiping it anyways it's certainly worth it. I can see no reason to go back to XP.
 
XP sp3 is much better than Vista. Even if your hardware can handle it, the parts in your laptop will hate you.
 
Motaa said:
XP sp3 is much better than Vista. Even if your hardware can handle it, the parts in your laptop will hate you.
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Hi. You've been here two days, and already you're making a fool of yourself.

Your GPU is DX10 capable. If you intend to game on the laptop, install Vista. If you don't, don't worry about it.
 
I'd hate to start another Vista vs XP thread, but after all that I've read (and participated in), it boils down to a couple things.

Vista as it stands by itself, provided you throw enough hardware at it, runs fine. That's basically what Microsoft's Mojave experiment was about.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, we all don't live in a MS Bubble™. I've got more applications than I can count which do not run on Vista. Between work and audio/visual type stuff, I have several reasons not to run Vista.

But some people just surf the Internet and read email. And those people buy Dells. And they are happy.

It all depends on what you do with it.
 
I use Windows Vista and love it. All my instrument processing software works fine on Windows Vista, and of course everything else I've tried does too, so I'm happy with compatibility.

I also recommend Vista for performance. I've been using Vista for about 6 months, and for me it's noticeably faster than XP in general computing tasks and responsiveness, and games run as fast or faster than they did on XP.

It seems more secure too. I have been running it without any anti-virus or anti-spyware software and haven't gotten a virus or spyware yet.
 
What do you plan on doing w/ this machine?

My suggestion is make sure any/all programs you use will work with Vista without issues. If your software catalog is compatible, i see no reason to stay with XP.

Vista64 works like a charm and will actually utilize everything in that laptop. . . hardware you spend hard earned money on.

Just my $0.02
 
I use Vista 64 on the lappy in my sig. It had XP on originally but I actually found vista to have more power options available in order to get more time out of it. On a full battery I can get 3.5-4.5 hours on the balanced power scheme with mid brightness (max is too much). I did disable things like bluetooth in the bios of my laptop to get more out of it as well. You should probably get even more out of it because lenovos are really efficient machines outside of the specs you listed. The 45nm proc will definitely help a lot.
 
There is ZERO reason to put XP back on that machine after a wipe. Vista will beat it out in performance, security and usability.
 
XOR != OR said:
Do you feel like learning a new OS? Because honestly, that's the only motivation I can see for installing vista.
Click to expand...

heh that was actually the only reason i could see for installing vista.

@Valnar thanks for your response, this is pretty much what i was thinking, and I guess i don't really see the point of running vista just because my hardware can handle it. i'd rather use the hardware for other things.


does anyway have this intel turbo ram or know much about it? i was thinking of installing vista just to see how much of a boost the turbo ram gives, i've been hearing it doesn't do much if you already have 4gb of ram though. any thoughts on that?

thanks for all the response!!
 
Valnar said:
Vista as it stands by itself, provided you throw enough hardware at it, runs fine. That's basically what Microsoft's Mojave experiment was about.
Click to expand...
Define "enough hardware". Would a $400 netbook like *this one* be "enough hardware"? Also, the specs of the laptop used in the Mojave video, as stated by MS, were not particularly high-end. Yeah they weren't exactly using a circa 2002 laptop, but in their own words it was a laptop that was "about a year old" when they made the video.

Valnar said:
Unfortunately for Microsoft, we all don't live in a MS Bubble™. I've got more applications than I can count which do not run on Vista. Between work and audio/visual type stuff, I have several reasons not to run Vista.
Click to expand...
Unless you can't count very high or simply use a non-Windows OS entirely, these must be some crazy apps to have so many that can't run in Vista.
Valnar said:
But some people just surf the Internet and read email. And those people buy Dells. And they are happy.
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Are you stating that the only thing Vista can do is surf the internet and read email? And you have some opinion on Dell laptops?
 
This is coming from a guy who just started using Vista about 2 weeks ago, RUN VISTA!

It looks sexy as hell (although my linux boot still looks better), and super-caching! And if your not familiar with that it simple throws frequently used programs into memory utilizing RAM a lot better and actually improved performance tremendously on programs that are super-cached.

As far as a learning curve, it's the same OS, some things are in different spots if your knowledgeable with XP you will pick it up in 4 days tops.

If you want to save money stay XP.

My $.02
 
RadiationBoy said:
does anyway have this intel turbo ram or know much about it? i was thinking of installing vista just to see how much of a boost the turbo ram gives, i've been hearing it doesn't do much if you already have 4gb of ram though. any thoughts on that?
Click to expand...

As a ReadyBoost cache, it's not likely to be of any use with 4GB RAM (although must note that Vista will be able to use free RAM for the Superfetch cache, whereas it would be idle in XP - and some will be unavailable in 32-bit XP anyway, and you'd need a 64-bit OS to see it all).

While I've not used a system with Turbo Memory myself, it apparently also allows the use of ReadyDrive, which claims that it will preserve battery power by caching drive data and so avoid spinning up the drive so often, and potentially speed up boot up/hibernation resume. I can't vouch for how well this works though.
 
The only reason i would not switch to VIsta is that i love Music in true 5.1 and not just "speaker filled" 5.1. But whenever i figure out how to get true 5.1 from vista i will switch for the gains in DirectX 10 games.

On a side note, this is my first post. Hello everyone. :)
 
@Mithent and JoNo216 thanks! those are both interesting replys, i definitly don't know a lot about some of the vista features. my computer did come with vista it just has xp installed right now. I'm definitely interested in the powersaving options. didn't know about readydrive, seems like a cool feature.

thanks again.

i had another thought, this laptop has active protection and stops the harddrive when the accelerometer notices the laptop moving a lot. i've noticed with some applications, for instance watching xvid videos they tend to lag or stop when this happens. do you think vista would be better at dealing with this?
 
It's protecting the drive -- you don't want to turn it off. That behavior is perfectly normal and will occur in /any/ OS because the accelerometer and drive protection is handled at a level well below the OS. The only way to fix it is to stop jostling your laptop around while you're watching videos, and possibly get more RAM / tell your media player app to buffer further.
 
bahmirk said:
The only reason i would not switch to VIsta is that i love Music in true 5.1 and not just "speaker filled" 5.1. But whenever i figure out how to get true 5.1 from vista i will switch for the gains in DirectX 10 games.

On a side note, this is my first post. Hello everyone. :)
Click to expand...

People running HTPC's such as myself have been getting 5.1 from vista forever now. Even 7.1 such as on my machine.
 
silent-circuit said:
It's protecting the drive -- you don't want to turn it off. That behavior is perfectly normal and will occur in /any/ OS because the accelerometer and drive protection is handled at a level well below the OS. The only way to fix it is to stop jostling your laptop around while you're watching videos, and possibly get more RAM / tell your media player app to buffer further.
Click to expand...

yeah i didn't mean to be saying that i wanted to turn it off, i think its an awesome. i just thought that maybe one of these vista cache features might buffer videos also, but your probably right just changing the buffer in the video player would help.
 
RadiationBoy said:
yeah i didn't mean to be saying that i wanted to turn it off, i think its an awesome. i just thought that maybe one of these vista cache features might buffer videos also, but your probably right just changing the buffer in the video player would help.
Click to expand...

My Lenovo U330 has the same system. The system should have come installed with an application in the control panel that lets you tweak the sensitivity of the protection. Mine was turned all the way up when I got the laptop, which caused the same symptoms you are experiencing. I turned it down (but not off) and now it works perfectly unless I really jostle it around or drop it.
 
If you've got good hardware, there's no real reason not to run Vista 64. I prefer it just because I like the sidebar, and imo it's not as ugly as XP. In my experience it is actually more stable.
 
Why don't I summarize this all up.

If you'd like to get the most out of your computer and already have a copy of Vista, go with Windows Vista 64-bit.
Reasoning:
For starters, it should be more stable. I find it to be more stable, and there are a lot of features added to the OS to improve stability. For example, the new driver model sticks a lot of driver code in the user mode of the Windows operating system architecture. Anything in the user mode must make a system call to access vital system resources. If a driver error occurs in the kernel mode, it's much more likely to crash the system than if it occurs in the user mode.

Better resource management. One of the biggest memory management features is Superfetch. Superfetch caches your programs and libraries in free memory so that things will open much faster. XP did this but on a much more reserved level, with Prefetch. Superfetch is much more aggressive than Prefetch was, so the benefits of Superfetch are much greater.

New driver model and new APIs. See here.

Aero. The Aero user interface finally brings a 3D-composite User Interface to Windows. People who don't like the more modern GUI can switch back to the Classic Theme.

UAC. I advise people keep UAC on unless they really are too impatient to click an extra button when they go to make critical system changes. See here.

Others in this thread have said Vista has better power options. I don't use laptops so I've never looked into this.
 
SuperSubZero said:
Are you stating that the only thing Vista can do is surf the internet and read email? And you have some opinion on Dell laptops?
Click to expand...
Humor doesn't come across the Internet too well, apparently.


I won't list all my applications, but I can list one. The Cisco VPN client does not work on Vista x64. If I can't get into work, we can't use it. Nobody uses Vista x64 at my work of over 1000 employees. Cisco's fault? Yah, possibly. But it doesn't change the reality.

I also have some TV tuners and other hardware that does not have Vista drivers. Vista also sucks on their TCP/IP stack, causing all kinds of issues. Some packet capture programs don't work with Vista. There are many industry point applications (nothing consumers would run) which do not work on Vista. etc.
.

ordovician said:
If you've got good hardware, there's no real reason not to run Vista 64.
Click to expand...
Not to pick on you, but this statement has been said a couple times in this thread.
This is the worst reason I keep hearing to run Vista. Whether the hardware can handle it is irrelevant. If you have no application compatibility issues, then good for you. But just because it boots and functions is not a reason to run an OS. We all might as well run Ubuntu then.
 
I have yet to find a single application that won't run on Vista, x64 or 32bit. That includes my tv tuners. You just have to find what is compatible.

Not everything will run in x64. Some apps specifically require 32bit but I personally haven't had issues on my computers.
 
winxp loses extended support in 2014--a while from now, but if my experience with win2k (which I used through 2007; support ends 2010) holds true with winxp, then new software will be less and less backwards compatible well before 2014 esp with the onset of windows 7. So simply in the name of laziness, I would go with vista unless you plan to go to windows 7 on that machine anyway or you really enjoy waiting for OS's to install ;)
 
By the time someone convinces you to make the switch to Vista, Windows 7 will be out.:p

Vista is like all of the other MS OS's to date, all have strong points and many weak ones. When they finally get the OS corrected with all of the service packs applications, a new OS is released, they put the old one on life support and finally cut it loose. That is their game and one can choose to play or not.

I have been using Vista since the Alpha, which was total crap, but that is why they have testers....I went through the betas and the RC's and saw a great change happen for the better. I have the Beta of SP2 installed and it has corrected even more problems without causing more.

I love Vista (I run Vista Ultimate 64 on my desktops and 32 on my laptops) and will continue to use it until I start running Windows 7....looking forward to that one also.

For those of us who have been working with computers since DOS, it's all good. Like kids in a candy store. :cool:
 
And with the "leak" of Beta 1 (apparently) for Windows 7 that happened sometime Friday afternoon... well, here we go... ;)
 
I'm in a similar position to the OP. I just rebuilt my PC for Xmas, and realized too late that the copy of XP I had been using was one I got for free when I was in college. I'm no longer a student, so I can't reinstall the student version of XP. I don't want to pay for a version of XP after all this time, so my decision has pretty much been made.

I guess I don't need to be convinced, but I do need to be consoled. I've heard nothing but Vista horror stories for the longest time, and my friends have the same reaction that so many people seem to: avoid Vista like the plague and wait for Windows 7.
 
I have a triple boot machine with Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows XP Home as well as XP Pro 64bit. Even though my preference is XP64, Vista has come a long way. In the beginning it was really bad...."a slow, bloated hog". I recently switched my default web browser to Opera (when using Vista) and all the silly un-explained freezes during simple web browsing went away. Go figure. I think Internet Explorer is responsible for a lot of the issues which creep up during Vista use. As an example; I'd be reading my hotmail or browsing and the page would just stop scrolling or just simply stop responding for no good reason whatsoever. To resolve the situation, I'd have to open the Task manager, close the page and then re-open it to continue. It would be interesting to see of the folks having issues with Vista, how many are using IE as the default web browser.
 
Your choices are XP x64 or Vista x64 to use all your RAM.

I would go for Vista x64 as almost everything 32bit still runs fine on it. I did not have the same experience with XP x64....

I love Vista x64 on my desktop and laptop (T61). Both run very well and quick.
 
Dijonase said:
I'm in a similar position to the OP. I just rebuilt my PC for Xmas, and realized too late that the copy of XP I had been using was one I got for free when I was in college. I'm no longer a student, so I can't reinstall the student version of XP. I don't want to pay for a version of XP after all this time, so my decision has pretty much been made.

I guess I don't need to be convinced, but I do need to be consoled. I've heard nothing but Vista horror stories for the longest time, and my friends have the same reaction that so many people seem to: avoid Vista like the plague and wait for Windows 7.
Click to expand...

The majority of people saying bad things about Vista don't have any clue what they're talking about and/or haven't used it. I've been using Vista for a modest 6 months, and I'm much happier with it than I was with Windows XP. It should for most people be at least as functional as Windows XP, if not better.
 
Valnar said:
Humor doesn't come across the Internet too well, apparently.


I won't list all my applications, but I can list one. The Cisco VPN client does not work on Vista x64. If I can't get into work, we can't use it. Nobody uses Vista x64 at my work of over 1000 employees. Cisco's fault? Yah, possibly. But it doesn't change the reality.

I also have some TV tuners and other hardware that does not have Vista drivers. Vista also sucks on their TCP/IP stack, causing all kinds of issues. Some packet capture programs don't work with Vista. There are many industry point applications (nothing consumers would run) which do not work on Vista. etc.
.


Not to pick on you, but this statement has been said a couple times in this thread.
This is the worst reason I keep hearing to run Vista. Whether the hardware can handle it is irrelevant. If you have no application compatibility issues, then good for you. But just because it boots and functions is not a reason to run an OS. We all might as well run Ubuntu then.
Click to expand...


I'm addressing the common misconception that Vista is slower than XP. Vista WAS slower than XP on the then-current machines when it came out, but patches and hardware progress has now made Vista more responsive than XP. I'm more talking about the ability to address over 3gb of ram and run every common game and application that Win XP can run. I wouldn't be caught dead with less than 4gb of ram these days...

So, to reiterate, if you have a DX10 capable machine with 4gb+ of RAM, you'd be stupid not to run Vista 64.
 
AbJ32 said:
UAC. I advise people keep UAC on unless they really are too impatient to click an extra button when they go to make critical system changes. See here.
Click to expand...

Bah! UAC blows donkey nuts! As long as you know what your doing and watch your computer from time to time you should be fine. Plus as a developer it will block some stuff from happening while debugging, and will make your code appear to not work because you won't recieve the stupid super annoying "Did you move your mouse just now?" dialog box.

It's a good concept, especially for people who are not familiar with computer so much. But before I will enable it, it has to be a little smarter so what things I at least do I don't have to confirm.

As soon as it's off... smooth sailing!
 
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