should I use xp or windows7 ?

bigdogchris said:
Windows XP can run on 128MB and actually be usable. Lets see Windows 7 do that.
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Hell when XP first came out I had it running on a Pentium II 350, with 96 megs....on a bench rig at the office. Slow? Yeah...but technically it ran and got stuff done. I wouldn't want to try that today with current browsers, security updates, software, and heavier antivirus than they were 8 or more years ago (I'd rather mow my lawn with my wifes nailclippers)...what was I running back then..Office 2000, Symantsuck Corp Edition 7.6, Internet Exploader 6.0, etc.

...hell, DOS was pretty darn quick on under 600K of ram too, and boy could it handle stuff if you tweaked config.sys to get it up above 610 or 620K.
 
Sovereign said:
I would disagree, unless "more stability" is somehow unrelated to usability since one reason for GPU compositing is improved overall stability of the OS. I've yet to see any reason to disable the 3D compositing, even on an ancient Dell OptiPlex GX-something desktop that my friend has from her father's work. As a matter of fact, my laptop gets worse battery life with Aero off than on.

"Less responsive" is subjective, but I also disagree there. Even integrated graphics in modern netbooks can handle Aero. Unless one deliberately tries to construct a situation in which the machine is under-equipped in the extreme (running GMA900 or less, 512MB of RAM or less, 4200RPM HDD), 7 should be on par with or exceeding Windows XP.

"Severely taxing" the battery is also a matter of opinion, inasmuch as while 7 does reduce battery life versus XP, if that reduction doesn't matter to the user, it's a moot point.
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Usability has nothing to do with stability. I was referring to the benefits of the bells and whistles as far as being able to manipulate the system- specifically, that there aren't any.

Power consumption is not a matter of opinion. All the processing for aero stuff requires far more computation, therefore it cannot be better in battery life with it on, especially utilizing 3d units that would otherwise be in power-saving mode. Likewise, the processing and resource overhead for every little gimmick of it are far more more than the simple XP-ish interface so responsiveness is clearly explained there as well. There are gimmicks on every little thing, right down to mouse movement and button clicks. We're talking about orders of magnitude of difference in processing/computation, and in those short moments it will become noticeable.

My laptop's battery life is roughly twice as long with all of this stuff turned off. That's well beyond subjective.
 
Win7 doesn't necessitate Aero. If you don't want Aero, or can't handle Aero, turn it off.

Aero is only a part of the whole Win7 package. As long as you've got the RAM, which a lot of these old platforms still do, Win7 is still my preference on old hardware.
 
Then cut some of the fat out of win7... Go look up how to optimize performance by disabling services etc. I just did a fresh install of win7 that uses ~6.5GB of HD space and uses less than 1gig of ram on my system with 4gig. Plus the load time is insanely fast.
 
i have windows 7 32bit home premium install in a pentium 4 3.4ghz it runs it fast, and this system has only 1gb of ram.
 
I've tried the AMD Athlon Neo before, I don't think ANY OS can make that thing usable for any serious work outside of checking Facebook.
 
Valnar said:
However, there are several things that will work on XP which won't work on Win7, especially 64-bit.
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This is so very true. I had a Nice 3-in-one Printer/Scanner/Coppier that had to be sold when I upgraded to 7. Had a hellova time with my soundcard (still doesnt have full support) also 1 webcam wont work, not will my AV VHS converter (RCA-in, USB out) I also lost 2 standard flatbed scanners. And even things that are "compatable" dont always work. it took me WEEKS to get Autodesk Maya to activate (and it's the 64-bit eidtion that "100% compatable")

Sadly the world is not ready for 64-bit, not unless you have the $$$ to buy only new hardware and toss most of your old stuff in the garbage...
 
Ashton said:
This is so very true. I had a Nice 3-in-one Printer/Scanner/Coppier that had to be sold when I upgraded to 7. Had a hellova time with my soundcard (still doesnt have full support) also 1 webcam wont work, not will my AV VHS converter (RCA-in, USB out) I also lost 2 standard flatbed scanners. And even things that are "compatable" dont always work. it took me WEEKS to get Autodesk Maya to activate (and it's the 64-bit eidtion that "100% compatable")

Sadly the world is not ready for 64-bit, not unless you have the $$$ to buy only new hardware and toss most of your old stuff in the garbage...
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Isn't there a way to run these drivers in WOW64 (uh... 32-in-64)? I'm new to W7 and did 32-bit just for this reason and... of course haven't had any issues. But I have a ton of older hardware.
 
Biznatch said:
Then cut some of the fat out of win7... Go look up how to optimize performance by disabling services etc. I just did a fresh install of win7 that uses ~6.5GB of HD space and uses less than 1gig of ram on my system with 4gig. Plus the load time is insanely fast.
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That's pretty good. Do you have a preferred guide on how to do this?
 
venm11 said:
Isn't there a way to run these drivers in WOW64 (uh... 32-in-64)? I'm new to W7 and did 32-bit just for this reason and... of course haven't had any issues. But I have a ton of older hardware.
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AFAIK, the only way yo do it is using a VM, which is then super-slow and whiole your inside your again dealing with XP, so it's a bit of a moot point (unless you need 1 device udner XP and the other 50 work under 7-64)
 
Just run windows xp and be done. Windows 7 will have a hard time with drivers on a older setup if it has older hardware.
 
Red Squirrel said:
If all your apps/hardware works in XP, then no reason to switch. If you don't carry big loads, then a small car will do, over a Hummer. Same idea here.
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I disagree. If your choice is between a 2000 car and a 2011 car that are both the same size and cost the same (as new XP and 7 licenses do) , you go with the newer one. Why hold yourself back with old technology?

Windows 7 and never look back.
 
I would try windows 7. it has made big improvements over vista, and it should run fine on your specs.
 
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This thread is probably going to get out of hand quickly.
 
djBon2112 said:
I disagree. If your choice is between a 2000 car and a 2011 car that are both the same size and cost the same (as new XP and 7 licenses do) , you go with the newer one. Why hold yourself back with old technology?
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Because neither of those factors matter. Compatibility is key. (Not just with the hardware itself, but apps). Of course, only the OP can know what he needs to run.
 
bigdogchris said:
Windows XP can run on 128MB and actually be usable. Lets see Windows 7 do that.
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We're far from the days of 128MB RAM for consumer systems. You have to be up with the times on hardware and software, otherwise it obviously won't work. On a modern system with a reasonable amount of RAM, 7 is far better than XP.

Valnar said:
Because neither of those factors matter. Compatibility is key. (Not just with the hardware itself, but apps). Of course, only the OP can know what he needs to run.
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Fair enough. Either way, running ancient apps isn't really good either, but if you have to, you have to.
 
If you need wide and sometimes old software support stick with xp,

if this your personal machine and do not rely on ancient software, go for win7
 
This thread is overflowing with misinformation!
Conker said:
Windows 7 will have a hard time with drivers on a older setup if it has older hardware.
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Considering what is included in Windows 7 and available through Windows Update, Windows 7 has the largest amount of available drivers for hardware. With and older system, chances are, all the drivers are readily available.
Biznatch said:
Go look up how to optimize performance by disabling services etc.
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Did I miss the time warp to 1999 again? Are people still buying into this? For the love of god....you DO NOT gain performance by disabling services. Please, please let this line of thinking die and rot in the ground where it belongs!
 
Biznatch said:
Then cut some of the fat out of win7... Go look up how to optimize performance by disabling services etc.
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You lost all credibility with this statement. Show me any benchmarks that claim Windows 7 (on modern hardware) would benefit from having certain services disabled, such as SuperFetch. Here's a hint: there are none. Want to know why? Because it's a stupid idea that someone thought of during the initial Vista days and it caught on for whatever reason. It was a stupid tweak then, and it's even worse now.
 
Yes because having because processes running in the background consuming cpu cycles doesnt affect system performance..... If this were the case they would have them all running all the time, but no they have the list of services that they think should be running, when I'm not using quite a few of them. No I'm not talking about services that are set on manual, I mean the ones that start with your comp every time. These take time to load and like I said take cpu cycles while running. So with them disabled, you system is not wasting time processing the crap and more time on the basic stuff I need. This isn't some magic fix that you just have to believe works.... And don't give me the modern hardware BS. Just because your system isn't affected as much by this stuff running does not mean you gain nothing by shutting it down.

For the people who are interested, here is a nice site with lots of info on what can safely be disabled.
http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm
 
Do NOT follow Black Viper's guide. It will harm your system far more than help. Biznatch, if the services aren't doing anything, they're paged out and consuming no resources.
 
Uh his site just says what each service does and which are safe to disable, and there aren't many in the safe list. So the only harm is if someone doesn't read and just starts shutting crap down.

And I guess it's just some computer gnomes using all that extra ram and extending my boot time before disabling them. I went from a fresh install and then tweaked it and there is a big difference. Nothing changed but the services and the few tweaks for a SSD. Now windows is loading much faster and is only using 930mb of ram on average. On my slower C2D laptop with 2gig of ram, it helped even more.
 
Biznatch said:
Yes because having because processes running in the background consuming cpu cycles doesnt affect system performance.....
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Not to an appreciable degree. The typical Windows services process will consume very little CPU time and do so fairly infrequently. Assuming a moderately capable processor, any so-called performance impact should be negligible.
 
Biznatch said:
Yes because having because processes running in the background consuming cpu cycles doesnt affect system performance..... If this were the case they would have them all running all the time, but no they have the list of services that they think should be running, when I'm not using quite a few of them. No I'm not talking about services that are set on manual, I mean the ones that start with your comp every time. These take time to load and like I said take cpu cycles while running. So with them disabled, you system is not wasting time processing the crap and more time on the basic stuff I need. This isn't some magic fix that you just have to believe works.... And don't give me the modern hardware BS. Just because your system isn't affected as much by this stuff running does not mean you gain nothing by shutting it down.

For the people who are interested, here is a nice site with lots of info on what can safely be disabled.
http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm
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Congratulations on winning the world's biggest troll award.

RAM is there to be used. Windows 7 uses RAM very well. And those "extra cpu cycles" you're bitching about are legitimate services that will take milliseconds to load. Any modern hardware can run it just fine. That site in particular that you listed, blackviper, is notorious for being a load of bullshit. Those "tweaks" are ideologies that were dragged from the XP days, and then most of them were terrible ideas.

Again, show us any benchmark/proof that shutting down services will benefit you in applications or gaming, or hell, even startup/shutdown. Again, on modern hardware (stuff that isn't 8 years old).
 
moomaster716 said:
Then you install SP3 and all the updates on xp and find out that its complete BULL**** to have a fresh install of xp and less that 512mb.
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Yea your right moomaster. It was Windows 2000 that needed 128MB to run fast. XP needs 256MB to run fast, but possibly more depending on the applications you plan to use. (as is is with anything else)
 
Jon55 said:
Congratulations on winning the world's biggest troll award.

RAM is there to be used. Windows 7 uses RAM very well. And those "extra cpu cycles" you're bitching about are legitimate services that will take milliseconds to load. Any modern hardware can run it just fine. That site in particular that you listed, blackviper, is notorious for being a load of bullshit. Those "tweaks" are ideologies that were dragged from the XP days, and then most of them were terrible ideas.

Again, show us any benchmark/proof that shutting down services will benefit you in applications or gaming, or hell, even startup/shutdown. Again, on modern hardware (stuff that isn't 8 years old).
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Yes.
I always post this link.

Blackviper debunk for XP here, circa 2005.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1685606

Guess what? Tweaking these services either does nothing benchmarkable, or actually decreases performance. Didn't work on XP, doesn't work on 7. It didn't even do anything on an Pentium II 300mhz.

By the way: I got win7 installed on a Pentium 4 / 2.8ghz box, and it ran pretty decently on 512MB RAM, although it got a bit slow multitasking. Could use 1GB+.
 
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Uh that thread is a huge argument and most of the people still agree it frees up memory and increases boot time. So the process gets paged when not being used, then why bother loading it? wtf do I need services like internet connection sharing running for when I know I will never use it? There is no point for it to ever take even a millisecond to load because it's 100% useless to me. That's just an example, but applies to all the services I disabled.

Got anymore links that aren't 5 years old and where most of the people aren't arguing against the point?
 
Biznatch said:
Got anymore links that aren't 5 years old and where most of the people aren't arguing against the point?
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No, because it's been that long since there was anything left to debate about BlackViper's site, and just as long since anyone actually believed his crap, or was dumb enough to follow his guides, expecting any performance increase. We've had Windows developers on here explaining, with links, how an unused service ties up no resources, and how disabling those services gives you nothing positive. It can, however, cause an issue down the road when that service might be needed, or shares a dependency.

It's old, stale thinking, and it's actually laughable that here, in 2010, with Windows 7, anyone would actually consider following his advice. That's why he is known around the enthusiast crowd as QuackViper.

It's been said hundreds of times, but apparently not enough to sink in....Windows 7 is not Windows XP. The best way to tweak it is....to leave it alone.
 
I thought the only bit of good advice from BlackViper was to disable the Messenger service, but then again I can't remember if his guide was pre- or post-SP2, which left the Messenger service disabled by default..
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
That's my experience. One of our service bench rigs at the office is an old old DellSmell Optiplex GX2something....with an early single core Pentium 4 non-H/T...like 2.4GHz. 1 gig of RAM. Onboard Intel imitation graphics. One of the first rigs we tested Win7 on back when it was beta. Win7 takes perhaps 20-30 seconds longer than XP to bootup (who cares..the thing runs 24x7 all year long)..but once it's up and running..it's equally responsive as XP was.

With just 512 megs of RAM even XP is painful these days...back when XP first came out 512 megs was fine, the standard, but these days, factor in all your windows updates, heavier software, and heavier antivirus than 8 years ago...and 512 megs is freaking painful.
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You got it... I have a ladies machine I format for her every year. It's about 6 years old. It HAD 512Mb, and 6 years ago it was fine.... two years ago when I formatted it, I had to upgrade her to 1Gb.... she couldn't understand it, but with the new AV out there, new MSN messenger, etc,etc.... 512 just didn't cut it anymore.
 
You say that like blackviper is the only site that recommends disabling services. I used his site because it has the most information, but there are a load of sites that discuss the idea. Funny even xtremesystems has a sticky about windows optimization, and guess what's included there. This seems to be the only time I have EVER had someone argue about it on any computer forums, and I visit a lot (yes it shows me as a noob, thats because I never registered here, just browsed for along time. Have a B.S. in compsci as well). You had MS techs come explain it on this forum? By all means post links to that, as it would be much more useful than the last thread you posted.

Like I said before, if what you said is true, and these running services consume no resources, why do they only have some of them running and not start/run every service? Come on, you and these supposed MS techs say they consume no resources so lets just make everything start on boot because it will have no affect on the system, as you claim.
 
Security. The more stuff running, the greater number of attack vectors. They want to minimize the number of services that run by default to minimize the number of places that attackers could look to exploit.
 
Biznatch said:
You say that like blackviper is the only site that recommends disabling services. I used his site because it has the most information, but there are a load of sites that discuss the idea. Funny even xtremesystems has a sticky about windows optimization, and guess what's included there. This seems to be the only time I have EVER had someone argue about it on any computer forums, and I visit a lot (yes it shows me as a noob, thats because I never registered here, just browsed for along time. Have a B.S. in compsci as well). You had MS techs come explain it on this forum? By all means post links to that, as it would be much more useful than the last thread you posted.

Like I said before, if what you said is true, and these running services consume no resources, why do they only have some of them running and not start/run every service? Come on, you and these supposed MS techs say they consume no resources so lets just make everything start on boot because it will have no affect on the system, as you claim.
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Once again, what is the point of disabling those services? To shed a few milliseconds of time off of a startup? To "increase performance"? Because it most likely won't do either of those things, and even if it does it's nearly impossible to measure or notice, so why bother? It's not doing any good. There's no benefit out of it. You've yet to show any proof that there's a benefit to doing it.
 
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