Win7 Is it worth finally giving up XP?

Dr. Righteous

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I am NOT impressed with slick looking GUIs for fancy gimmicks. I want performance and stability above all!
That is why I stuck with XP and I laughed while everyone cried about what a turd Vista was.
For my business system, XP is here to stay. Everything works perfectly, NEVER any issues.
But for my media system (including gaming) Windows 7 is looking promising.
I looked at some tests on Win7 in beta, dated back to January. On synthetic benchmarks, XP wins. Only on high end DX10 gaming does Win7 start to edge out Vista.
Judging by THAT. Forget it. XP stays. But has the release version's performance improved dramatically since then?
 
Vista is plenty stable, it was one of the longest OS installs I've ever had (before I got curious and loaded Win7RC).. I always thought it felt faster, snappier over XP and kind have attributed that to the hardware accelerated GUI or maybe superfetch.

The game performance between the 3 OS's from my experience and the reviews I've seen have largely been negligible. 1-5% give or take here or there is not enough for me to pay any attention to.

Vista is fine, 7's not really any different, personally only upgrading because it was only $39 from MC, and it means more years of security updates/patches/servicepacks/etc.
 
Vista was worth giving up XP for, and Windows 7, by all indications, is worth giving up Vista for.
 
You've already decided you won't ever change for any reason. Lots of people have gotten over it and moved on. Are you trying to convince us that we shouldn't like windows7 too? It works great for me. But then again, so did vista.
 
I am NOT impressed with slick looking GUIs for fancy gimmicks. I want performance and stability above all!
So the gist is....you have yet to try out Windows 7 yourself, and are only reading what others have to say about it? Weren't you around to see that very same bullshit happening with Vista a few years ago? The RC is free...so my suggestion is to stop posting, start downloading, and try it out yourself.
 
The purpose of the OS is to run other software. If the current OS is doing the job without problems, there is no real reason to change.
 
I am NOT impressed with slick looking GUIs for fancy gimmicks. I want performance and stability above all!
That is why I stuck with XP and I laughed while everyone cried about what a turd Vista was.
For my business system, XP is here to stay. Everything works perfectly, NEVER any issues.
But for my media system (including gaming) Windows 7 is looking promising.
I looked at some tests on Win7 in beta, dated back to January. On synthetic benchmarks, XP wins. Only on high end DX10 gaming does Win7 start to edge out Vista.
Judging by THAT. Forget it. XP stays. But has the release version's performance improved dramatically since then?

Obvious troll is obvious. Stick with XP if that's what diddles you, and quit boring the rest of us with your ignorance.
 
I am NOT impressed with slick looking GUIs for fancy gimmicks. I want performance and stability above all!
That is why I stuck with XP and I laughed while everyone cried about what a turd Vista was.
For my business system, XP is here to stay. Everything works perfectly, NEVER any issues.
But for my media system (including gaming) Windows 7 is looking promising.
I looked at some tests on Win7 in beta, dated back to January. On synthetic benchmarks, XP wins. Only on high end DX10 gaming does Win7 start to edge out Vista.
Judging by THAT. Forget it. XP stays. But has the release version's performance improved dramatically since then?

/laugh ?

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but its just too fun...

So I ran a test too, Win XP from the moment bios finishes to usable OS takes about 21 seconds to load up.

Win 95 takes about 3. I guess I should go back to running Win 95 fulltime. Remember the days when XP was the devil and Win 98Se would live on forever.

People who still ride the Vista was a turd bandwagon really dont understand how drastic the change from XP was. Most problems in Vista were not OS related but driver/application related. Once most drivers/apps caught up to the new kernal things were fine.

Enjoy your XP rig, if it does what you need fine. Win 95 does what a lot of people need too. Vista and 7 are good OSes, 7 even more so.

And when you finally decide to that decent memory management, and proper multicore support matters to you, we'll welcome you with open arms.
 
I was NOT going to right back to someone with an attitude like yours, but seriosuly dude, with that attitude, I don't want to tell you that yes seven is awesome, because you seem to think that xp really is all that, I never understood all these people with 'all these problems' in vista, i had a mid range system and it worked excellent, just like it ran xp excellent, and my newer system, guess how it runs seven? excellent, it's jus tlike saying, what do you mean my pentium 4 doesnt run crysis well, get with the times. If you love xp, stick with it, if you like vista go with that, noone is making you do anything, I have had a bit much to drink to know weather or not I am making sense, but seriously, oi you know what, i never actually saw a computer run vista poorly :S, actually, my mums laptop, it ran it ok... not great, but still plenty usable. oh what the hell, others have already seen it, 2% fps fdifferent wont do anything in real terms of game play, wheres was all these vista problems? on P3's?
 
XP is old and needs to go away forever. Vista is better than XP in any number of ways and more stable than I've ever seen XP be. Win 7 is so good in beta Release Candidate stage that I preordered WIN7 Pro last month.

If you have not actually run either Vista or 7 how the hell can you state anything about either ? :rolleyes:
 
For my business system, XP is here to stay. Everything works perfectly, NEVER any issues.

I looked at some tests on Win7 in beta, dated back to January. But has the release version's performance improved dramatically since then?

On the business end, obviously use whatever works and your business payed for. XP is mature and businesses have lots of processes in place to make it 'just work'. Businesses on XP will move to 7 (skipping Vista) as the expiration date for XP support draws closer.

Looking at old benchmarks from January and drawing a conclusion though is just laughable. This is a forum full of people who have been testing Win 7 every step of the way; build 7000 or earlier was a long time ago. Performance has improved in newer builds.
 
Originally Posted by Dr. Righteous
For my business system, XP is here to stay. Everything works perfectly, NEVER any issues.

I looked at some tests on Win7 in beta, dated back to January. But has the release version's performance improved dramatically since then?

NEVER any issues?

Stretching a bit.
 
The purpose of the OS is to run other software. If the current OS is doing the job without problems, there is no real reason to change.

Yes, but XP does not do that. To do what you say, run other software without any problems, requires many things, including stability (which Vista is better than XP at because many drivers are moved out of kernel code into user land, meaning that a driver bug typically does not screw the system, the OS just reloads the driver and the user doesn't see a bsod), security from auto-install threats (XP has limited protection against this, Vista has additional measures like ASLR, sandboxed IE, hardened services with ACLs, stack and heap canary values and checksumming, file and registry virtualization to make it much simpler to run as standard user, and so on.), well supported 64-bit (XP Pro 64 did not have mandatory support, Vista-64 bit does, the effect is it's much easier to find software/hardware/etc. that works in Vista-64), and so on. In addition to this, many users like a nice interface with hardware acceleration (vista has this with Aero, XP does not.) There are many other things Vista has that makes 'running software with no problems' more of a reality than XP, and a couple of things XP has that Vista does not (compatibility with poorly written, unupdated software.) So it's not quite black-and-white, but if it were, I would say Vista easily wins unless you just absolutely must have some old app that doesn't work in Vista. (Win 7 being a child of Vista, is even better.) Vista is as fast as XP and in many cases faster, and has things like superfetch that really increase satisfaction when using the system.

Use XP if you want, but don't pretend it's better.
 
Vista was worth giving up xp. With quality drivers vista is faster than xp almost across the board. It's always been fast and stable on my system. Windows 7 is faster still. The benchmarks I have seen in the past 3 months prove that.
 
/laugh ?

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but its just too fun...

So I ran a test too, Win XP from the moment bios finishes to usable OS takes about 21 seconds to load up.

Win 95 takes about 3. I guess I should go back to running Win 95 fulltime. Remember the days when XP was the devil and Win 98Se would live on forever.

People who still ride the Vista was a turd bandwagon really dont understand how drastic the change from XP was. Most problems in Vista were not OS related but driver/application related. Once most drivers/apps caught up to the new kernal things were fine.

Enjoy your XP rig, if it does what you need fine. Win 95 does what a lot of people need too. Vista and 7 are good OSes, 7 even more so.

And when you finally decide to that decent memory management, and proper multicore support matters to you, we'll welcome you with open arms.



I am so glad I found this forum! I am so tired of people around here bashing vista only because they "hear its bad". I have not had problems with vista since the beta. Yes, there were obvious hold ups and the need for work arounds, but its a new OS!

I have vista running on my desktop (x4 3ghz, 8gb, 4870 1gb, 74gb raptor), and 7 running on my R60. TBH, the 7 machine feels quicker, but vista is not really a "failure". People just dont like change.


On a performance note, crysis went from unplayable to playable on my m1210 when I switched to 7 from vista. I guess it depends on the config/application of the system.

Honestly, I cannot give numbers or endless proof, but I would rather have a vista sp2 or 7RC1 system than xp right now (with a decently spec'd system. 7 did not work well on my 710m due to the 8 series intel chipset).
 
I am so glad I found this forum! I am so tired of people around here bashing vista only because they "hear its bad". I have not had problems with vista since the beta. Yes, there were obvious hold ups and the need for work arounds, but its a new OS!

I have vista running on my desktop (x4 3ghz, 8gb, 4870 1gb, 74gb raptor), and 7 running on my R60. TBH, the 7 machine feels quicker, but vista is not really a "failure". People just dont like change.


On a performance note, crysis went from unplayable to playable on my m1210 when I switched to 7 from vista. I guess it depends on the config/application of the system.

Honestly, I cannot give numbers or endless proof, but I would rather have a vista sp2 or 7RC1 system than xp right now (with a decently spec'd system. 7 did not work well on my 710m due to the 8 series intel chipset).


yeah, I really like [H] too. A most of the members here are smart people and know how to sperate the bullshit from facts. They don't take too kindly to trolls either lol :D
 
Yes, but XP does not do that. To do what you say, run other software without any problems, requires many things, including stability (which Vista is better than XP at because many drivers are moved out of kernel code into user land, meaning that a driver bug typically does not screw the system, the OS just reloads the driver and the user doesn't see a bsod), security from auto-install threats (XP has limited protection against this, Vista has additional measures like ASLR, sandboxed IE, hardened services with ACLs, stack and heap canary values and checksumming, file and registry virtualization to make it much simpler to run as standard user, and so on.), well supported 64-bit (XP Pro 64 did not have mandatory support, Vista-64 bit does, the effect is it's much easier to find software/hardware/etc. that works in Vista-64), and so on. In addition to this, many users like a nice interface with hardware acceleration (vista has this with Aero, XP does not.) There are many other things Vista has that makes 'running software with no problems' more of a reality than XP, and a couple of things XP has that Vista does not (compatibility with poorly written, unupdated software.) So it's not quite black-and-white, but if it were, I would say Vista easily wins unless you just absolutely must have some old app that doesn't work in Vista. (Win 7 being a child of Vista, is even better.) Vista is as fast as XP and in many cases faster, and has things like superfetch that really increase satisfaction when using the system.

Use XP if you want, but don't pretend it's better.
When did I say it was better? All I said is that it's purpose is to do the job is was purchased for. XP is as safe as the person who uses it, and the same goes for Vista or 7. If XP is run under a normal non-admin account, it is for the most part already sand-boxed. It's even more secure if Firefox replaces IE for daily use. If you want a statement to pump up XP over the others, after years of use XP has a known record and mature patched code, which is slightly better than theoretical improvements. 64-bit only matters on a new PC with larger specs, and is mostly pointless when upgrading on hardware that already works with 32-bit.
 
A most of the members here are smart people and know how to sperate the bullshit from facts.

Indeed, and the facts are that many people use their rigs for many different things. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.

To the OP: is 7 worth kicking XP into touch for? Try it. Dual boot it. Benchmark it with your apps. Live/work with it. Only then will you have your answer.
 
Yes, but XP does not do that. To do what you say, run other software without any problems, requires many things, including stability (which Vista is better than XP at because many drivers are moved out of kernel code into user land, meaning that a driver bug typically does not screw the system, the OS just reloads the driver and the user doesn't see a bsod), security from auto-install threats (XP has limited protection against this, Vista has additional measures like ASLR, sandboxed IE, hardened services with ACLs, stack and heap canary values and checksumming, file and registry virtualization to make it much simpler to run as standard user, and so on.), well supported 64-bit (XP Pro 64 did not have mandatory support, Vista-64 bit does, the effect is it's much easier to find software/hardware/etc. that works in Vista-64), and so on. In addition to this, many users like a nice interface with hardware acceleration (vista has this with Aero, XP does not.) There are many other things Vista has that makes 'running software with no problems' more of a reality than XP, and a couple of things XP has that Vista does not (compatibility with poorly written, unupdated software.) So it's not quite black-and-white, but if it were, I would say Vista easily wins unless you just absolutely must have some old app that doesn't work in Vista. (Win 7 being a child of Vista, is even better.) Vista is as fast as XP and in many cases faster, and has things like superfetch that really increase satisfaction when using the system.

Use XP if you want, but don't pretend it's better.
Just wanted to add that drivers do run in Ring 0, without being in kernel space.
 
I was NOT going to right back to someone with an attitude like yours, but seriosuly dude, with that attitude, I don't want to tell you that yes seven is awesome, because you seem to think that xp really is all that, I never understood all these people with 'all these problems' in vista, i had a mid range system and it worked excellent, just like it ran xp excellent, and my newer system, guess how it runs seven? excellent, it's jus tlike saying, what do you mean my pentium 4 doesnt run crysis well, get with the times. If you love xp, stick with it, if you like vista go with that, noone is making you do anything, I have had a bit much to drink to know weather or not I am making sense, but seriously, oi you know what, i never actually saw a computer run vista poorly :S, actually, my mums laptop, it ran it ok... not great, but still plenty usable. oh what the hell, others have already seen it, 2% fps fdifferent wont do anything in real terms of game play, wheres was all these vista problems? on P3's?

I don't know why everyone thinks what I am asking is unreasonable.

Lookit. My business system is a 7 year old P4.
For what I do, upgrading the OS makes little sense.
I'm not the type to toss out the old because everyone else does. It is reliable and fast because I keep the crap to a minimum.

BUT, my second system I deal with media with and occasionally play games.
That is the system in my sig. A mid level system by most standards, but it meets my needs just fine.
It is a quad core, and I know XP will not take advantage of more than 2 cores.
When I looked at the benchmarks comparing the XP, Vista and Win7 I was surprised to see that XP, as old as it is didn't do too badly overall. With the exception of DX10 games, XP helds it's own. Well, "upgrade because it is 8 years old" holds no water in my opinion.

Now for the times I had to sit down in front of Vista, meh, I wasn't impressed. The GUI is slicker, and more gimmicky in my opinion but not compelling enough for me to want to change.
 
XP will not take advantage of more then 2 cores? Since when? You don't even know anything about the OS you are defending....

Seriously, why even bother making this thread? I really want to know.
 
This is almost like talking to a wall........I mean the guy can't distinguish between MHz and GHz (according to his sig) and is filled to the brim with FUD.

Dr Righteous, you asked for everyone's opinion and the overwhelming majority responded, YES go Win 7. XP is a dinosaur now and doesn't effectively use your system resources.
 
I don't know why everyone thinks what I am asking is unreasonable.

Lookit. My business system is a 7 year old P4.
For what I do, upgrading the OS makes little sense.
I'm not the type to toss out the old because everyone else does. It is reliable and fast because I keep the crap to a minimum.

BUT, my second system I deal with media with and occasionally play games.
That is the system in my sig. A mid level system by most standards, but it meets my needs just fine.
It is a quad core, and I know XP will not take advantage of more than 2 cores.
When I looked at the benchmarks comparing the XP, Vista and Win7 I was surprised to see that XP, as old as it is didn't do too badly overall. With the exception of DX10 games, XP helds it's own. Well, "upgrade because it is 8 years old" holds no water in my opinion.

Now for the times I had to sit down in front of Vista, meh, I wasn't impressed. The GUI is slicker, and more gimmicky in my opinion but not compelling enough for me to want to change.

I would agree that if what you have works then keeping it makes sense. But you're running your business on a 7 year old P4 with XP? What happends when that machine dies? Sometimes you upgrade not because you need to but because it makes like easier in the end. XP is not a platform to be tied to because its no longer getting top tier support from Microsoft and XP is only going downhill from now on.

I would suggest getting a new system with Windows 7 when they come out (or build your own if want)) and simply TRY getting you business systems up and running on a Windows 7 box. I bet its easier than you're thinking.
 
This is almost like talking to a wall........I mean the guy can't distinguish between MHz and GHz (according to his sig) and is filled to the brim with FUD.
Ha ha, I didn't catch that. Good call! I did spot the irony in his username, though.
 
When did I say it was better? All I said is that it's purpose is to do the job is was purchased for. XP is as safe as the person who uses it, and the same goes for Vista or 7. If XP is run under a normal non-admin account, it is for the most part already sand-boxed. It's even more secure if Firefox replaces IE for daily use. If you want a statement to pump up XP over the others, after years of use XP has a known record and mature patched code, which is slightly better than theoretical improvements. 64-bit only matters on a new PC with larger specs, and is mostly pointless when upgrading on hardware that already works with 32-bit.

XP is not as safe as Vista/7, preriod, it is still wide open to 0-day exploits that Vista/7 are hardened against and immune to, why don't you do a google search on the security protections I mentioned to see what I'm talking about. And most people don't run XP as normal user, and that's one point of upgrading to Vista/7, because without file/registry virtualization, a lot of things don't run that DO run in Vista/7 normal user accounts. And that is not a sandbox (not the one I was talking about anyway), Vista sandboxes the browser so as a normal non-admin user, an exploited browser can't touch any user files, XP does not do this even as non-admin. It would help if you knew what you were talking about before opening your mouth. And 'mature code' doesn't count for anything, by that reasoning we should all be using DOS, it's nice and mature - and has no securiy whatsoever, are XPs security protections 'theoretical improvements' that are only slightly better than DOS? Yes 64-bit support may be pointless for an old 32-bit computer, but it is still a plus for Vista in general.
 
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DOS 6.22 is rock solid stable and doesn't have a fancy GUI. Maybe you should give that a try.
 
Vista was nasty when it first came out... most people can't deny that... you needed HIGH-END hardware(at that time) to run it properly... most OEM's threw it on machines that couldn't run it properly.... you can soleyl blame the OEM's... but I blame MS just as much for making an OS that needed so much 'GUTS' to run properly.

Secondly, the driver support was TERRIBLE!! I remember Nvidia drivers that would make the machine not come out of standby.... I remember Xerox taking almost a YEAR to come out with proper drivers for some of their older printers that were STILL in production. Worse was all of the manufacturers that didn't make drivers at ALL!! :mad:

Now... this brings me to Win7.

#1 It takes LESS resources than MS's LAST OS that was released 2 1/2 years ago!! Less HDD space, less ram.
#2 It has some new features that are a REAL improvement.
#3 Drivers?? I haven't found anything that works in Vista that won't work in 7.(maybe someone has... but I haven't)

Moral of story... as good as Vista currently is, 7 is better. And FAR better than XP.
 
Simple solution:

If XP works for you, does everything you need it to do, then stick with it.

If you want to try something new, get more current, keep up with the pack, so to speak, then grab Windows 7.

Not much else needs to be said, by me or anyone else.
 
Vista was nasty when it first came out... most people can't deny that... you needed HIGH-END hardware(at that time) to run it properly...

This isn't true. You needed WELL SUPPORTED hardware not necessarily newer hardware. I've had Vista RTM running on 2001 hardware in 2006 right after RTM just fine.
 
Simple solution:

If XP works for you, does everything you need it to do, then stick with it.

If you want to try something new, get more current, keep up with the pack, so to speak, then grab Windows 7.

Not much else needs to be said, by me or anyone else.

It's not that simple. The OP said he was running his business on a sever year old P4 with XP. When that machine dies and he hasn't tested his stuff on Windows 7 and when XP doesn't do something he needs then guess what?

Stuff gets old and if you just let your critical systems languish because "XP is just fine" you're going to eventually get in trouble. I've seen this happen to people a 1000 times before.
 
This is one example of why Win7 will sell well. People jumped on the hate Vista bandwagon without trying it themselves.

They will buy Win7 and say, "at least I skipped that turd Vista..."

I ran Win98SE until XP showed it was worth upgrading. Of course I never said I'd never run XP as some have about Vista. So I never had to swallow my pride and admit I was wrong.
 
Actually it ran pretty well. Maybe not quite as well as XP but not enough of a difference to notice using it for basic stuff like surfing and office automation.

But that is why 7 is so spectacular... it runs BETTER than the PREVIOUS OS, on the same hardware....
 
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