Vista vs. XP
I’ve been running systems with both Vista and XP for some months now. And the fact is I use XP most of the time. Some of that is because I have software that won’t run well on Vista, some of it is preference for the familiar, but to a great extent it is because nothing about Vista really grabs me. Sure, Vista has a lot of eye candy but I use a computer to get things done, not to gaze at. And Vista can be annoyingly slow. XP on a system with the hardware that Vista requires is snappy. On Vista everything just seems to take longer. But, you ask, isn’t Vista more secure? Maybe out of the box, maybe theoretically, but for my pattern of use I’ve made my XP system just as secure. Is there nothing about Vista that I like? Of course there is. For one thing, it’s easier to navigate. It has some nice administrative tools. But there just isn’t enough about Vista to make me want to use it instead of XP. And it really does require new hardware and for some applications, new versions of the software.
Here’s what Windows expert and technology writer Scot Finnie has to say:
I honestly find no advantage to Windows Vista, and there are some downsides. For example, no matter what Vista advocates say, Vista requires Vista-level hardware. Pentium M/Centrino single-core notebook hardware just doesn’t run it well. Pentium 4 desktop hardware runs it better, but usually that class of hardware needs a video upgrade. I’ve personally seen instabilities with the shipping version of the Vista code. Applications freezing, Windows services slowing to a crawl, even OS crashes. I’m not saying everyone is having these problems, but I see no real improvement over Windows XP. While the architecture of Vista is a little better, Vista adds a lot overhead to support a lot of new and sometimes questionable functionality. Vista is a lot more complex than Windows XP.
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