Another Reason Vista Is Better Than XP......IMO

the.fatman.cometh

Hey GP! It has been a mini-debate in here before(some of you may remember), which is a better OS? XP or Vista?
There have been differing opinions on this, most hinging on the assumption and rumor that Vista is unstable. Well so far so good, no major faults, no "recalls", and the bugs that started the rumor have been fixed with the release of Vista service pack 1. The only reason that Vista would be "unstable", or run slow, is if your machine cannot handle it. Your machine has to have at least 1GB of RAM to run Vista smoothly. If you don't have at least 2GB of RAM(1GB for Vista and 1GB for your applications), and you try to run it, you're gonna notice it. Really, this would be more obvious if you took a look under Vista's "hood" to see what purrs underneath. If you're wondering what is so different, you'll have to look that up on your own, add it to this thread, or wait for me to put it up ;-).
No, this thread's purpose is to bring Readyboost technology to your attention.
You see, Vista is capable of doing something no other OS can even claim to do, increase system performance and overall responsiveness by plugging in a USB flash drive and taking advantage of Readyboost. It really makes a noticeable difference when you are doing some heavy multi-tasking, which I usually am. With my 22" HD monitor, I have a lot of visual real estate to work with, so I usually have Photoshop, Fireworks, folder windows, Firefox(usually GP) open, while watching a movie or listening to some tunes. I'm also usually running skype at the same time to communicate with the other guys on the design team as well. In the background, I usually am seeding quite a few torrents, as well as my AV, privoxy, and tor running at the same time. While this usually only uses maybe 15-20% of my system resources, I felt that Readyboost would benefit me, so I picked up a 1GB thumb drive on sale for 18 bucks, and put it to work.
Here is a screenshot of what I am talking about, with task manager up to show you.





For more detailed information on Readyboost, go here.

the.fatman.cometh

Of course, neither of these OS's can hold a candle to Linux.

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CaptainStoner

I have both vista and XP running in my house. Never tried readyboost as i've never felt the need for it.

Specs:
XP: AMD Athlon XP-M1600 which runs at various clocks from 1.4 to 2.74ghz, DFI Infinity m/b, 1gb Corsair BH5 ram 200-274mhz @stock-3.3v, CAS2 11-2-2-2. Few SATA samsung spinpoint hds, NVIDIA Geforce4 Ti4800 256mb, Tagan 480w PSU, used to be watercooled when i had it at 2.7ish ghz.. now aircooled on a good hsf.
Vista: (laptop) Core2duo 1.73 (merom) Samsung R20, 2gb ram, 120gb hd, ATi 1250 256mb gfx

I've had maximum uptimes on the vista machine of 12 days before it becomes unresponsive. It lasted from july 07 to june 08 before needing a reinstall like windows does sometimes - i traffic a lot of data through my pcs. XP runs for months without restart. Unraring a 700mb movie from 14mb rar files takes three times as long as the Athlon at 1.4ghz. USB2 transfer rates to my mobile phone is 262kb/sec on vista, multiple mb/sec on XP. My caddy is much faster on XP. I have to put the vista machine into full performance mode to watch some videos on it, videos which play no problem on my mums 1ghz duron laptop which also has XP.

Don't get me wrong, i like the looks of vista, but the disc access speeds are beyond pathetic. It isn't very reliable, the only reason i kept it is because it came with the laptop.

Pure CPU power/ram use is not really fair comparing my laptop to my desktop XP machine, as i use a nLite'd, stripped down and streamlined XP, similar to tinyxp on my XP machines. I'm going to try this OS on the laptop when i can be bothered. Suffice to say my XP runs fine on 128mb ram whereas i found vista to NEED 2gb.

I'd like to try a vLite'd Vista and see where its at, but for now, XP blasts vista dead in the water, for me. Like i say i never needed to use readyboost, but the whole concept of that seems.. flawed to me because of the very finite lifespan of USB sticks.

I liked vista, and think it will be a good product once it has been developed to the point XP has, but at the moment it stinks.

the.fatman.cometh

Hey, CaptainStoner, I totally agree with you, man.
The speed and security of Linux keeps me happy. My desktop is a AMD 64bit box, AMD Phenom 9500 quadcore, with 3024 MB RAM clocked at 3.32, ATI HD 2400 XT video card with 1GB video RAM, 2 500 GB's HDDs, etc.etc., my point being that it runs like a dream with Linux, no hangups, no problems, and I have an uptime right now 30min(I had to reboot for updates, but that's cool though, because it takes less than 30 seconds for me to boot into Linux )but before that I was up since the start of April. I love Linux.
I hate booting into Windows now, and the only reason I do that is for work. And that's because I have to! LOL

I dual boot vista and a custom version of Ubuntu Linux on my desktop, my wife runs Vista on her laptop, and my 5 yr old has a full Ubuntu Linux install on her desktop that I keep loaded with educational games she plays about 60% of the time

Hey CaptainStoner, you should check this thread out, and rise to the challenge.

Here is a wallpaper I did for the Linux community that sums up the way I feel about Linux


FULLSCREEN

Cheers,
theFATMAN

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