New Laptop/Windows XP/Vista

[bamboo]

Kathy
Go to www.laptopshop.co.uk and have a look at leasing. It's very tax efficient and much better than buying IMHO.
They do a great many laptops with XP as the OS of choice.

[CymraegKev]

The thing also to consider with Vista is not all your current peripherals will necessarily work.

Not so true anymore. Most modern peripherals will work as the driver vendors have finally got their fingers out. 90% of the issues people have with Vista is compatibility with hardware. The hardware vendors failed to create drivers in time for the Vista release. It was the same when Windows 95 took over from Windows 3.1x.

In my opinion, if you want a secure, safe and far more usable operating system go for Vista (Business). You will see much more Vista only software being released very shortly too as software developers get into WPF etc. Just my humble opinion of course. XP is great, but Vista, on a decent machine, is much much better.

Kevin

[CymraegKev]

Kathy
Go to www.laptopshop.co.uk and have a look at leasing. It's very tax efficient and much better than buying IMHO.
They do a great many laptops with XP as the OS of choice.

I got a great Vaio from there recently - great value and next day delivery etc to boot!

[NormanRouxel]

My feeling re Vista is that the wise money is on waiting until Vista Service Pack 1 comes out and then wait a bit more.

I bought a new high-end Acer laptop last spring and, of course, went for XP. Both still trouble free.

[Mark H]

Well the timing of the conversation is interesting - we have had to reboot our Vista/Actinic PC 12 times so far this afternoon since I said "go for Vista" as Outlook 2003 hangs irretrievably trying to forward just one email.

SCREEEEEEAAAAAAAAAM

Time for a beer.

[RuralWeb]

XP for me - I have seen far too many Vista disasters over the last few months. Looks pretty but is pretty crap in reality.

Ive just bought 2 PCs from DELL with XP.

[chris ashdown]

The irony is that although I'm buying a Mac because I'm sick of Microsoft's attitude to its smaller customers, :

I thought Microsoft brought out a controling share of Apple Computers about 3 years ago

[Stereo Steve]

I can recall when XP came out as we were system building at the time. It was slated all over the place. It was bloatware, it was slow, it was insecure and nothing worked with it. See a pattern?

I was even told by the head of City Link IT that Clan 2000 would in no way work with Vista and we would have to buy an XP machine. Or, how about right clicking the .exe, selecting Run as Administrator and putting it into XP compatibility mode? 45 seconds later and I have defeated City Link IT.

I was told my Samsung laser wouldn't work but it was up and running in 3 minutes once I had googled the error message.

Like it or not, Vista is the future. There will soon be software written for it and XP will stop being supported by MS.

On the speed issue, Vista is designed for multi core CPU's and can use them properly, unlike XP. So, if you buy a dual core laptop and it's fast on XP, it'll fly with Vista. This is certainly the case with the Vaio I am typing this on. It was sluggish with XP but Vista Ultimate has made it come alive.

Some of the features on vista are just so useful day to day and the auto backup stuff is brilliant.

[NormanRouxel]

I can recall when XP came out as we were system building at the time. It was slated all over the place. It was bloatware, it was slow, it was insecure and nothing worked with it. See a pattern?

Yep. Exactly the reasons I, for example, stayed away from XP for at least a year. After that there was a reasonable expectation of bug / security / usability / compatibility issues being sorted out. In fact, a decent level of base level security didn't turn up until Service Pack 2!

Now Vista is just off the staring grid in terms of user experience, is some time away from SP1 and serious-business level take-up at the moment isn't that high. It's better among small home based businesses but this quote from The Register perhaps indicates why:

Of course, one explanation for the sudden spike in popularity among SMBs could be that they are less likely to have IT departments that will test and advise on products. They are also more likely to buy on an ad hoc basis, from the likes of Dell or CompUSA, and will use whatever is supplied on the machine.

Here's a feedback thread a bit like this topic on The Register where I expect quite competent sysadmin types to be commenting.

[gabrielcrowe]

Like it or not, Vista is the future.

This sir is claptrap. They are already working on the next version, a complete core re-write, called Vienna.

Windows vista is a big holy mistake, akin to the torture that was windows ME.

Their operating system is fatter than ever before, pushing up the price of hardware. This tactic is a microsoft standard, their entire business model is one of domination and I dont agree with that one jot. Including windows with PC's feels restrictive, and genuinely takes away your freedom.

Vista is a bizarre 'on rails' experience for your PC. Its memory hungry and Actinic runs slower on it. Trust me, i'v ran tests on the same system versus XP. The additional memory required by all the additional background tasks they have invented for vista takes up precious system resources. Resources better used for yout applications. Not to mention the Graphical interface, Making a 4 gig vista machine about as speedy as a 2 gig XP machine.

The same goes for games. I get less frames per second in ALL games under the same system in Vista. All pllications seem to be slower as well. Benckmarks here.

These are the facts kids. If you want to use vista, then get your wallet out. its going to cost you. Not only that, but some pc retailers, are actually deducting some cost for XP installs over vista. Some would say that hardware is cheap. But even so, you'll still get more performance out of XP with your cheap fast hardware than Vista. Actinic, and for a lot of people, Adobe, will continue to support the XP platform for many years to come. I'd skip this version of windows out all together, if you want to make sure your business works smoothly. Wait for Microsofts next offering.

Rant over.

...and I diddnt even mention Linux once.

[Duncan Rounding]

I've only been on XP for about 2 years - in fact I still run Actinic v7 and v8 in virtual machines on W2KPro. I see Vista as mutton dressed up as lamb. If you need a machine at home that just surfs the net and stores your pictures and music then go for Vista - if you have work to do then stick with XP (or W2K!)

Let this monster evolve (or die) for a couple of years before rushing in.

It's very frustrating to be almost forced into a specific OS when buying a new machine and shouldn't be allowed - the OS should be a separate purchase.

Download and boot a live version of linux and see the speed difference - MS is mostly bloat.

[leehack]

From what i have seen so far, home users seem to be using and loving Vista and businesses are playing it safe on XP Pro. I'm not entirely sure of the Windows range and how it progressed, but i'm sure i've never had ME or 2000 on anything i have used. I also expect Vista to be a skipped Windows version for a lot of people. For me it was 3.1 - 95 - 98 - XP - Vienna next?

12 months is a long time though, so who knows, if it is 2 years until the next version, our hands may be forced to at least move off XP onto something else. We might be talking about V11 Actinic too, although i'm sure it will have some poncy name by then instead.

I've used Vista for a few hours, my initial impression was a few bells and whistles and a couple of nice things, but nowt to really get excited about at this stage. Vista SP2 will probably be the one to have IMO, although we might never get to see it, if Vienna is delivered on time.

[NormanRouxel]

Hehe. I get to correct Gabe...

Wait for Microsofts next offering.

I think he meant

Wait for Microsofts next offering, then a year, then for the first service pack (or the second to be really safe) that fixes the bugs, incompatibilities and annoyances it was delivered with.

And I too, didn't mention Linux, even though about 80% of Actinic sites are hosted on it. After all it just works.

[fergusw]

After all it just works.

Exactly - what's the point in talking about something that doesn't really have any major issues? Where's the fun in that?

Interestingly though, Windows 7 (Codename Vienna) is due for release in second half of 2009. The core kernal is being called WinMin and it is used internally at Redmond.
There is a little vid of a presentation of WinMin running a little web server app in less that 40Mb of memory - thats the OS and app running in that memory space!
Obviously once the Marketing boys cram it so full of Libraries it'll choke, however, it's an interesting look at how they are trying to address the issue of bloat......

Personally I feel the OS market is being driven by what they think consumers need and should be doing, and selling it by "opening up exciting new possibilities", instead of delivering something we need now, for the things we need to do well now, and delivering it in a fast, efficient and cost effective platform.

[Mark H]

To bring things down to a more day to day user level, the most annoying thing about Vista is how slow it is (sorry, the second most annoying thing - the MOST annoying thing is the half-*rsed answer to security which basically relies on popups effectively saying "are you really sure you wanted to do that?" ie start a non-microsoft program EVERY TIME - it doesn't learn, or "you tried to copy a file to xyz location - Vista has prevented this for your own good because you are obviously too stupid to be let out alone").

Sorry - back to slow. It's like driving a car where turning the wheel or applying the brakes doesn't do anything for between 0.1 seconds to 5 seconds. Even the slightest delay between click and do something is incredibly irritating, especially a couple of thousand times in a working day. For reference we use a (Vista pre-installed) Vaio core 2 duo 2.2ghz 2g RAM which I don't think can be described as slow. The funniest thing of all (ho-ho-effing-ho) is copying files. Copying a 500kb file (yes that's a whole half megabyte) produces a pop-up box which says "calculating time remaining" which stays there for about 15 seconds, then copies, whereas even XP would have copied the file in about one second. And don't get me on to copying a couple of Gb of smaller files - estimated time remaining 3 days 12 hours 14 minutes. Cr*p