I just wrestled with this question over the weekend while building a new system. In the end I stuck with XP for the same reason as Ryeguy_24. I have an Nvidia 8 series GPU and I'm looking forward to DX10, but I'm not willing to invest all that time and money to be stymied but poor drivers.

Also, my XP system has room to breathe at 2GB of RAM, but I'd want to go to 4GB for a Vista system. So at $100+ for Home Premium, plus another $100 for the extra RAM, the move to Vista would increase my build cost by almost 20%, and it's not even dialed in yet.

No thanks.

popjack

Making the Vista decision was easy -it was incompatible with our primary applications so it got two thumbs down. On top of that it offered very few advantages over XP, it required more expensive hardware, and it would have required retraining staff and employees.

So in our case, we decided to stick with XP while we migrate our Windows dependent applications to run in a browser. By the time we need new computers we will not be tied to an OS, so we can run Windows "AfterVista", Linux, Mac, whatever.

devnull

I'm not switching until NVIDIA drivers work flawlessly with Windows Vista. After 10 or so driver updates, I'm stills seeing bugs with Vista that I don't see in XP. Unacceptable.

ryeguy_24

Yeah, I remember that and then Lifehacker posted a bunch of fluff about the new features. In the time that's followed, users aren't all that impressed with Vista and many have switched back to XP. Guess those reasons for upgrading weren't all that great after all.

drsmith

@TENDOMENTIS: cries for you spending money on Vista Ultimate not once, but multiple times.

urpwnd

No fence about it for yours truly. I made the switch at the beginning of the year, and like a majority of early adopters experienced best and worst of times.

Overall, I'm satisfied with Vista as a full-time replacement for my modded-to-heck-and-back XP professional. I still keep an XP pro image in Virtual PC so I can VPN into work, but that's it really.

The only computer I own that I'm not using Vista Ultimate is my server (W2K3 until W2K8).

TendoMentis

I'm happy with XP, it rarely crashes, doesn't require me to upgrade any hardware and I simply don't like the look of all those animated windows. Moreover, XP service pack 3 is set to come out soon and I reckon if I'd gone over to the glossier version of Windows, I'd upgrade Vista to XP SP3

db

sciencetext

I just blew away my Vista install after 3 momnths and went back to XP. This vista system was just to slooooow, and didn't offer any improvements worth switching for.

My Vista experience is really making me think about switching to a MAC, even while I manage a 99% windows infrastructure.

the_craigster

@urpwnd: Meh....people were absolutely critical of XP when it first released too...I was one of those people.

This time I didn't want my own luddism to keep me on a particular OS. DirectX 10 is fun. Media center on Vista works 10,000% better than XP Media center (small exaggeration, but you get the idea). Everything else is eye candy, but don't underestimate the power of the eye candy :)

Except for the afore-mentioned company vpn client, none of my software has shown even a hint of not liking Vista....with the possible exception of ATI Tool for overclocking, which is fine since I really should have been using RivaTuner anyway to overclock my 8600gts.

I was comfortable with XP, sure, but progress oftentimes involves moving out of your comfort-zone. Heck, I'm even playing with Ubuntu, and that's WAY out of my comfort-zone.

TendoMentis

I'd love to see an offsetting feature on why not to upgrade - I still don't see the need to, and am put off by a lot of horror stories I hear.

wererogue

I tried Vista but its not really worth it. Takes up too much time trying to get my printers to run and all that. I am fine with XP.

hchaudh1

It still bothers me that the default settings on Vista require a hella lot more hardware that what it's being installed and sold on. That feels fraudulent to me; I don't need an OS that's pretty by default; I'll make it pretty myself, if I want it that way.

My Mom doesn't need Vista to be all flashy on her 'just for e-mail and looking at grandchildren pictures' computer that costs less than $600, so why the hell put it on there with all the bells and whistles turned on?

Still smells fraudulent to me; MS isn't making hardware yet, are they? -.-

cJw

@ahoier:
>Wham, you got Windows XP :)
> Well, aside from the intro screen.....and some applications have new icons...

...And the new driver framework, new audio stack, new networking stack, new print architecture, redesigned memory management model, transactional NTFS, I/O scheduling, app isolation, DirectX 10, Avalon, Indigo... Shall I go on?

SEMW

Set your theme to Windows Classic
Turn off the Themes Service
Turn on Classic Start Menu
Turn off UAC

Wham, you got Windows XP :)

Well, aside from the intro screen.....and some applications, like MSPaint.exe, Notepad.exe, have new icons...

TBH, has anyone opened the Vista mspaint? It's rad...you can now resize the palette (the area you draw on) without dragging the resize handle pixel by pixel etc. And you can now resize images too.

And then there's thus cool Picasa-wannabe Windows Photo Gallery that has a similar interface to that of WMP11 lol.

But yea, I can understand some of the gripes....Wal-Mart sells Vista systems with 512MB RAM, but out of the box, Vista is sluggish as hell, until you turn off the memory intense features.

ahoier

I fought with Vista upon it's release until about 3 months ago. I went back to XP ... to many things would not work, or would work part of the time. I guess it all depends on what you do on our PC ... I record music as well as the normal geeking out.

mysticgeek.htg

I've been using Vista for nearly a year. I turned off a bunch of the bells and whistles right away so the 2g ram system would run the speed I wanted it to. I've had problems with the Nvidia drivers (display would constantly reset to lowest res). At first I didn't like the UAC, but there are some things about it that I like. Overall, I'd say my experience with it hasn't been any better or worse than with XP.

Dan

I'm also no longer on the fence. I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

<-- switched to Ubuntu

After years of using and administrating Windows desktops and servers ... I couldn't be happier with my move to Linux.

Some might see this as a shameless plug that doesn't belong on a post about Windows, but my experience is as valid as anyone's, especially considering that Vista is the *reason* that I switched.

Don't like Vista. Switched to Linux. (And reverted a few unhappy users' machines from Vista -> XP) That's my personal experience.

remi

I got vista business for free from my uni so I upgraded when XP "died" (virus) a few months ago.
I didnt notice too much diff from xp but I enjoyed the sleep function (never worked with xp). The average pc usage is increased (maybe 10% tops) on vista but I did build my machine for vista albeit 8 months before I made the update.
UAC is annoying but it doesn't pop up that much anymore. I use tweakUAC for the times I know the UAC will pop up a dozen or more times in a minute.
I am looking forward to SP1 which promises many features that will improve stability overall.
Oh and the fact that no company I know will even touch vista until sp1 arrives. We have the licenses (dell xp+vista business) and all our software works on vista (to my knowledge).
All in all it is a change I havent regretted...even when some software pooched vista the reformat simply renamed windows to windows.old and allowed me to grab any of those "pesky files".
I would suggest people at least give it a shot before making their judgments.

simmo

I bought a laptop with Vista. Pretty yucky compared to XP in my opinion, though some seem to actually like it as I have argued the subject on forums.

Depends if you're a KISS kind of guy (keep it simple, stupid) or a loaded with goodies person (Wow, memory hogging AERO interface!).

I am grateful to Lifehacker for providing a couple of hints that make Vista bearable, such as pointing out alternate file managers, right click hacks that give you Move and Copy in the context menu, and so forth.

Capone

For business users, Vista is still too much of a pain:
- Hardware requirements too high.
- The next XP service pack is showing that XP will be faster than Vista, using minimum hardware requirements on for both systems.
- Using a computer is about getting work done. I don't need fancy windows to get work done.
- A ton of older hardware do not have Vista drivers, not including NVIDIA hardware
- All of our scientific software models produced by government agencies do not run in Vista. Many produced by commercial companies don't either.
- Media center applications have no place in our business
- Buying a new computer to handle simple tasks requires less robust hardware under XP than Vista. Why spend an extra $300.+ on RAM to get Vista running smoothly when the user is only wordprocessing?
- Business is not about moving out of your comfort zone, it's about getting the job done.
- Everything that SEMW said above
- Oh, and the vulnerabilities that haven't yet been patched...

-

Bentwheel

I bought a fast Dell (AMD 64x2, 3GB) with Vista and I suppose I am still on the fence. I've turned off Aero, UAC and a few other frills. I can't get on with the new explorer (where's the 'up' button?), but I found a freebie, Cubic Explorer, which I'm more comfortable with. It seems like I'm gradually turning it into XP, but there is a lot of stuff under the hood worth having and I still have my old XP machine for nostalgia. I bought one game, Bioshock, which runs well at 1920x1200 with all the settings at max, but some trivial things seem to take too long. Unzipping or copying files can be very pedestrian ("calculating time remaining ..." tum te tum). Oh, and the firewire ports won't work with my external HD (could be a Dell problem). So, the jury's out but I'll probably stick with it. It can only get better. Can't it?

algypug

@algypug: That's the hope. Certainly, by all reports, SP1 has apparently fixed the "calculating time remaining..." file copying bug. Dunno what took them so long, but better late than never.

(BTW, the 'up' button in the new explorer is the address bar. You click the name of the folder one up from your current one and it takes you to it. Quite neat, IMHO, since if you want to jump up, say, 3 levels you only need one click rather than 3).

SEMW

@algypug:
You can do the equivalent of the 'up' button with ALT-UP ARROW - takes a bit of getting used to, but as a fan of keyboard shortcuts in general, I've grown to like it. There's also a hotfix for the slow calculation of time when copying files, which worked wonders for me, but I know that it's not fixed the problem for others (KB931770).

I've been pretty happy with Vista on my notebook, but it's pretty max'd out spec-wise. On my 3 year old desktop at home, I'm seriously considering going back to XP - in fact the decision's made, it's just finding the time now. It's not been a good experience.

spacemanspiffofzog

I bought Vista shortly before starting to use Ubuntu. After going through Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu gutsy betas and now having Xubuntu Gutsy 7.10 proper, I've reinstalled XP Pro on my old machine (the machine doesn't run Vista as nicely, and Vista doesn't have the compatibility) and I'm ashamed to own a copy of Vista that sits on a shelf.

The only thing my XP machine is even used for is gaming and iTunes. Wine will get good enough I'm sure, and sooner or later someone will get iTunes (w/ iTunes' Store) running on Ubuntu, and I'll replace XP Pro with Xubuntu too.

khamer