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Windows Vista or XP?

As I mentioned, I'm getting a new laptop. I believe it's going to be a sweet machine with a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and 200GB of hard drive space. I'm trying to decide if I want to use Windows XP, or Windows Vista.

At first, I was convinced that I was going to use XP. After all, it's stable, fast, and has 2 service packs under its belt.

Then, I went to a Microsoft conference, and of course they were running Vista. It seemed to run very well for them, and even though the eye candy wasn't that impressive, it still put XP to shame. I've always been one to be running the latest software, so of course I'm getting itchy. I'm also a little upset that XP will only recognize 3.5GB of RAM on the new machine. The irony is that Vista will recognize it all, but will probably eat up the extra 512MB.

I had pretty much decided to use Vista.

I went so far as to create the streamlined Vista install disk using vLite, the Vista version of nLite. It allows me to integrate all of the latest hotfixes into the installation disk, so that you don't have to mess around with Windows update.

Then I started doing Google searches for "XP vs Vista". I was not impressed. There are very few people that can say anything good about the OS. Combine that with the fact that many of your drivers and applications won't work, and you have a recipe for frustration. I'm not really in the mood to be fighting with my operating system to get anything done.

The good news is that my requirements are not too crazy, since I do my software development in a virtual machine. Here is a basic list of what I need to run:

  • VMware - for my virtual development environment.
  • GAIM/Pidgen IM
  • Filezilla
  • Outlook - For exchange access
  • Thunderbird - For IMAP mail
  • SVS
  • Windows Live Writer
  • Truecrypt
  • Notepad++
  • TightVNC
  • KeePass
  • Putty
  • Firefox
  • VLCPlayer
  • Juice
  • Paint.NET
  • Wireshark
  • 7-zip
  • Unlocker
  • Picasa
  • Unreal Tournament 2004

So now, I'm not sure. What do you think I should do?

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posted @ Wednesday, September 19, 2007 7:58 PM

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# re: Windows Vista or XP?

Left by Shawn Riesterer at 9/20/2007 1:05 PM
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I would create a dual boot system. Vista as the primary system and have XP there for any games. Anything for day-to-day work that doesn't run in Vista would be run in an XP VM. I'd say go for Vista. You're going to be running a clean host OS anyway since all of your development will be done in VMs, so why not use Vista so you get to know all of it's little quirks and pains (and by little, I probably mean large).

BTW: I know Firefox, Thunderbird and Picasa run in Vista just fine.

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