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The Advantages of Upgrading From Vista To XP
An anonymous reader passes us a blog posting, which may be just a bit tongue-in-cheek, about the pros and cons of upgrading from Vista to XP. "...there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft have really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly."
Over half of those are patently false. Plain and simple, they're lies. I've been using vista for a while now and not experienced most of those. And this isn't on a beast of a machine either, it's an old P4 Dell. The rest are wildly exaggerated and repeated on this site. In fact, the only one I can confirm to have any truth is the slow file copy bug, XP does do that faster. You could maybe get away with saying DRM is a problem, but I don't use any DRM encumbered files so magically it's not an issue for me. All the hidef content I get from BT and mp3s work absolutely fine and always will. DRM is mostly a boogie man, it only effects people who buy content protected by it. The subsystems are there to support DRM, but guess what? They're also there in XP. Imagine that.
A related issue about slow file copy: there's a curious discrepancy I found with Linux copying files over a network with windows PCs. Copying from XP to Vista took less than 1/4 the time to copy files from XP to Ubuntu or Vista to Ubuntu (which was even slower). Ubuntu also became incredibly slow and unresponsive during the copying, so much so that I gave up trying to do anything with the machine during the time it took (some 3 hours). I can't figure out why it would take over four times longer to do with Linux than with windows. Has anyone noticed a similar problem and found a way to correct it?
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Other than DX10.x in Vista for purposefully DX10.x limited specific games releases
Nice shot of misinformation there. DX10 & Vista support GPU multitasking, which is how you get hardware acceleration in multiple windows and the desktop all at the same time... something XP can't do. DX10 isn't just some marketing carrot to lure people to vista. DX10/Vista is a substantial upgrade to the underlying graphics system, with a whole new driver model that makes it possible... it fundamentally changes and how grahpics work in Windows at the kernel level.
It may not be something 'gamers' care about, but its important. And its pathetic when people look at just the relatively minor game-related features directx10 has added and then conclude directx10 is irrelevant.
As to your base question, what is the Killer app in Vista? I'd say their isn't one, and that it isn't a compelling upgrade unless its time to buy a whole new computer anyway. But having said that, what was the killer app for XP from 2000? I don't remember one.
What about from 98 to XP for the 'home users'? Sure XP was more stable, but it required gobs more RAM (98 ran very well on 64MB... XP was a dog on less than 256, was slower on the same hardware, and wsn't compatible with a lot of games. It came with DRM in the form of enforced limitations on connections to shared printers and folders, and featured an activation process that had the potential to lock you out of your computer if you upgraded it.
XP was as much of a non-event as Vista is. It was on some level better accepted than Vista precisely because it was so much less of an upgrade than XP was from 2000. There is a reason that 2000 is "Windows 5.0", while XP is "Windows 5.1". XP wasn't much of an upgrade!
It makes Windows more secure than *nix (i.e Vista is the only OS in the world where even root != root), and is less irritating than su (you don't need to type password every time, assuming you are "root").
Read about it. Try it. It works ok in practise. If you really hate the idea of not being root always and forever, it's 5 clicks to turn it off.
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