One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?

CWmike writes "More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. 'The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base,' Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. 'People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights.' Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. 'Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.'"

Comments

2001 Called

[nauseum_dot]

and said that its OS is not going out without a fight!

Seriously, some variation of NT 5 is going to live for a long time, ReactOS is proof positive of this.

Non-Compatible Laptops

[Renraku]

I bought my laptop with the intention of downgrading to Windows XP for increased stability and performance.

I was shocked, on the other hand, to find that there were no Windows XP drivers and that inserting the Windows XP CD and booting from it caused a BSOD before the installing starts. I have an HP Pavilion DV5-1002NR.

Do not purchase this laptop if you want to use Windows XP on it.

Re:Server 2008 = Windows 7

[Hyppy]

I hate to break it to you, but you've stumbled on Mojave. Server 2008 is Vista to the core, minus some of the flair.

Not quite valid comparisons

[DesScorp]

"Windows 98 was slower than Windows 95, running on the same hardware
Windows XP was slower than Windows 98, running on the same hardware
Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP, running on the same hardware."

On a 486 with decent memory, it was hard to tell the difference in performance between 95 and 98. There's no mistaking the difference between XP and Vista on the same hardware, though. 1 gig of memory is fast for XP. On the same amount, Vista runs like a dog. Well, actually, Vista runs like a dog with any amount of memory.

As far as 98 to XP, Microsoft has an out there... 98 ran on the old DOS-based core, while XP has the much-more-capable but resource intensive NT core. So you're really comparing apples and oranges there. Vista has an NT based kernel, just like XP, so no excuse there.

Re:it's all a bit silly, really

[Archangel Michael]

XP was an upgrade from Win2k, not 98

And in that regard, XP is faster than 2000 is.

XP is a great OS!!

[suck_burners_rice]

The question in the title of this story is: "One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?" The answer is: This is a trick question. PCs are not being downgraded to Windows XP; they are being upgraded to Windows XP.

Let me explain. No, that'll take too long. Let me sum up. Windows XP is actually a very decent operating system, if you know how to install it. For that, there is a program called nLite. This is a program that allows you to insert your factory original Windows XP installation disc, choose basically all the various options that you would, on a normal installation, go through all the Control Panel windows, the registry, and maybe even some INI files, and then it makes you a new Windows XP installation disc that installs Windows with all those options set. So you can go ahead and switch all of Microsoft's defaults to their opposite. You tell it to optimize for best performance; get rid of those cartoonish looking blue and red windows in favor of the Windows 95 style; tell it to display extensions and hidden files; tell it to basically do everything backwards from the way Microsoft installs it normally. And once you do all those things, Windows installs in 30 minutes and runs like a meteor through cyberspace. A few additional utilities like CCleaner (set it to run on startup and check all the boxes) and a better editor than notepad (like UltraEdit-32, commercial software you have to pay for and it's worth every penny ten times over) and whatever other utilities you want... like FileZilla client and server for transferring files around your network (Windows SMB networking sucks -- that is unless you do it through Samba, in which case it works great), Wireshark for figuring out why Computer A can't "see" Computer B when you just transferred a file from Computer B to Computer A and that worked like a charm, those sorts of things. If you set it up using nLite to be a more businesslike OS and a less "let's make everything really easy so even the experts won't be able to move a file from one folder to another" then Windows XP is a wonderful operating system.

Windows Vista? I'll use it when it goes Open Source. (Hmmm, maybe I'd better be careful. Sarge was released; Apple did go Intel; and who knows, maybe Duke Nukem Forever will come out one of these days... You never know.)

Re:Not exactly surprised...

[Allador]

*sigh*

Let me be more specific, so that you dont get too caught up on my 'halfway to vista' comment, and use that (rather than the obvious point) to comment on:

Completely re-writing the desktop imaging/management system on XP to support a compositing system like Vista uses, including pulling the bulk of the video drivers out, is major, major surgery on XP. If you actually did that to XP, it would result in a system that would need all new types of drivers for video cards.

Not to mention changes to the kernel to support some sort of mini-driver (to do all the kernel level calls that the video driver themselves used to do, and are no longer able to do since they run in user-space.)

If you do that, you've got something that is fundamentally not XP, is not driver or image or kernel compatible.

Not exactly

[DrYak]

Properly coded games, of course, actually use the system clock to adjust the timing of the main thread and should work on any system.

That's sloppily fixed games.

Properly coded games, actually synchronize to the display refresh rate. Which not only gives a fixed speed, but also give a smooth animation (the 60Hz display refresh has a finer grain than the 18.2Hz system clock, and synching to display avoid tearing and other artefacts).

Also, synchronizing the refresh rate was a requirement for very old hardware to avoid displaying garbage (single channel memory, couldn't be accessed by the DAC and the system at the same time). That's why some archaeologically-old games still run well on more recent PCs.