Did I make the right decision re Vista.....

Hi All

Ok so I finally took the plunge and bought a new pc, the spec I have ordered is listed below. I chose not to have Vista installed on it but opted for XP home edition. I have a NVidia GeForce 7300 graphics card at home (PCI -E) waiting to load up into the new pc (O know it's now old - but had it a while - long story!). Just not sure now whether I should have gone for Vista instead of XP....comments welcome!

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™2 Duo E4500 (2 X 2.20GHz) 800MHz FSB/2MB L2 Cache
Memory (RAM) 2048 MB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)
Motherboard ASUS® P5VD2-VM SE: DDR2, S-ATA II, 1 x PCI-E x16, 2 PCI, etc
Operating System WINDOWS® XP Home (inc. Genuine CD & License) (£59)
USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT) AS STANDARD
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 500GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st CD/DVD Drive 20x Dual Layer LightScribe DVD Writer ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd CD/DVD Drive 16x DVD-ROM WITH 48x CD-ROM
Graphics Card INTEGRATED VIA UNICHROME PRO GRAPHICS
Sound Card 6 Channel SoundMAX High Definition Audio (Standard on P5VD2-VM)
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)
Case Stylish Silver/Black Sigma case + 2 front USB
Power Supply & Case Cooling 500W (Peak) Quiet Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£25)
Processor Cooling SUPER QUIET 19 dBA INTEL CPU COOLER (£14)
Firewire & Video Editing 3 PORT FIREWIRE (IEEE1394) PCI CARD (£9)


BB

Well, at the end of the day, it's your choice - I personally would have gone for Vista, it will save you the inevitable upgrade costs if you want to change later.

I've been using it for some time now, and it's been great. Mainstream support from MS will end for XP in April 2009, with only security updates being available after that.

Each time a new OS is released, it's always the same story - there will be bugs and patches needed, but with Vista SP1 around the corner, most of these are sorted out.

SL runs fine on Vista, as long as you get the right graphics drivers.

A lot of peoples hesitation from changing to Vista is because of the posts other people make about problems with it on the web and others just dont like change until they *have* to (I still know people using Windows 95/NT because of the horror stories they heard about XP 8 years ago!). All OS's have problems, but for me, Vista performs exeptionally well.

Look at it another way - XP is is now 6 years old... would you go into a showroom to buy a car and decide to purchase a 6yo car for the same price as a new one?

Gomez

Absolutely. Ya big error. Change it.

If I was buying a new machine today I'd get it with Vista and dual boot it with XP pro, which I would continue to use for most of my day.

Doesnt Vista give you a retrospective licence for XP? Either way, XP Pro OEMs are so cheap now.

i would have gone with vista aswell.
pretty much for the same stuff that gomaz suggested.


I've been using vista since Janurary and have never had any problems with it.

most of the people posting about problems with vista are having problems because they haven't heard of a little thing called upgrading there pc, they are stuck in the stone ages using a pc that was excellent for gaming 3 years ago not wanting to accept that times advance and hardware requirements change. They toss vista onto there pc with 512mb or 1gb of ram and expect it to run as good as xp completely ignoring the fact that vista uses 512mb of ram compared to XP using 64mb, less free ram = slower pc. or they never bother to update drivers with vista compatible drivers and suffer tons of hardware issues. then they think its vistas fault when there pc is slow and crashes a lot due to insufficient ram or incompatible drivers.

That would be my biggest concern.

Thanks for your responses - I think I will change it to Vista - I still have the option to do and your replies have made me think that this is the right decision...!

Vista Business or Ultimate can downgrade to XP Pro, but cannot use both. Vista Home Basic or Home Premium has no downgrade rights.

Gomez

Hi Schwanson

As stated in my op - I have a NVidia GeForce 7300 graphics card at home waiting to install so hence the need to not add one into the build at this stage