The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Compared to Windows 2000, Windows XP was very bloated. I didn't consider it good until SP2, but I suppose that is a more subjective and per-situation sort of thing. However, the simple fact is at least in every situation that I'm aware of, XP needed much more system performance and capacity than Windows 2000 needed to run similarly well. I booted up two old 2000 and ME machines a year or two back and they ran better with 128MB and 192MB of SDRAM-100 with a weak P3 each better than XP ran on a system with 512MB of DDR2-533 and a decent for the time P4 630 (3GHz, 2MB L2 cache, and Hyper-Threading) until I threw in another 2GB of RAM for the XP system. XP had very bad resource management.

I don't know of any programs that can't run on Vista that do run on 7 unless you count XP mode. What programs are you talking about?

You may be right about XP's issues being contributed to by MS merging professiona and home use into a single system, but that was not nearly the only issue. It shared a lot of issues with Vista. Like Vista, XP was a LOT more bloated than its predecessor. Lot Vista, it had a lot of driver issues up to even a few years after its launch. It had its good qualities eve nearly on, but the same can be said for even Vista and 8. For example, Vista brought in a much more complete 64 bit experience than XP managed to do and had some innovative changes (and some very bad losses, but still).

 

Deadrum33,

It's not that XP is "beloved", it simply works every time! Win 7 left me stranded for over 6 weeks, when it would no longer start! Fortunately I had it installed in Dual Boot with XP (tricky), so I was still able to work. For 47 days, Win 7 wouldn't work! It just gave me a bsod every time I tried to start it! A 47 day delay with the main OS out of commission, is not acceptable! At least not to me! Sure I could have wiped the drive and started over, it's only a couple of weeks of work, to get it all installed again

Another thing about Win 7 that drives me nuts is they are constantly removing programs that I use all the time! Here's a partial list to give you an idea of what they removed.
7Zip, Win.rar, convertXtoDVD, Registry crawler 4, Hardware Monitor Pro, Sandra, TuneUp Utilities 2012 (permanently crippled), 1 click Fixer (permanently crippled), CleanMyPc, and Dragon Speaking. When I say crippled, I meant permanently! You can't use it on any computer! That's outrageous! My bought and paid for, legit software! And don't even get me started on this 1 copy of the OS per computer, at outrageous prices. Vista was Micro$oft's problem. It was M$ that wasted all that money on trying to fix Vista. They need to stop making us pay for it! Rant over!

BTW, some here were looking for info about setting up dual boot with XP. Here's the best guide I could find.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Blazorthon, re:"some very bad losses, but still".

Visa was Micro$oft's mistake, not ours. Why are we being made to pay for it?

Best Regards,
Russ

 

There are tons of programs that won't install or run on Vista that do operate fine on XP and Seven, tons.... I play with a lot of games and business programs so I see more then the average Joe I guess.

NT/2000 was only good for business and ME was a gaming platform and poor one at that. XP was the blending of the two and because of that it did have more overhead but I wouldn't call that bloat. Also XP was built for a stronger base then 2K/ME so it should be that 2K or ME will run better on older gear, that is almost always true. ME and Vista bloat with time and Vista is a major resource hog, Seven is not and actually Windows 8 actually even performs better resource wise then 7. Vista is pretty and I think that is what people like, functionality doesn't seem to be important to Vista lovers. Unlike Russ I don't mind change as long as it is good unfortunately too often change is bad i.e, Metro....

 

On XP and not Vista, yes, but I don't know any programs that do run on 7 and not on Vista. Can you give any examples?

XP wasn't just geared for newer, somewhat more modern systems, it was very bloated for its time. None of my computers from that time today nor back then performed as well for standard usage as my ME systems that worked and my 2000 systems that both had inferior hardware, not just similar hardware. XP needed several times more RAM capacity/performance and CPU performance just to run comparably well.

ME didn't bloat even as badly over time as some of my XP systems, so I'll have to disagree with you on that too. ME was simply a much less stable system in my experience even to this day.

I know that 8 performs better than 7 and 7 better than Vista, but I think that you are over-exaggerating the differences overall. I have systems with nearly identical setups except for the OS (specifically for testing stuff between OSs with as few variables as reasonably possible) and my experience has not been quite similar to the performance differences you describe with Vista. I never liked Vista and I still don't, but still. 7 is a major resource hog compared to even XP and isn't a huge improvement from Vista, although it is a big improvement in managing what it does use in my experience.

Basically 7 doesn't seem to use more than around 15-25% less memory and such than Vista, but it can run much better at low memory and CPU capacity/performance systems. For example, 7 seems to run much better than Vista for me on low end systems (say P4/HT with 1GB of DDR2 memory), but the difference really pans off at say 4GB with a much more modern CPU such as even an Athlon II at around or over 3GHz and DDR3-1333 9-9-9-24 or better for the RAM and going further up into the high end makes the difference almost unnoticeable.

Windows 8 seemed to continue that trend, but had many advantages even for higher end systems (such as web browsing performance according to Tom's latest WBGP, granted that's usually not an issue anyway). However, even going for the server version, Windows Server 2012 and comparing a five years old Vista 32 bit installation to a fresh Server 2012 x64 installation is not a huge performance advantage in any of my tests. It is noticeably better, but even five years of near constant use didn't let the Vista system bloat up so much that performance was too greatly affected and that's with a nearly full hard drive and not a whole lot of maintenance either.

 

What do you mean by that? I never said nor even meant to imply that the customers were at fault for Vista's *fiasco*.

 

What do you mean by this? With the exception of RegistryCrawler, I've used every one of those programs on Windows 7 and never had any problems with any of them except for Everest (which is a flaw in Everest, not in windows).

As far as it goes for me:

Windows Me - very low resource usage, but also very unstable, even compared with 98. Most programs (and I do mean most) crashed daily if not more often - it was so bad I had no option but to rollback to 98.
Windows XP - much higher resource usage than 98/Me, but for the first time, proper stability with protected code. If an application crashed, it didn't take the system down with it. A computer finally felt like a stable environment, if it was slow, you took your time, but you got there, rather than with 98/Me, if the PC was slow, you had a far higher risk of losing your work through crashes.
Windows Vista - Good from the sense that it forced companies to start making 64-bit drivers (XP 64-bit was bit of a write-off because of poor driver support), but the resource hog was quite excessive. 2GB of RAM was borderline adequate for basic office use, whereas 1GB would have been perfectly sufficient before. The layout of some of the menus was bewildering, but the visual style was nonetheless improved.
Windows 7 - a bit like Windows Vista done properly. Although the menu systems were actually made worse than Vista, performance was improved, although it still wasn't quite enough to allow 1GB systems to perform properly even for basic tasks. Things were also a lot less buggy, the network stack didn't randomly fail causing you to need to reformat as with Vista, programs crashed less, and there were fewer inexplicable changes in behaviour (random delays in logins, odd permissions errors and so on) - effectively, Vista was the beta, and windows 7 was the finished product.
Windows 8 - if you ignore IFKAM, Win8 is basically like a further polished Win7, minus the start menu. The interface is better all round in the desktop environment, and boot times are much improved. General performance may also be slightly better, but not enormously so. Unfortunately Win8 does not address the long-standing delay bug in the installer, but apart from that performance is good.
One negative is the shutdown script. People are misled into thinking that Win8 shuts down quickly as the display goes blank 2-3 seconds after shutting down. In actual fact, however, this is because turning the display off is the second part of the shutdown process, before all the service shutdowns etc. occur, so your system can remain on for another 10-20+ seconds on occasions after the monitor has gone blank - which could be problematic for mobile PCs that are unplugged, people believing them to have shut down (assuming of course, no obvious power LED).
The other problem with the shutdown script is the desktop is hidden during the 'these programs are preventing windows from shutting down' so it's more effort to find what they are and close them before shutdown.

Generally speaking though, as long as you can retrofit the start menu, Windows 8 is a perfectly reasonable OS. It's just one you have to modify through third-party software before you can actually use it. (I do not consider IFKAM usable).

Oh I forgot, although Windows 8 has a 2-day grace period for installing windows updates versus the 4 hours of 7, notifications are not published to the desktop, only to IFKAM, so unless you lock your workstation, you'll never know they're coming, then wonder why your PC suddenly reboots itself halfway through doing work/playing a game.

 

Your way off base Blaz, ME was the King of bloating, the KING hands down and I just disagree with you on XP being bloated, it was not. It is a fact that games and programs that run on XP and 7 won't run on Vista. That is why 7 was so revamped from Vista and is truly just an extension of it. It is also why businesses wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. So if I wanted to waste my time I could dig through my list and provide you many examples but I'm not going to waste my time so believe it or not if you choose, it doesn't matter to me.

 

Why does it seem like I've offended you or something? All I asked for was examples because this is the first that I've heard of software running on 7, yet not on Vista these days. I'm not asking for a huge list, just give me say three or four examples and I'll go from there. I've never known any such examples, hence I asked. I wasn't trying to put you in any spot light and say you're wrong, just asking for some examples since you say you have a lot of examples.

I'm simply telling you my experience with my numerous machines running these operating systems. What I believe is irrelevant as is what you believe, I'm just saying what I've seen with my own eyes and that of what I've read about as well.I don't have some of my oldest machines anymore thanks to some of their very old PSUs finally failing over the last few years (it's cost more to replace some of those old PSUs than the whole systems are worth these days, so I didn't bother fixing them up), but that's not the point.

Businesses didn't touch Vista because of the stability problems, huge expense of needles upgrades, potential software and driver incompatibility, and other such reasons. Any bloating over time issues had little to nothing to do with it. Even now, we're only seeing upgrades to 7 because it's in a much more stable time with much better software support and XP is running out of support time. The far lower costs than in the past with Vista for the time are probably also related.

EDIT: Well, this last paragraph is more like my opinion of the situation than a definitive guarantee, I'll admit that much.

 

I'll second that in spades! Seems to be a broken record somewhere?

 

For the record, I have found at least one application that worked on Win7, but doesn't on Win8 (yet).

 

I do realize that there are a few things that run in 7 and not in 8. Mostly though, that's been resolved, granted there are probably a few things still not working (I've heard of a few old games still not running, IDK if it's still true with the most recent drivers because AMD released a few versions over the last few weeks and some of them had Windows 8 improvements in the driver notes).

 

The application in question here is http://www.hddled.com

 

Edit: mobile client double post bug

 

I'm not offended at all so sorry if I came off that way. Businesses are always worried about stability but that isn't why they didn't move to Vista and still stay away from it. It was compatibility and the requirement of more resources, expensive PC's at the time to run the OS, that was the main problem and still is.

As a general example, many of my 500 or more Reflexive games will work on 7 or XP and will not work on Vista. Some of the problems are due to the Signed Driver issues in Vista. If I can I will look later and try to give you more specifics but I have too much on my palate right now.

I still have a running K6 computer, Windows 3.1/DOS 6.22 or DRDOS 7 and I have an old notebook, monochrome, that is a Z80 and also still works. I use the K6 for old DOS games, and I mean old!

Blaze, even if you get me upset it's not the end of the world and I get over it as everyone here is pretty darn good and one of the people I've been the most heated with I respect the most, which would be Sam, just don't tell him that. We may not always agree but he does know his business typically and I certainly make my mistakes from time-to-time.

So I apologize as I didn't mean to come across as being cross with you,
Stevo

 

In my coming up on 9 years at aD I've seen more arguments (all too often involving myself) than I can count, but very rarely has it resulted in genuine animosity. There are the odd few out there that are out to make life a misery for people, but fortunately that's a rarity.

 

Geese Russ. You've had some problems with 7 for sure. My experience has been the opposite. And by the way, the programs in your list that don't work for you, work for me The ones I use anyhow.

Dragon naturally speaking? I haven't installed that one, but I suspect I wouldn't have a problem. But then, the integrated speech capability is plenty for a good speaking person. I recall Sam has trouble with those sort of programs, due to certain accents. When I finished setting up my speech recognition, my brother(similar voice), could use my computer by speaking to it.

 

Blazorthon,

Whoa, please! I never said you did! I wasn't trying to imply that the customers were at fault, for Vista's fiasco. 100% the opposite! I'm talking about all the millions of Dollars Bill Gates force fed Vista, trying to keep it alive, when it was a hopeless case and should have been scrapped, a year earlier than it was. Now, the customers pay for all that money wasted, with higher prices for win 7 and other M$ products. Remember that M$ webcam that became so popular here, because it had such a great picture and frame rate, a couple of years ago?. It was a bargain at $14.99 at the egg! I picked one up for a friend about 5 months ago. It was $37.99, more than double the price! As a paying customer, I resent it!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Oman7,

12 is the latest version, and it should work better for someone with any accent, than in the past. I haven't used it because it won't work right on Win7, but my friend Dave got it for his computer (XP) and once it went through the learning phase, it worked fine.

Russ

 

Mr-Movies,

I beg your pardon? I have always been a very progressive person. I have no objection to change, but I do take exception to change just for change's sake though! Computers are not like Automobiles! They don't need a new grille or portholes to look like a new computer! Metaphorically speaking, lot's of people out there want to put a skirt or pants on computers, like they are human, and your best friend, when they aren't and never will be.

My original purpose for building a computer was to do work with, and make some money. Games and other entertainment were very secondary to me. Today, I still do a lot of computer work, and when I'm doing it I don't want all the pop up garbage that you get with 7. My screen looks no different than it does with XP, with all the junk turned off! When I am not doing work, I focus more on entertainment and games, than I used to.

Let me ask you a question. What were you doing when you were 7? Did you know where your future lay? Well in 1951, at age 7, I already knew! I knew it the first time I went into the new electronics store in town. I had a sudden vision of electronic machines combined with medicine and I followed it up with a 40+ year career in medical electronics. Unlike most of the repair technicians of the day (1951), I wasn't afraid of Transistors and integrated circuits, and readily embraced them, making a very successful career for myself out of the new tech, while being a part of the creation of a huge industry that never existed before. I'm proud of what we accomplished, and the lives that are saved, every day because of what we created!

Best Regards,
Russ