Upgrading To Windows Xp

[blim]

Pretty comical article! Kudos to Boat for finding it

http://dotnet.org.za/codingsanity/archive/...windows-xp.aspx

Liz

[JDoors]

... To be honest there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft has 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 [ed. Vista]. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly.

Well done Microsoft!

Too funny!

And fairly typical of "those were the days" hindsight as XP received its share of criticism during its lifetime.

[bozodog]

Glad I did my upgrade to XP "midstream". No way am I gonna buy a super powered, flame thrower for speed, power and functions I don't need. Oh, and the price has been discounted now.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it plans to cut prices of its Windows Vista operating system sold at retail outlets in a move aimed at pushing customers to switch to the newest version of Windows.

The world's largest software maker said it plans to lower retail prices for Vista in 70 countries later this year in tandem with the shipment of the first major update to Vista, known as Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Packaged versions of Windows Vista sold at stores and on the Web account for less than 10 percent of all licenses of the dominant Windows operating system that sits on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers.

Most consumers opt to buy a new PC, which comes preloaded with the latest version of Windows.

"We anticipate these changed will provide greater opportunities ... to sell more stand-alone copies of Windows," said Brad Brooks, a Microsoft corporate vice president.

In the United States, Microsoft will reduce prices for Windows Vista Ultimate, the company's top-end operating system, to $319 from $399 for the full version and cut the price for an "upgrade" version to $219 from $259 for consumers who already run Windows XP or another edition of Vista.

It also cut prices for upgrade versions of Vista Home Premium, its mainstream product, to $129 from $159.

Edited March 3, 2008 by bozodog

[jcl]

In addition, numerous tasks that take a long time on Vista have been greatly speeded up. File copies are snappy and responsive, and pressing the Cancel button halfway through actually cancels the copy almost immediately, as opposed to having it lock up, and sometimes lock up the PC. In addition, a lot of work has gone into making deletes far more efficient, it appears that no more does the operating system scan every file to be deleted prior to wiping it, and instead just wipes out the NTFS trees involved, a far quicker operation. On my Vista machine I would often see a dialog box from some of my video codec's pop up when deleting, moving or copying videos. No more, now all that is involved is a byte transfer or NTFS operation.

Speaking of copying, I've been wondering how the Windows community reacted to the explanation of Vista's file copy performance. (Spoiler: XP's file copy is "snappy and responsive" because it doesn't commit the data to disk before dismissing the dialog.)

[JDoors]

Speaking of copying, I've been wondering how the Windows community reacted to the explanation of Vista's file copy performance. (Spoiler: XP's file copy is "snappy and responsive" because it doesn't commit the data to disk before dismissing the dialog.)

I assume they don't care that Vista's method is safer and more secure, it's slower, and that's what they actually "see."

Since the service pack is supposed to speed things up (pretty dramatically according to some sources) I wonder if they skipped the write step?

[jcl]

Since the service pack is supposed to speed things up (pretty dramatically according to some sources) I wonder if they skipped the write step?

Yeah, they went back to cached writes. Now people will complain that Vista is slow after they copy large files and blow away the file cache

Edited March 4, 2008 by jcl

[martymas]

thank you guys

ive used xppro since it arrived

and i love it

shortly a friend is giving me for a present a dell compt

3.5

with vista preinstalled

but after reading that article

ime reluctant to change

ime getting proficient with xp pro

and other than a few little things i have to sort out

it is a good os, but with vista ile have to learn al over again

so maybe i wont make the change

didnt we say that when we had win98

this is a never ending cycle

when we talk about operating sys

marty

[JDoors]

... they went back to cached writes. ...

So ... (I'm still using 98SE) it WAS NOT cached for hard drives, by default, with no option to change it? Is there still an option to cache or not for removeable drives (as there is in 98SE)?

-----

Edited March 5, 2008 by JDoors

[jcl]

So ... (I'm still using 98SE) it WAS NOT cached for hard drives, by default, with no option to change it?

AFAIK that's correct.

Is there still an option to cache or not for removeable drives (as there is in 98SE)?

There's an option in the device properties, I guess. I haven't seen it in person.