i have a Intel C2D T9300, 4GB RAM Laptop recently, so which OS will work best?

any incompatibilities?
any noticable performance difference?
which is more worth?

i dont really like vista because of UAC and stuff, very irritating, but XP is going to be out of support soon? but i still like XP... and between XP 32 and 64 which is better? and Vista 32 and 64?

If you vLite then I would say the choice is between Vista x64 and XP 64. My vote would still go for XP 64. You will just notice a lot more speed than Vista. That is for sure. However since you are on a laptop, I would make sure about all the drivers being all in order before I go for 64 bit flavor in any OS.

This post has been edited by suryad: Mar 15 2008, 09:04 PM

I have a an AMD Turion 64 laptop with 4GB memory. I have flopped back and forth with Vista 64 and 32 and have now decided on staying with 32. Personally I think Vista looks too nice to go back to XP. The UAC can be turned off with a click so that's not an issue and I don't know why people keeping harping on it. In all honesty I don't see any performance difference between the 64 and 32 bit versions although this laptop is for school and work so games are not played on it. Now after having Vista 64 on for about 5 months I just went back to the 32 bit. Two main reasons. 1. My laptop has a built in mini SD memory card reader, Vista64 doesn't even see it and even if it did there aren't any drivers for it. The whole driver issue with Vista 64 is pretty much gone by the wayside too unless your using some old hardware. Most of the drivers are out there. The second reason I switched is because I just picked up Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.5. It says it works with Vista however when you put the disk in a window pops up and says it won't work with 64 bit.

There are a few other programs that I needed for school that will work fine on Vista 32 but not on Vista 64. So since I don't see any performance hits and I'm tired of working from two different PCs to get work done I switched to Vista 32 until 64 bit programming becomes mainstream.

My laptop has a 5400RPM hard drive on it so even if there was any performance increase by any of the OS's your looking at I think that's pretty much my bottleneck for now. I'm sure some geek can tell me that Xp is so and so faster than Vista and that 64 bit on certain applications is faster than 32 bit. I don't see any noticiable difference and I'd rather take my dog out for a walk then spend time figuring out how I can get some application to start up 1 second faster or get 3 more FPS from a game.

Peace!

UAC is a good thing. However, it can be disabled. It's always been able to be disabled. "and stuff" can probably be disabled too.



First off, XP64 will be supported for some time, as it's based on Server 2003, which will be around for a while yet. NOBODY at Microsoft is too eager to stop updating Server 2003.

Secondly, if MS stops supporting it.. who cares? When's the last time you called Microsoft with an OS problem?

i would love to use Vista X64 on a day to day basis but i cannot run peer guardian due to the whole WHQL Drivers thing. So for the time being i use XP X64 although honestly i cannot wait until the day i switch to Vista X64 permanently

Windows Vista x64 edition

PR department?


For a laptop, if its a tablet PC then get Vista. Its slower, and uses more battery but it has better support for tablets.

Otherwise use XP Pro. Support wont stop coming for awhile, 2013 I think.

This post has been edited by brucevangeorge: Mar 20 2008, 10:15 AM

I've used them all and in my personal opinion I find XP to be better. I cannot stand Vista. My hardware can more than run it at fast speeds, but it just feel too sluggish to me. It's lacking in some areas. A few (IMO) nice things. But overall it's not something I would choose to run.

That being said...

If you like Vista, make sure your hardware has drivers. Most all current hardware has drivers for at least the 32bit version of Vista, 64bit is sorely lacking for some things. Program compatability with 64bit is also a factor. The vast majority of programs runs just fine in 64bit, but some either don't work at all or work poorly.

With 4 gigs or RAM or more you will definitely have to have a 64bit OS whether it's XP or Vista to be able to use the full amount of RAM.

If your concerned about XP going out of support then install XP64 as it IS Server 2003. S2K3 will be supported for a lot longer than the consumer OS ever will be.

I'd definitely go with 64bit considering the amount of RAM you have. Whether it's XP or Vista that you choose, is ultimately up to you.

This post has been edited by MrCobra: Mar 24 2008, 05:59 AM

XP 64, by a long margin!
I tried out Vista after it came out and was very disappointed. It has severely lacking application compatibility and driver support, a lot of things were arbitrarily changed around for no reason at all, it's quite a bit slower than XP (especially with games) and still has lots of flaws: file copying bug, network bugs etc. I would list Uac there as well, but "It's a feature, not a bug" ™

With XP64, all of my apps work, driver support is fine, and it even feels somewhat snappier than XP 32bit
XP64 will still be supported quite a bit longer than XP, since it's based on Windows 2003.


Whoa, "smart" choice
Someone should tell you that you can't use 4GB on a 32bit OS.


rofl
One of the worst pro-Vista arguments I've heard yet. You can easily outfit XP with themes to look as good or even better than Vista. There are even several Vista transformation packs, should you wish XP to look the same as Vista.

I do like the way the Vista looks but I have to agree XP 64 by a long margin!

mmm... then just talking about performance alone, XP wins Vista right? and 32bit and 64bits are abt the same? i read 32 or 64 bits don't provide much difference but maybe thats a year or 2 ago, what abt now?

for me, i tested Vista x86 and Vista x64 with PCMark05 and 3DMark06 didnt seem to give much difference...

Vista 64bits
- Processor 5.4
- Memory(RAM) 5.1
+ Graphics 4.8
- Gaming Graphics 5.3
- Primary Hard Disk 5.3

- PCMark Vantage x64 3807 PCMarks
- 3DMark06 3943 3DMarks
- Performance Test 6.1 539.3

Vista 32bits
- Processor 5.4
- Memory(RAM) 5.1
+ Graphics 4.8
- Gaming Graphics 5.3
- Primary Hard Disk 5.3

- PCMark Vantage x86 3895
- PCMark05 6077 PCMarks
- 3DMark06 3940 3DMarks

XP 32bits
- PCMark05 5476 PCMarks
- 3DMark06 4130 3DMarks

as for compatibilities, i guess XP64 will be fine?

This post has been edited by iceangel89: Apr 2 2008, 06:55 AM

Synthetic benchmarks really dont mean much.

32bit and 64bit are about the same, but the improvements you will see most comes from 64bit programs and the larger memory space available to the programs that can make use of it. If you have 4GB+ of RAM and you use a 32bit OS, you just wasted money on that extra RAM because you cannot use it. To get full RAM capacity you HAVE to use a 64bit OS.

I've been using XP x64 on my newest PC for about 4 months now, and I don't see myself going back to any 32bit OS anytime soon.

I regulary set up a Vmware install inside memory, that is on a ramdisk at 4GB. Xp 32bit ram limit is at 3.2GB ram max.
Cant do that on 32bit =( Ramdisk and ability to use much ram is so many things so superior cool about it that its futile to try and list them all, but anyone known with the concept and knowing how much faster ram is then any harddrive/ssd. Having said that, Using vista and ramdisk dont mix, i dont care what people say that vista will release memory for other programs, it doesnt work as they say, as in i need the memory i have and need right this *instant*. Measuring with DPC you will see some serious latency problems with vista and its memory caching. Couldnt resist, sorry.

Well, it all depends on the hardware really. There isn't too much support for XP64 as far as drivers are concerned. But their might be drivers for your laptop for it, so definitely check before deciding.

I used to run XP32 and denounce Vista. But really, Vista isn't so bad if you have the hardware to support it. All of Vista's annoyances can be turned off. Between 32 and 64-bit Vista, I would say go 64-bit. I've not run into any problems with application compatibility and the driver support for Vista64 is pretty decent.

Also, as mentioned above, since you have 4 GB of RAM, you should think about going 64-bit. That way you can use all 4 GBs of it. I personally think Vista64 is better performance-wise than Vista32. YMMV of course.

This post has been edited by tosk: Jun 6 2008, 07:47 PM