Bye-bye Windows XP
 

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I'm struggling with my new Vista Home Premium pc. Sort of an emergency purchase after my regular xp machine died. I've heard a lot of people say just install xp over it.

I have a day job in the software field, though I don't deal with the intricacies of the operating systems. But I feel like doing that will bring about its own number of headaches and problems I'll have to troubleshoot.

Sure, I'd figure them out, but I think I'll figure out problems and workarounds for Vista, plus various software manufacturers whose products I use (Red Giant, Adobe, Cineform, etc) will be working to smooth any bugs they are having with Vista. Plus, Microsoft is releasing their service packs, patches, etc.

So, I'd rather deal with Vista for now.

What y'all think?

I think it's time to stock up on Windows XP installation discs, but if you can get everything to work with Vista that's okay too. Good luck...

The one positive thing about this is that Intel has decided to skip Vista altogether for all of its 80.000+ PC's.

XP will still be supported with security updates. And it will be 'available' for years and years to come. (Ebay) Plenty of time for VISTA to sort out and settle down.

Come on now people... I started this thread because it's a timely story and I was interested to hear how people are dealing with the end of the XP era. It was NOT intended as an excuse to post inflammatory remarks about Microsoft or start a platform war. We've deleted a couple posts already. Please remember that we have a zero tolerance policy at DVinfo when it comes to this sort of thing.

I'm not overly concerned about it. When I bought my first NLE (A turnkey AVID solution) it was running on Windows 2000 NT. The vendor stressed that XP wasn't 'ready' and AVID agreed. A few years later, AVID and XP were on the same page, and I made the change over. I view VISTA the same way. I'm not in a hurry to make the jump. AVID and Media Composer 3.O have just started to support it. BUT it still runs on XP as well. When I get around to upgrading my workstation computer... perhaps a year from now... I'll revisit VISTA and AVID's solution.

Meanwhile everything hums along on XP just fine.

Hmmm...

Already OWN XP licenses for all my machines...

XP runs reliably and smoothly with most everything I need to do...

Vista would cost $100 a pop to "upgrade", and I'd also have to upgrade perfectly adequate hardware...

The only compelling question for me with Vista has been "WHY?"



XP will be around for a while, and as with many other things, sometimes one can "skip" an upgrade cycle, much to the consternation of the manufacturer. "New and improved" may or may not be the latter, and oft times is only "new" in respect to the revenue stream of the supplier...

BUT... that's how it goes if there's no compelling speed or usability improvement (and is there ANY "upgraded" version of Windows that hasn't required faster hardware for comparable performance?). I don't know of any "Vista only" app that would send me rushing out the door to buy a copy of Vista... is there one?


One of these days I MIGHT put a copy of Vista onto a new machine (build my own), or replace an aging laptop, which will no doubt have Vista preinstalled... but no hurry here.

It's quite entirely possible that "Windows 7" (that's the tentative name I heard the other day for the OS to succeed Vista) will be out before I find a compelling rason to upgrade.

XP certainly won't be hard to find, so there isn't much to worry about. Vista is not THAT bad, but it's new and has some kinks. It'll get there eventually though.

I'm mainly waiting for a 64-bit Sony Vegas or Avid Media composer before I upgrade to Vista 64, so I'm sticking with XP Pro until that happens.

I'm running Vista 64 now with very few problems and getting everything settled for Vegas 64 to arrive.

Vista was a little raw at first, but it's over the hump at this point and V64 seems pretty solid.

To me there are two kinds of computers, some for video editing, and some for general use.

What works for me: use the latest and greatest everything on the general use machine. Download all the updates on OS and all software, arm it with security programs. The result: even a brand new machine is not really faster than a 5 year old PC. I have seen brand new computers that take 3 minutes to boot!

Is it just me? It seems like with all of the advances in technology, most general use software (Office stuff for example) runs at the same speed (at best) as the old version... because it has a ton of new features I don't need. On one PC, after being fed up with the latest version of Office, I went back to the previous one and got a much faster computer after reformatting it.

On the editing machine: a clean copy of XP, with the minimum necessary service packs (tipycally SP2), install driver soft and the minimum editing software needed. I have one of these, a 3+ years old office use Dell (off the shelf), loads XP in under 30 seconds.

I work in a 25,000 workstation environment and most of those systems are just NOW loading XP. 2000 has been the flavor of choice for the last so many years. We don't need MS to write patches or support the OS and its functionality. We do all of that in house. Our actual XP licenses extend well beyond their support end of life, so replacing Vista as new boxes come in will happen for years to come. Many of the normal folk out there don't even know about the end of support life for XP, only us techies and videophiles. The OEMs will pick up most of the slack as users with XP will call them first.

Surely you aren't suggesting that the time it takes to boot up the OS is the sole factor that makes a computer "faster."

I have a few as yet uninstalled copies of XP sitting in a box. No intention whatsoever to even think about Vista for another two or three years - if then.

I once had a notebook crash and had to re-install Windows. Couldn't find the disk that had come with the machine so installed a regular boxed version. It was a disaster - drivers missing, etc etc.

Installing on a desktop is a piece of cake, but notebook PC's are another story.

So I bought a MacBook Pro this time around. Regular boxed version of XP works just fine on it. I'm now running both Windows XP and Linux on the MacBook under VMware Fusion and am quite happy with it.

I have Vegas and Sound Forge running under VMware and so far performance has been reasonable. I also have my Waves audio plug-ins working on it thanks to the iLok USB dongle, which also works fine on the XP guest machine..

So far the only thing that hasn't worked is direct Firewire video capture to the Windows guest machine, but I've been able to capture OK so far with iMovie and I also have FinalCut Express installed on the Mac side. File interchange between MacOS and Windows has been trouble free so far, and when I'm at home the XP guest machine can access my network file servers just fine.

So I think I'm in a good spot to wait and see what develops with Vista. XP running natively on my big machines, and XP under VMware on the MacBook.