I bought a laptop a month or two ago, which has a 2.1 GHz processor along with 4 Gigs of ram, on a 32-bit system, as well as a 256mb video card, and I was wondering if it would be worth it to change the operating system to XP? (Which I have a free installation CD for)
As of yet I haven’t had any real problems, such as crashes (I think I may have only had one or two) or virus infections, but I have heard that Vista is very unstable.
So the main reason I wish to do it is to improve performance, such as startup time and such.
I do not use the laptop for games, but I do use it a lot for videos, especially burning and ripping dvds, as well as video converting, and occasionally editing.
How much faster will those activities become, for me, if I drop back to XP?
Windows XP will probably give you improved performance over Windows Vista, but you should consider giving Windows 7 a try, it runs great on notebooks and laptops.
It is worth while it will become alot faster because vista uses so much system resources and services where as xp uses barely any compared to vista
no. some vista hardware will not work on XP, plus when you un-install the OS and reformat it, unless the laptop came with a physical cd, you might void the warranty (I know because my old man did this and it voided his warranty)
If you do decide to do this, I would download Windows 7, you can get the LICENSE off of M$ website, and you will have to DOWNLOAD THE OS from a torrent site like isohunt, mininova or piratebay…..
XP will greatly improve yoour performance. However many Vista only apps. won’t work. I don’t know of any video editing software that doesn’t work on XP that is commonly used. Also if it is a 64 bit XP your laptop will work MUCH faster.
it depends on the type of vista, because some dont allow more than 3 programs to run at once
I would appreaciat that as far as xp is good and love it but why would u do that? instead of installin xp uppgrade vista to windows 7 and it will make gd performance.u gonna luv it its just sexy and even much faster than vista and xp,so take a try and enjoy windows 7
xp will be the fastest in converting videos etc i have personally experienced it .vista takes up lot of memory and thus process are slower eg converting video.but moving and copying of files are faster in vista than in xp.but display and quality of video(atomatically gives the pictures/vedios in screen beteer quality) will be great in vista.thats it its your choice now. youcan even put both the os in the same computer by creating partions.and if you have enough memmory.
or other vice it would’nt slow down your computer unless you are running both the os at the same time.thats it its your choice now.
Get rid of that crappy vista and install XP
Theres no such thing as a vista hardware
all the hardware in your system will be compatible with xp drivers i guarantee it
Vista hugs 500mb + my 64bit vista hugged almost 1gb just to run the dirty vista os.
my window xp uses only 200mb to run the os. so you’ll see a significant difference in performance!@#!
It would be very obvious, and also faster and better, but I don’t suggest so, because some applications and drivers won’t work on XP. And Windows 7 will be released soon-Microsoft won’t give support to XP.
Windows XP has gotten really outdated and Windows Vista no longer has the compatibility problems that plagued it when it was released over three years ago. Vista is also far more secure out-of-the-box than XP is.
Go for Vista or windows 7. the best.
If you want performance go with windows 98 or 95 or xp all of thes are out of date. but you want performance
Vista is only unstable if your hardware doesn’t meet the requirements for Vista.
In my opinion, I don’t think you should as it seems your Laptop can Handle Vista without any problems. But if Vista starts getting slow for you then Uninstall vista and go back to XP.
But for the most part I don’t think Vista is to blame, the crash issues may be from something else, it’s illogical to blame vista for every crash that happens. Sometimes applications stop responding and then that means the RAM is in chaos trying to forget something quickly when it can’t, and that’s what causes the whole OS to stop responding for a while.
Sorr for blabbing on a bit, like I said it all depends on wether Vista is running smooth or not. JUdgung by your specs it should run just fine, but for video editing yo’ll want to get a new video card.
betta do that job first!! vista is the worst release!
You should try Linux, it has fast start up times and performance
http://ubuntu.com/
You may want to read a benchmark test done by Tom’s Hardware to see which OS is right for you. Each has benefits, but as far as video processing, these few blurbs might be of interest to you:
"Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed."
"Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP."
"We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP."
"No new Windows release has been able to offer more application performance than its predecessor."
- I’m actually hoping this will change with Windows 7 when compared to Windows Vista. I realize Windows 7 is basically the real fix for Vista, but reports do indicate that it performs well and may give XP a bit of competition in some areas.
All said, I’d still consider leaving Vista since you have it installed already. Vista does offer security improvements over XP. Going to XP will require some effort on your part to ensure you have the necessary hardware drivers, which is not a trivial task. Unless you find that a particular tasks performs much better on XP, I’d stay on Vista and plan to replace with Windows 7 after it is officially released and positive consumer reviews are available.
Oh dear lord another MORON! If you want your computer to fly install windows 95 you idiot!!!!
Windows XP!!! LOL Look at the calendar guy…its 2009,forget about this dead OS. Your computer was made for vista so USE IT
I hope you are happy with all the XP morons. Vista is far superior than XP in every way. You are a fool if you change to XP.
I have 3 XP computers I never use because my other 2 Vista machines crank and I have no use to blow money on Windows 7 because Vista works perfectly and I don’t even need Anti Virus software.
Microsoft had stopped selling Windows XP. With the release later this month of Windows 7 it will be ending all updates and patches of XP, and support early next year. This means that the next time there is a security hole found in XP (which happens about once every 3-4 months), Microsoft will NOT be releasing a patch for it. That will leave all XP computers wide open to hackers and viruses.
There is also a good chance that there are no XP drivers for your laptop. With drivers, you will lose you sound, your network card and have nothing but 640×480 265 color video display.
With Microsoft dropping XP, software and hardware companies are no longer designing their products to be backwards compatible with XP. Six months from now there will be nothing on the market that you will be able to run.
Plus to go to XP, you would have to purchase a copy of XP (good luck as it is no longer sold) and then format the hard drive (losing any other programs that came with the computer). The cost XP and replacing the programs is high.
A smarter option, if you do not like Vista, is to wait three week and spend the same money to purchase a copy of Windows 7 (check with the vendor of your PC, many are offering free Win 7 upgrades for PCs purchased in the last three months). You can upgrade to win 7 without formatting or losing any of your data or other programs.
Windows 7 is a revision of Vista that resolves the resource issues and slow boot time, but keeps the tighter security and good features of Vista. If your only reason for switching to XP is because it loads faster and uses less memory, then go back to Windows 98 which is faster and uses less memory than XP, or Windows 95 or Windows 3.1. Of course Vista uses more resources than XP – it is a more powerful program. But today’s computers are designed for it.
Upgrade yourself to the newest version of Windows, rather than downgrade to a dead OS.