I'm too cheap to buy Vista just yet so SP3 and it's 10% performance boost is welcomed with open arms

Lavallee017

Flawless victory?

DomZ

Fatality. XP Wins.

jarobi

this is going to make me sound like a fanboy but...
ms should have followed apples release structure after xp. it's a great os that just needs improvements. they could charge $129 every 2 years until an actually really big improvement is made. for that matter, i think ms should move their back end to *nix to try and get back some of the server market share and desktop stability...but that'll never happen.

EMoShunz

dling sp3 asap

Arsenal6

@ab3: They're not going to sell Vista to anybody but early adopters at this point, and they know it. What they're trying not to do is lose enterprise market share. The combination of an outdated XP and a not-ready-for-prime-time Vista would make MS vulnerable to enterprise defections.

Empire

@LastVigilante: if i remember correctly, i think it's actually a processor socket thing (more accurately, a memory controller thing). cheap motherboards also can effect that. cheap mb, cheap amd chip, or cheap intel compatible memory controller.

EMoShunz

I'm no expert, but I wish there was something they could do about 32-bit XP only recognizing a max of 3-3.5GB of RAM. Is that a software OS thing or a hardware thing?

LastVigilante

i don't hate vista, it just doesnt give me any compelling reason to switch from xp.

firesign

@.Saint.: lol, I guess it was a fortunate episode of cheapness. But I still have full plans to get Vista when I get a new machine (whenever that is). But for any corporate business looking for a great alternative to upgrading to a new system and the inevitable tech seminar SP3 will be so nice.

Lavallee017

I count myself as more of a Vista ignorer - I don't hate it because I don't know it and don't want to. I'll probably wait a little on SP3 for XP, let them hammer out a few bugs. I really like XP - it does what I need it to do and is mostly stable. Mac OS does some interesting things, and I've been thinking about getting a mac for com video editing aps, but Vista just doesn't offer anything worth the upgrade hassle.

Canoehead

Nevermind the fact the you will have to uninstall the release candidate to get the real SP3, go ahead install it, and hope the uninstall won't break anything.

terranaut

@Johnny Chimpo: why doesn't douche rhyme with touche...stupid french class :P

EMoShunz

@Johnny Chimpo: Tosspot

terranaut

@terranaut: Yawn, insightful comment douche bag.

I am looking forward to the performance boast. I run XP on my work PC and even with 1GB of ram I notice the occasional hiccup.

Johnny Chimpo

I have not seen it specifically mentioned anyway (although I've only done a pretty adhock look around), but I really, really, really hope they have not 'borrowed' UAC from vista and stuck it into XP.

Vista would be an acceptable OS if not for UAC. And yes, I am aware you can turn it off, but my experience shows that with it turned off, many software apps fail to install or work properly. Something to do with not being given access to the required parts of the registry or something if UAC is switched off.

In any event, I really don't see much use for Vista. XP SP3 should last people 10 years.

diverguy

i'm just going to wait for SP3 instead of giving the RC a chance.

bobide

Yawn, It's been on my VM for over a week now.

terranaut

I wonder if they slipstream the SATA driver to the full XP SP3 disc. It's annoying not having the sata driver

Type-E

Vista wins hands down. :)

Tiger SP3 coming out soon. Leopard is the new Vista!

yoshi

Is Microsoft trying to not sell Vista?

ab3

No wait ... XP BORROWS from Vista and XP is better?

That's an oximoron if I ever read one....

You won't see me whinning about Vista anytime soon. It's the best yet.

aec007

@Lavallee017:
You should replace the word "cheap" for "smart" in that sentence ;)

.Saint.

@GATTSURU: Well said, that's probably one of the better explanations of that particular issue that i've seen.

I wish Itanium had taken off, It's too bad we're stuck with this x86/64 bit hybrid that is x64.

bpatten

@gattsuru: to further that very nice comment...early x64 chips actually ran 64-bit instructions through 48-bit chips and emulated the rest...sneaky buggers...both intel and amd were guilty.

EMoShunz

Interesting. I'll just wait for the official version though. I just had the hardest time installing XP on a laptop that doesn't officially support XP (Vista preloaded), and it's working flawlessly (much unlike Vista Ultimate, that was the worst POS OS I ever used up 'till now... and I'm using computers from DOS 3.1).

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

This may be a miraculous case based on contrary experiences and evidence posted online, but I have two laptops... one running XP Pro, and one running Vista Home Premium, and I have no more problems with the Vista rig than I do with the XP Pro setup. I received the Vista upgrade free with my HP laptop last fall, and I am more than pleased with the performance. I've been using Vista for almost a year now with no nightmares as detailed by the many less-fortunate. Has anyone else had luck with Vista?

halfkorean

Microsoft's keeping XP running because they make as much money from XP sales as Vista sales. There's no real reason for them to do otherwise, other than the higher cost of defeating security threats in XP.

Is that a software OS thing or a hardware thing?

Hardware and software, and it remains an issue with any operating system that runs in 32-bit mode.

Processors running with a 32-bit wide architecture can only support processing integers of, at most, 32 bits. That means that the largest single integer they can 'think' about through a normal process is 4,294,967,295. This doesn't matter for most things: processors have extra 'floating point' components that can typically reach into the exobyte or further ranges, and memory makes it possible to strap integers together. But a few things can't be described with floating point values, and that's most notably memory access space.

There have been attempts to work around this, in both software and hardware.

AMDx64 and Intel's 86x64 systems have 64-bit wide architectures. Intel also has a component in some but not all processors call physical address extension, or PAE, which could in theory allow software to map to 64GiBs of memory.

But such hardware is only half of the solution. Programs have to have specialized versions created to run in those environments, whether you're talking 64-bit or with PAE. Trying to run these specialized programs in a x32 bit machine can cause blue screens or their Linux equivalent by trying to map to occupied or inaccessible memory, and becomes more common the more problematic the code.

Moreover, all of these solutions cause performance degradation in >3 gigabyte applications.

If they released a patch to upgrade systems to Windows to allow access to wider ranges of memory, it would be huge, bulky, cause performance loss, and reduce (or simply render inoperable) many computers without PAE/PSE-36/x64 support.

Right now, there isn't enough demand for this level of change. There aren't enough people who give a damn for software developers to even bother with x64 or PAE versions of their software, and since doing so often requires programmers to avoid using common tricks, it's not going to happen out of the warmness of their hearts. Without that, no reason for Microsoft to care.

gattsuru

I find that the Vista haters are the ones that haven't actually tried it. We got a new PC a few weeks ago - quad core, pieced together from different stores. After putting it all together we slapped in the Vista disc, ran it and everything worked perfectly (after installing the motherboard and graphics card drivers of course). I am so impressed with the performance of the new system I am going to switch to Vista as well. I have no idea what people are talking about when they mention driver clashes and similar problems; they have been non-existent. Not to mention that Vista recognizes and mounts my NAS drives without any setup - this takes hours in XP.

If you have problems with Vista it's likely caused by your crappy old ready-for-the-dump computer or your crappy old ready-for-the-retirement-home brain.

mor10

@halfkorean: I haven't used it yet, but it is always the people who have problems who are the most vocal.

OmegaRed59

@mor10 I think a lot of gamers still like to run XP until all the quirks get sorted out with Vista. Vista isn't horrible for gaming, but often a little slower performance-wise. Even though it might look nicer and perform well, it's a little bit more of a resource hog when gaming. Personally I've had a happier time running my games in XP, but I'm guessing the gap is going to get a lot smaller soon enough.

fiskadoro

I eagerly await this.
I hope it doesn't mess my machines up.

strider_mt2k

How many service packs do you think there will be before they officially can Windows XP?

GizFanAlpha

Holy smokes! 336 mb?! that's actually half the space that Windows XP SP2's CD occupies!

R031E5

XP SP3 is an all behind the scenes fix, no OMG! UAC gremlins hiding in this update. As for the dreaded UAC in vista, switch off secure desktop.

camo_r

@mor10: I'm going to duck while the pies get thrown at you.

But I do agree. I made the jump from XP MCE'05 to Vista Home Premium, and then to Vista Ultimate. So with two upgrades to get to where I am now, I have found relatively low problems. In fact, the only issue I have found is with some software that my company uses with their products, and it even has a workaround.

When I jumped to Vista, I was told by many people that it was a bad choice. I heard horrors of the inability to network with my current XP machines on my 2003 Server (R1). I've never had a hiccup with any of that.

While I wouldn't recommend having everyone jump to Vista (there just isn't a need if you are happy with XP on your current computer) I would suggest Vista if you are buying a new machine. For enterprise users with very specialized software, I would test current software packages before upgrading the whole company.

stopNgoBeau

YAY!!! Now all I have to do is reinstall XP for the third time this month, and then I might have enough time before the next crash to enjoy this update...or maybe I'd be better off buying a new computer.

teejay333

@firesign: anyone ever heard of "windowblinds"? thats pretty much vista...

an1m3fr33k

@EMoShunz: @gattsuru: Thanks for the info, though, gattsuru, I blacked out when you started talking about "floating point integers."

I originally asked the question because I falsely thought that Vista (32-bit) could support more than 4GB RAM, which, upon further investigation, it can't! So, now I have no reasonable reason to consider Vista! That was an easy decision!

LastVigilante