About a year and a half ago, I built my own PC. A coworker of mine, a dorky sort, somehow managed to convince me of the merits of putting XP Pro x64 on my system. I’ve been sorely disappointed, to say the least: my printer has no 64 bit driver, iTunes doesn’t work at all, other random programs give me minor headaches, I couldn’t install Tiger Woods 2007 (golf being one of the few games I play on the computer), and I find no benefit to x64 except that it seems to start up much faster than my previous system. (Though I’m not sure if that’s because of new hardware or x64.)
So I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy and iPhone when the 3G version comes out this year. I’m also determined to have a printer at home again, because I’m taking and printing more photos now and I’m tired of going to CVS all the time. And I like to play computer golf during the winter. All in all, I’m about 80% sure it’s time to dump x64 because of all these stupid problems, and the question is, do I go to the 32 bit XP or move on over to Vista?
My system is thus: 4200+ AMD dual core, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HD, 8600 GTS video card.
I realize it is going to be a painful process to move from x64 to any other OS, but any and all opinions are welcome.
You’ve got plenty of system power to run either OS.
Lots of people are saying Vista is ready for prime-time after a fairly shaky introduction. Me? I have XP installed on a very similar system but I have Vista sitting on the shelf waiting for SP1. I got Vista as a freebie, though, as part of an upgrade program for XP. That program isn’t valid anymore.
I guess, and I can’t justify it with anything more than just dollars, if I were building a new system today, I’d install Vista rather than buying XP now and Vista later.
I’ve got virtually the same system but with an Intel CPU, and 32-bit Vista seems fine. There are significant annoyances, but it’s just a tool.
There’s no point going for 64 bit Vista unless you’ve got more than 4 GB of memory. I’m expecting V64 to take off towards the end of this year as motherboard availability goes up. You can already get 4 GB for E100 but many if not most motherboards only have 2x2GB or 4x1GB memory slots. New motherboards based on the X38 and X48 chipsets can have 4x 2GB slots. Graphic designers - those who dont use Macs, anyway - will leap at V64, as will modellers like my brother.
I would say that you want to stay away from any 64-bit version of Windows, whether XP or Vista. Unless you’re some sort of super-duper uber-user, you don’t need them. They’re not deisgned or intended for regular home use.
I bought a new Alienware PC last February, it came with Windows XP installed and a free upgrade certificate for a copy of Vista Business. In September I decided to risk it all and do the upgrade. I’m a little sorry I did - while Vista does some nifty things, there still seem to be instability issues that happen far too often. I’ve hard to ‘hard reboot’ my computer (by holding the power button down) more times than I care to remember. Plus, Vista doesn’t play nice with some older XP applications; even attempting to install or run in compatability mode doesn’t help.
For all its flaws, XP is a mature and relatively stable OS at this time. I’d stick with it for now, at least until Vista SP1 is released.
Vista’s upgrade has to be run from within an installed copy of Windows but I’m pretty sure if you try running 32-bit Vista from inside 64-bit Windows XP, you’ll get an answer of “That isn’t allowed!”
However you can use an upgrade version of Vista on itself (by first installing with no product key and then reinstalling over top) and it will work just fine. See here: