will it be mroe beneficial to buy a nice desktop with XP or a nice new desktop with the new OS? i have a laptop now and i dont have the money to get a really nice PC. i could get a new comp for only a few hundred now i know (i already have a keyboard, monitor etc), but if im going to get a desktop im going to get a reallly nice one and make it worth it and make it gaming ready. so im gonna wait. itll probably be a few years. so by that time it looks like the new OS might be coming on new PCs.

so which theoretical computer would be faster say same specs and everything. good graphics card, more than 1gig of ram, etc. b/w the two OS?

[Edited on August 26, 2005 at 4:06 AM. Reason : ]

8/26/2005 4:05:50 AM

I'd be a good bet that an older OS will run faster than a newer one.

8/26/2005 4:21:34 AM

yeah dude, i had windows 98 on my computer a couple months ago and literally like 10 seconds after turning it on it would already be done booting up

shutdown was even better...probably less than 2 seconds from me click to the screen being black

8/26/2005 5:16:38 AM

My guess is it will run comperable. Your GPU will end up doing most of the work anyway. And the new OS is suppose to be able to give-up resources like never before so that your games ftw pwn the speed they use to run at. But there's no use debating, it's new, it's going to do somethings slower than others.

But, you will be forced to upgrade, pure and simple. The new .Net stuff they are adding with winfx, will NOT be backwards compatable, because all that new shit like avalon and indigo has nothing to be backwards compatable with. Eventually software will come out you can't run, and it's MS so that's a guarantee.

8/26/2005 8:22:34 AM

There are people running 98SE today. Almost everything that comes out is compatible with 98SE and up.

XP will be viable for AT LEAST 5 more years.

8/26/2005 8:24:32 AM

It depends. The new OS is sure to be bloatware. Each iteration MS goes through (or any other OS for that matter) always ends up eating up a larger portion of your RAM.

The only reason that you might go with vista is because one day MS will drop support for the Win XP OS. That means no more security updates. That probably won't happen until right before the release of whatever comes out after vista. I think that support for Win 2000 was cut off here recently.

I'm sticking with XP. I'll probably leapfrog vista and just get whatever comes out after it. I really don't see a need to switch OSs nowadays.

[Edited on August 26, 2005 at 8:37 AM. Reason : ;]

8/26/2005 8:35:57 AM

No, 98 SE was dead when .Net came out. They obviously just didn't run any programs written in it.

8/26/2005 8:36:13 AM

What programs run .Net that are so important?

8/26/2005 8:37:45 AM

So far the only program that I have seen (for a gamer) is the catalyst crap for ati video cards.

I just install the plain driver without the catalyst crap because catalyst ends up eating 30-40MB of memory (because it fires up .net).

The only other stuff I know of that requires .net is dev software.

[Edited on August 26, 2005 at 8:42 AM. Reason : .]

8/26/2005 8:40:19 AM

I still have 98SE on this old Thinkpad 600X and the only problem I've come across was when I needed to use Visual Studio for class.

8/26/2005 8:43:21 AM

Quote :

"What programs run .Net that are so important?"

The ones that say they require the msc7.dll or something like that. Not enough for you to notice, because windows update doesn't consider .Net a required thing, so not too many of the more widely used programs use it. But when Vista comes out, it's going to have that shit engrained. So I'd expect even more people to use it for utilities. Any common desktop application.

*shrug*, there are advantages to staying ahead of the curve, even if you must putup with some of the bloat. Security updates will be highest priority for the newer OS'es.

Really, the key is just to be on the OS people are developing for. Which will probably be XP for about a year after vista comes out.

Yeah, visual studios. No HL2 modding without VS.Net :-P

[Edited on August 26, 2005 at 8:49 AM. Reason : s]

8/26/2005 8:48:21 AM

Oh. One more thing. It is probably better to not be an early adopter of any new OS. Windows ME? Tiger?

It is best to wait a while and see if it flops.

8/26/2005 8:49:33 AM

ME was never a good choice at any time.

8/26/2005 8:50:58 AM

I really doubt everybody's gonna be eager to make their new software incompatible with XP.

If a new game or something came out a year after vista and only ran on vista, it would not do well.

8/26/2005 8:52:15 AM

Well, if a game came out that wasn't written in ANSI C/++, and used .Net, it would run like an overweight child. No game company is that stupid.

But you can bet your ass, there will be "features" in the game you wont have access to or some shit. It always happens. Even simple shit, like transparent windows, you can only get in 2000, and XP. Not really game related, just pointing out a feature.

[Edited on August 26, 2005 at 8:55 AM. Reason : s]

8/26/2005 8:53:41 AM

We'll see.

As for CalledToArms, stick with XP for now.

8/26/2005 8:55:10 AM

Any of you guys remember ME's launch?

I was just curious because I can't. Was the Windows XP launch date already announced at the time of release for ME? Did people know that there was another OS right around the corner? I seem to remember that being the case. That to me would acknowledge that they knew ME would be a flop.

8/26/2005 8:56:23 AM

Yeah, they knew XP was coming. ME was nothing more than a 98 service pack. But you can make more money by getting computer companies like dell to pay more for your new shit, and then make even more when all those ME people gota upgrade.

8/26/2005 8:57:58 AM

Good point. My father in law won the crap lottery when he bought a dell. It came with Windows ME. I'm not sure how long he used that OS but I upgraded him to XP.

Similar to what you said about 98/ME - Vista, to me, sounds like an XP service pack.

8/26/2005 9:02:37 AM

Some goober was running Vista at the library yesterday when Quinn and I were shooting the shit.

It looked nice.

However, why bother with a task bar if you have a dock at the top?

Better off sticking with XP as long as possible, possibly skipping Vista.

8/26/2005 11:27:39 AM

Quote :

"However, why bother with a task bar if you have a dock at the top?"

Well, you can probably pick to use one or both.

( >.< ) I wana play with vista.

[Edited on August 26, 2005 at 2:25 PM. Reason : h]

8/26/2005 2:24:57 PM

So can anyone hook me up with a beta version of Vista??

8/26/2005 3:31:52 PM

I tried it last week at work, and I'm not impressed at all. But its only the first beta, so I guess it still has potential.

8/26/2005 4:22:55 PM

Quote :

" Vista, to me, sounds like an XP service pack. "

If this is what you think, then you have no business commenting on it at ALL. Try reading before making assumptions.

As for it being "bloatware", the only reason Vista is heftier on the processing and memory requirements is because it's using an active indexer, not dissimilar from OSX. And the first time you actually USE the thing, it's very apparent that the database features of Vista propel it FAR beyond XP for business and productivity consumers.

I ran Beta 1 on my Celeron 1.5ghz 256mb PC2100 laptop for a few weeks. Ended up switching back because Vista/Longhorn doesn't properly support smartmedia cards yet. But it ran comparably to XP, only real slowdowns came doing obvious memory intensive things (but then 512mb of ram is standard now anyway).

To sum up, its a LOT more than a service pack. The GUI is still in the same vein, which is a GOOD thing, but behind the scenes a LOT has changed and is still changing.

8/26/2005 5:21:48 PM

^considering 3/6 of the "important" revolutionary features have been removed since they won't meet the ship date, and because those 3 that WILL make the ship date, will be ported backwards to XP, i'm pretty sure Windows Vista won't be extremely different than a XP service pack

8/27/2005 12:25:55 AM

I'm still running win2k and i like it just fine

winxp is way too bloated for my tastes

8/27/2005 12:46:30 AM

^ Maybe true, but I found that configuring XP to run more like 2k solves most of the issues other than slow ass load time (regardless of how well i clean off my startup list and services), and shutdown time. But, I dont have to reboot very often with the desktop, and it's just the nature of the beast with the laptop.

I actually like that XP does a lot of hardware auto recognition that Win2k didnt do, and some other features that I'm too damned tired to try and list.

That, and I had to format 2k anyways for my desktop, and with it being unsupported and no security updates, I figured I may as well move to XP - which my laptop came with.

As far as longhorn/vista- I have no inclination to move to it, quote Prospero above, and the fact that I dont see any *good* reason yet to change.

8/27/2005 1:20:59 AM

yes, i'll agree that xp has good hardware support

but the flashing colors and aerodynamic buttons just kill it for me

i mean seriously.

8/27/2005 4:00:03 AM

thats why they made classic mode availabe in XP

8/27/2005 11:09:50 AM

yes. as soon as i got XP installed i reverted to the classic look

8/27/2005 11:20:39 AM

hah, I wonder how many people would decide not to upgrade if "classic mode" hit the abandoned features list

8/27/2005 11:44:44 AM

You know, you should really just wait and see. Unless you've used it there's really no reason to go around talking about how you refuse to upgrade, because you will sooner or later. Plenty of benchmarks will come out after it is released showing the degree of change in speed in various areas.

Personally I can't wait to try it out, good or bad, getting to play with new shiney toys is great.

8/27/2005 12:05:35 PM