I guess I must have the only notebook in the world which runs 30 mins longer under xp (even when all the fancy eye candy is turned off).
I don't have a general problem with Vista, but for me XP does the same job with the same hardware (and most of the time even faster). Unless SP1 for Vista (which I haven't tested yet) is correcting some serious stuff, Vista stays a new Windows ME version for me.
I really recommend you try SP1. It's nothing gigantic improvement wise, but it's just a collection of little fixes which should speed it up and lower system requirements a bit.
What does ME have to do with 2000????
ME is a graphically, more messy DOS-based Win95/98 while 2000 is a "proper" operating system based on WinNT...
Back in the days win98/ME were for home offices and players while NT and 2k were for workstations and servers.
MS never intended 2k to be a player's OS, many players switched to it when there were drivers and dx available. 2k has by far been one of the most stable microsoft products.
greetz
der DOS-Win3.1, win3.11, win95a, win95b, win98se, 2000, xp, ubuntu butz
At work, our IT guy is so unimpressed with Vista, even after SP1, that he's rolling out XP 64-bit for those of us that need to compile 64-bit code. I wonder how typical of a response that is.
I have vista, and all the Next-gen games are gonna be built on it. To be honest, the only two faults with vista is:
It's unstable, but that WILL be fixed in SP2
Takes up alot of RAM
And alot of people say 'Ohhh but vista is uncompatible with EVERYTHING'
It's actually compatible with everything.
honestly i have never had compatability issues. You can run programs in compatibilly mode back to windows 95 or 98. Even the original lfs works with vista.
Compatibility mode doesn't mean programs will work, though.
Original LFS copies work fine, but sound doesn't.
The only app I have that doesn't work in Vista is Brazil - but that's because i'm using 64-bit, not because of Vista.
EDIT - There is a project to put DX10 on XP. And while it works, forget trying to run a game on it - it's absolutely appallingly slow. Would probably be quicker if you used a Vista Virtual Machine.
8600GT is a value card - when it was made it was a bit of a dead sheep (like the 8600GTS) as the performance was in no way in line with the price, and from then on things got worse.
An 8600GTX doesn't exist - it will probably be a cheap cash-in on the GTX name from a dodgy vendor, and will just be an 8600GTS with a factory overclock.
The cheapest 8600GTS I can find it £61, the cheapest 8800GS is £66, and is roughly 50-70% faster than it in games...
i bought it from nvdia so thats gay if it doesn't exist. I think it has a boost that the normal cards didn't have. iirc it was a limited run of about 300. I think they just wanted to shift some 8600gt's so added a boost and called it an 8600gtx. cause it uses standard gt drivers.
Mine worked out the other way. After I told the boss that workin on an iCrap was more of a headache than it was worth, he bought a new box with windoze for me and asked me what I wanted, XP or blista.. naturally the reply was 'XP' to which I got back 'blista it is then'.
After spending a few weeks working on it now, it seems to suffice for what I need it for at work (PHP / Perl dev / SSH sessions), but I certainly see absolutely no gain at all over the XP install I have at home.. they've just managed to rename / move things about for no real reason (Add / Remove Programs is now something like Program Manager for example.. you can still only add or remove from it.. so why it needed a name change is beyond me). Network connections now require half a dozen clicks to get into the properties rather than a simple right-click on the systray icon and in ya go.. and as for that sh!tty UAC
I most definitely won't be downgrading from XP to blista for myself any time soon.