New PC for my father in law

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Hello there

My father in law needs a new pc, got between £700-800 to spend on it, now the thing I'm having to think about is whether to buy it with XP or Vista installed....

I'm hearing mixed stuff about vista and he's got a very decent photoprinter that I want to work on his new machine without a lot of frigging about....but I'm also thinking spending £800 on a new machine still running xp is a waste ! and installing Vista ontop at a later date is going to effect performance.

Any opinons guys ? Thanku.

 

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Never worked on Vista myself, but some of my friends are and i have mixed feelings. First of all - in my opinion its not settled yet; not all hardware has dedicated drivers, not all software (inc. games) is working properly http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List. Second - (again, in my opinion) performance on Vista is not what is suppose to be, all that fancy widgets, compiz-like effects and so on, theyre not exactly performance friendly (another thing is all that DRM controll, thats a funny performance thingie). Of course, buying computer with a budget of 800 quid can take that problem off your back, but still...

Also, if thats a thing that is important for you, google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#External_links a bit for informations about vista contacting with ms servers in the background and all kinds of copy protection stuff its using. For me personally it would be too much too think about.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista

I heard an opinion that all who have a choice should wait untill service pack arrives, and thats sounds like a good advice.

But after all, I'm not a windows user, so it's possible that i see Vista through my Linux glasses ;)

 

If you were thinking Vista Business or Ultimate OEM verisons, you would have downgrade rights to run XP on the box until Vista shakes itself out. (http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=543 of search Vista downgrade rights on Google) That might be the best of both worlds.

 

I would stick to XP for the next little while. While I am using vista ultimate at home right now, I still think that for day to day tasks XP is better and more stable.

With that said, make sure that when you buy the computer that is upgradeable in the future, and that it can run vista smoothly.

 

Why bother buying? with that kind of cash you could build a very high spec machine. As for the XP or Vista debate, Personally I'd stick with XP for a while (buy a copy, only £60), put it on its own partition with NTFS, and then at a later date you could install Vista without affecting the data on the rest of the machine.

 

Thanks for the input guys.

I can't build him a system because he wants one with warranty and I don't have time to build and support it.

I've gone for one with vista mainly because I couldn't actually buy a new system with XP lol.

Its a decent system with good core 2 duo processor and plenty of space for upgrades.

Sparky mate I am going to have to hope the printer is vista compatable, its a fairly new printer so I'm hoping it is.

 

if the printer is about 1yr old it should install on Vista no problem. i have had my printer for over 3 yrs and it installed on Vista no problem. Just download the latest drivers for it and all should be fine. shame you couldnt get a machine built for him. Hope he likes the one you got him anyway

 

Thanks Noel, its under 2 years old so fingers crossed will be ok.

would have LOVED to build the system but hey

 

Have you had a look on the printer manufacturers website to see if they have vista drivers for the printer?

 

no probs running vista so far
5 machines running it, combined uptime of over 1 year now

not a single blue screen, all my hardware has been detected on both the x32 and x64 versions, some driver updates were required which was something i knew was likely being an early adopter anyway

 

My brand new laptops running vista, its not too bad in general when you get used to it but I am running new hardware. Some of my drivers are a bit flaky, unfortunately DELL doesn't seem to give a toss about providing an update for the graphics driver and NVidia doesn't provide integrated drivers.

Had a couple of BSOD, laptop rebooted ok though with little issues.

Some programs downgrade the display or require run as administrator. This can be pretty anoying especially in a command line, especially when you ARE an administrator ! Theres are work arounds however.

Theres various issues with various programs, some codecs can cause issues viewing folders with video in, you get a bizzare COM surrogate error.
Some of the error messages try to be overly helpful and end up being just plain wrong.

Uninstalling badly written installers can be interesting because of the new special system/install account.

I can't really see anything to justify all the years of development, maybe the administration or the .Net stuff is better, the new AERO look and feel is nice but not really any big deal, the readyboost idea is cool but hardly revolutionary, some of the search changes are useful like the start search. You will still need a seperate program to search inside archives.

Thats about it really...

 

Thanks guys, very reassuring.

Raf, I can't even remember the make and model of the printer so I am going to have to check all that out while i'm there and have the system up and running.

This will be my first look at vista, so quite excited really, sad aren't I

 

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