Is there actually a speed difference between OS's?

[TheTopher]

If your sticking with XP (I'm assuming 32 bit here x64 XP never really caught on) your going to have less than 3GB of you RAM usable, with 8GB of RAM and 1GB of VRAM you need a 64bit OS or it's just wasted. It may suck learning a new OS but there is really no reason for a home PC to buy all new hardware and run an outdated barely supported OS. Also since you bought a 460 I'd assume some gaming is planned (if not that card is way overkill) so note XP will leave you with no higher than DX9 while 7 will give you DX10 and 11.

And Vista isn't nearly as bad as most people seem to make it out to be (yeah it sucked at launch) but there is no reason to buy it now that 7 is out.

Quiet, you!

My 10 year old OS isn't quite done yet!

 

[tecwizrd]

Since the title ask about differences in OS speed. I thought I would put in my 2 cents.

To help quantify my remarks. I work for Marshal Space Flight Center, here in Huntsville AL. We service about 8000 PC's mostly running Windows 7 or XP. We have some MAC's and even quite a few Linux boxes.

I work with huge Dell workstations with two 6 core processors and 32 gigs of memory. With Windows 7, these machines seem slow in comparison to my dual core, 4 gig laptop running RedHat, or Ubuntu. They run Windows 7 64bit.

When talking about OS's, you would be hard pressed to beat the speed and efficiency of any Linux distribution over a Windows OS. Jaymz9350 is right. It may suck to learn a new OS, but if you are going to learn one why not step into the 21st century. Get a live cd of any distribution of Linux and go for a test drive.

 

[AllanD]

THE issue with Vista was people trying to run it on machines that didn't run XP all that well to begin with.

I wanted to go to Vista or win7 because my desktop has a new enough chipset to allow me to run an 4gb intel PCI-e "flash cache" turbo memory card.

I only have a 1gb mini-pci card in my notebook but in my dual core notebook that 1gb flash cache card cut cold start boot up times by ~20%

My next build will be with a 64-bit OS

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[Daven]

Ya ill have to get a win7 disk. I just learned about the 32 bit vs the 64 bit thing today and that freakin sucks lol. I have 8gig RAM installed but it only picks up 3.25gigs of it

I always wanted to run win7, but never really thought too much about it since i had a pretty slow computer and this was back when it first came out and everyone was skeptical about it. Problem tho is that i dont wnat to spend 150 bucks or so to buy it lol stupid me wanting to spend it on my truck. How selfish

 

[Daven]

So i just ordered Win7 Home Premium 64bit from NCIX. I am kinda proud of myself for actually paying for this lol. My XP was "pirated" and with a little work i could have gotten win7 too, as u all know. But i figured i may as well. More fool-proof this way too.

Congradulate me!!! lol jk

 

[shane96ranger]

Quiet, you!

My 10 year old OS isn't quite done yet!

The hospital we go to, which is only like 4 or 5 years old I might add, uses XP Professional on all of their equipment. There are a lot of people complaining about support being dropped - but nobody with half a brain uses IE anymore. That's about what every update is, a damn fix for IE vulnerability. Driver support will surely be available via manufacturers. Like you say, I have no reason to move over to 7 because XP has never once left me hanging. I had a chance to buy Windows 7 Professional for 70 some odd dollars at it's release, but decided not to.

I wonder if when Microsoft drops XP support, they are going to monitor multiple machines using the same code anymore?

Looks like a good little unit you've got though Daven. Congrats on getting it up and running.

EDIT: Curious Daven - how much did the Win7 Home Premium run you?

 

[Daven]

How much did the Win7 Home Premium run you?

I purchased the "Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64BIT DVD OEM" on NCIX for $123.98.

And im very excited because i also bought the 3.2GHZ AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition because i got anoyed with trying to unlock my dual core to the quad. That paired with my 8 gig RAM (that with win7 i will actually get to use now lol), 1.5TB HD, GTX 460 vid card....

But now i am up to a grand total of 1055 dollars shok: holy shit... didnt even think it was that high... :/) and an extra brand new dual core thats powerful enough as it is lol. Wow... its a good thing im still a student and dont have any bills... I should fail all my classes now so i can stay like this FOREVER

EDIT: I origonally was looking at win7 on the microsoft store, they had it for 170 or soemthing there. But i think that came with both 32 and 64 bit and all the extra crap i dont need lol

 

[AllanD]

The hospital we go to, which is only like 4 or 5 years old I might add, uses XP Professional on all of their equipment. There are a lot of people complaining about support being dropped - but nobody with half a brain uses IE anymore. That's about what every update is, a damn fix for IE vulnerability. Driver support will surely be available via manufacturers. Like you say, I have no reason to move over to 7 because XP has never once left me hanging. I had a chance to buy Windows 7 Professional for 70 some odd dollars at it's release, but decided not to.

I wonder if when Microsoft drops XP support, they are going to monitor multiple machines using the same code anymore?

Looks like a good little unit you've got though Daven. Congrats on getting it up and running.

EDIT: Curious Daven - how much did the Win7 Home Premium run you?

Atleast microsoft responds to discovered vulnerabilities and THAT is why you are seeing security updates.

Just because they are NOT updating security for firefox, Chrome, or any new Whateverthe**** browser doesn't mean that they are invulnerable.

You are drawing the wrong conclusions from the data available to you.

I purchased the "Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64BIT DVD OEM" on NCIX for $123.98.

And im very excited because i also bought the 3.2GHZ AMD Phenom II X6 Black Edition because i got anoyed with trying to unlock my dual core to the quad. That paired with my 8 gig RAM (that with win7 i will actually get to use now lol), 1.5TB HD, GTX 460 vid card....

But now i am up to a grand total of 1055 dollars shok: holy shit... didnt even think it was that high... :/) and an extra brand new dual core thats powerful enough as it is lol. Wow... its a good thing im still a student and dont have any bills... I should fail all my classes now so i can stay like this FOREVER

EDIT: I origonally was looking at win7 on the microsoft store, they had it for 170 or soemthing there. But i think that came with both 32 and 64 bit and all the extra crap i dont need lol

NEVER trust a computer with a single hard drive.

I would NEVER put an Operating system on a 1.5TB drive because it's too inconvenient to maintain an active "cloned" backup

Frankly I'd get a small cheap drive, actually TWO of them, install the new OS on one get everything set-up the way you want it, then clone that small "OS drive" to the spare using clonezilla.

THEN you are essentially immune to crashes.



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[gribly]

The hospital we go to, which is only like 4 or 5 years old I might add, uses XP Professional on all of their equipment. There are a lot of people complaining about support being dropped - but nobody with half a brain uses IE anymore. That's about what every update is, a damn fix for IE vulnerability. Driver support will surely be available via manufacturers. Like you say, I have no reason to move over to 7 because XP has never once left me hanging. I had a chance to buy Windows 7 Professional for 70 some odd dollars at it's release, but decided not to.

I wonder if when Microsoft drops XP support, they are going to monitor multiple machines using the same code anymore?

Looks like a good little unit you've got though Daven. Congrats on getting it up and running.

EDIT: Curious Daven - how much did the Win7 Home Premium run you?

Security updates are not based on browser. You're getting browsers and operating systems confused. And in case you are not paying attention, support for XP has already been dropped. Go look it up. They officially do not support SP2 and are leaving out major updates for SP3 already. XP is dead, end of story. Nobody in their right mind who knows anything about what I am talking about installs XP on a brand new machine anymore. It's okay if that is what you already have, but you're going to have to do something within the next year.

 

[gribly]

THE issue with Vista was people trying to run it on machines that didn't run XP all that well to begin with.

I wanted to go to Vista or win7 because my desktop has a new enough chipset to allow me to run an 4gb intel PCI-e "flash cache" turbo memory card.

I only have a 1gb mini-pci card in my notebook but in my dual core notebook that 1gb flash cache card cut cold start boot up times by ~20%

My next build will be with a 64-bit OS

AD

Actually, the reason a lot of people were all upset about Vista and why Vista broke so much is it had a completely new kernel from the ground up, same with 7. Microsoft does not understand that it is simply not feasible to re-write a kernel every few years, unless you are just trying to screw over your customers for money... oh, wait...

If they were to standardise their kernel, which is not really possible at this point now that they've screwed up compatibility so bad, it would solve a lot of problems, but then they couldn't "phase out" operating systems forcing you to buy a new one every few years even though the computer is still fast enough to do what you want.

 

[gribly]

You also do not need any experience to run Ubuntu. I routinely have people get all confused when they have been sitting there using my computer and I inform them that they are successfully using linux. It's so easy to use they don't even notice it's different.

I still think that you should run 7 with that build, though, given the speed of those components and how well it will play modern games. You won't utilise that video card in linux too much, it would be like using a riding lawnmower on a 10'x12' lawn.

 

[shane96ranger]

Just because they are NOT updating security for firefox, Chrome, or any new Whateverthe**** browser doesn't mean that they are invulnerable.

My firefox updates all the time.

Security updates are not based on browser. You're getting browsers and operating systems confused.

Actually no I'm not confused, I'm well aware of the difference.......

They officially do not support SP2 and are leaving out major updates for SP3 already. XP is dead, end of story. And in case you are not paying attention, support for XP has already been dropped. Go look it up.

OK, I will. These say 2014.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/products/lifecycle

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itproxpsp/thread/0b48fbdd-619f-4852-a5cb-ce14c51d0b5d/

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208800494

I just installed XP on a system this last weekend and I got SP3 right from Windows Update. Because they dropped support for SP2 doesn't mean "XP is dead".

.

 

[Daven]

Pics as promised. Nothing really to look at but she performs good. And im getting my 6 core processor soon (Gave up trying to figure out how to unlock my dual lol )

 

[TheTopher]

My firefox updates all the time.



Actually no I'm not confused, I'm well aware of the difference.......



OK, I will. These say 2014.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/products/lifecycle

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itproxpsp/thread/0b48fbdd-619f-4852-a5cb-ce14c51d0b5d/

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208800494

I just installed XP on a system this last weekend and I got SP3 right from Windows Update. Because they dropped support for SP2 doesn't mean "XP is dead".

.

Even with dropped support the updates should be available


A few years ago when I installed win2k onto a system that couldn't handle XP, Microsoft still let me use windows update to get SP4 for it. This was long after support for win2k was dropped. I'd assume they'd keep the same policy. I think dropped support just means they stopped releasing new updates for it, not that they stopped making the preexisting updates available to you

 

[shane96ranger]

Even with dropped support the updates should be available..... I think dropped support just means they stopped releasing new updates for it, not that they stopped making the preexisting updates available to you

Yeah, that's what I gather as well from this in the top link I posted:

End of support refers to the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance. This is the time to make sure you have the latest available service pack installed. Without Microsoft support, you will no longer receive security updates that can help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software that can steal your personal information. For more information go to Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

I also might add that the stuff in the red would be browser based, not OS based.