Widescreen Gaming Forum

Been using SP3 since it came out, no problems so far. From what I can tell through normal use, they added a little extra security (copying from other places, not from your computer, will prompt a small dialog). It also fixed a problem I had with the shell (tooltips forgot their ontop-ness after right-click in menu). Guess it doesn't matter too much if you don't get it.

tbh , id use vista if it would recognize my 400gb partition , but it doesent for whatever reason so i -have- to use XP...

I've been using Vista Ultimate 64-bit for about a year now, and I prefer it over Windows XP. The performance loss is negligible on my system so it doesn't bother me at all, and all I do is play games and browse the internet mainly. The main thing I'm happy about is Windows XP was always a pain in the ass for me, I used to have a lot of bugs, crashes, corrupting drivers, and degrading performance over time.

Haven't had any trouble with Vista since I installed it last december instead, and I'm no longer complaining about crashes and blue screens, and find myself bitching about lacking widescreen support and poor game mechanics instead. There's some annoying security things I had to disable, but in the end, I'm just happy to have a completely stable computer for once.

I've been quite lucky with compatibility as well. I've tested over 130 games out of my collection and they all work fine except for one. I can't get Rayman 2 to play on my machine, although considering it never worked for more than 5 minutes on Windows XP either(cpu lock ups and such) it doesn't make a difference.

I also have my older PC parts reassembled in a back up machine running Windows XP, just in case, but since I've had such good luck with Vista, I only use it to store file backups on and occassionally host servers with it.

Best part is, on top of that, it was totally free. I used to be quite sceptical about it, since I heard all the complaints, and would never have tried paying for it, but my dad has a developer license to MSDN, so he picked up a copy of Vista for us.

I have one one gaming rig running Vista, and one running XP. So take your pick.

The XP rig seems to be developing some odd quirks, though - Dr. Watson will hang explorer.exe for no reason, explorer dies, explorer restarts, all is well again.

Seems to only happen when I'm playing music through Winamp and surfing the net with Firefox 2 and have something else from Office 2003 (like Word/Outlook/Excel) and Spybot S&D open too. Kind of annoying. But unless that collection of things is running, everything is fine.

While Vista has come its way since launch and I own...lets see...Enterprise, Business and Home Copies in both flavors (64bit too). XP Pro SP3 seems to be just fine for me. With how old my machine is...it doesn't make sense to upgrade. Vista is harder on machines, they don't bench as higher either. Not until I upgrade would I even consider it.

Well I love Vista x64 :) The transition was almost painless from 32-bit Vista, which was okay, but I wanted more memory... oh but now all my 16-bit apps don't work :( *cries* Ack well they were crap anyway.

I couldn't dump that ugly Windows XP quick enough.

p.s. Crysis FPS boost with Vista 64-bit & 64-bit executable was very noticeable.

I use XP SP2 still.
Is SP3 good then? Does it make any difference whatsoever? I don't know much about it.

Yes install it, "Security isn’t a dirty word, eZ. Crevice is a dirty word, but security isn’t."

Doesn't make much of a game difference, although it improves some. However it plugs a fair few crevices, sorry holes in XP's security

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Dipping bags at Mach1.9

I was running XP SP2 without any installed updates for the past year and a half :P I may be wrong, but I always thought that as long as I think about everything I do, I won't catch anything nasty in any, errr, crevices? *touch wood*. Err....

Have updated to SP3 now :mrgreen:
Haven't noticed anything different except this Windows CardSpace thing whatever that is.

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Formerly eZ`

Follow me on twitter: @theg00seberry and find me on Steam

Yeah you can get away with updates being really careful, same with anti-virus...but it just takes one error or bit of bad luck and some Bulgarian Bandit has a keylogger on your PC and access to your online banking.

I have seen this, 25k whisked away while he was on hols in the UK :(

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Dipping bags at Mach1.9

I've been using Vista for the last year or so, 64bit version on a quad core CPU with 8 GB of RAM. You'll have to put a gun on my head to force me back to WinXP. Rock solid, sleek and fast, those are the only words that can describe my experience.

I do agree that people with older hardware should not switch to Vista in the same way that people with 486 CPUs should not switch to WinXP.

If games are the primary software on your PC, don't bother with Vista. The majority of games are console ports and most developers will put very little extra for the PC platform. A PC with 2 GB of RAM, WinXP and GeForce 8800 GT will serve you good until the end of this console cycle.

The next console generation will be build around DirectX11 or DirectX12 and then you will have no choice because those games will not work on WinXP.