Is Microsoft's biggest competitor itself?

Question

I read an interesting article indicating the XP SP3 improves MS Office performance by 10% while Vista SP1 has no performance improvement. Any beta testers out there know if this performance difference applies to non-MS applications too?

I have several PCs and my entire family plays World of Warcraft on them. The oldest PC (about 6 years old - AMD Athlon 3000XP, 1GB RAM, ATI RADEON Pro 9000 ) runs XP and keeps up with the newest PCs (three of them @ less than 3 months old - AMD X2 3600+, 1GB RAM, nVidia 8600GT) running Vista. I'm actually surprised at times how much game lag I see on the newer PCs given the increased hardware specs. Does Windows XP out perform Vista enough to make it the strongest competitor to Windows Vista?

Computer World Article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9048658&source=rss_news50

Linux geek - As much as I'd like to push Linux on the desktop, it isn't ready for every situation. For a general office like system it would work fine. Linux (and UNIX for that matter) have made great progress and could be ready for common usage if more software vendors wrote applications for it. You mention WINE to handle the DirectX applications but WINE does not guarantee compatibility, especially for DX9 & DX10 (not many yet) games. I've installed Solaris 10 x86 at home and it worked well with WebLogic but no game support, a common usage for many home users. In my workplace, we are finding many customers requesting Linux or Solaris based servers (SUSE or RH mostly) over MS Win32/64 systems. At the desktop level though, MS still is the dominant OS because of the third party support. The situation is a catch 22 though as you won't get the applications without an OS base and you won't get an OS base without applications.

Answer 1

Despite the PR from Redmond, Vista is a flop. The problem with Vista is all of the software put in to restrict your rights, such as DRM services. All of these extra services running to ensure you don't do anything Microsoft doesn't want you to do slow Vista to a crawl.

In my experience, while XP is pretty good, almost all Microsoft Operating Systems are bloated pieces of crap. Poor design and poor execution.

Answer 2

I'm not a Windows expert but from what I've seen the new Windows Vista wastes the computer resources on visual improvements. There are several Vista solutions in which the office applications may work more or less better than on Windows XP. :) In the game situation I think say that the game has it's own limitation and works perfectly on both old and new machines the same (and I'd say that's a plus) way and regardless of the operating system. :)

Answer 3

Vista is a disaster and Linux is coming on leaps and bounds, please take time to read my answer :

I work with both Ubuntu and Vista, Vista has been an expensive disappointment for me and sits mainly redundant on my hard drive and I consider Ubuntu to be far superior of the two.

I will break it down in to categories and give each system a rating out of 10.

System resource friendly :

Ubuntu 10/10
Vista 4/10

Graphics (Eye Candy) :

Ubuntu 10/10
Vista 7/10

Ease of use :

Ubuntu 7/10
Vista 9/10

Software compatability :

Ubuntu 4/10 (Open Source alternatives in some cases are available) also WINE as described above can be used.
Vista 8/10

Wireless compatability :

Ubuntu 5/10
Vista 8/10

Networking compatability :

Ubuntu 7/10
Vista 8 /10

Security :

Ubuntu 9/10
Vista 8/10

Gaming :

Ubuntu 3/10
Vista 8/10
This category sourced from various sites.

Office software :

Ubuntu 10/10 (Free)
Vista 2 /10

Price :

Ubuntu 10/10 (Free)
Vista 2/10

Overall performance :

Ubuntu 9/10
Vista 6/10

Value :

Ubuntu 8/10
Vista 2/10

It should be noted that these ratings are based on my experience working extensively with both Ubuntu and Vista.

Of the two for me Ubuntu wins hands down.

Ubuntu 7.10 download link :

http://www.ubuntu.com/