OR, you could use a "custom" edition of Vista / use VLite, all the aero goodness minus the bloat. TinyVista comes to mind. Quite amazing what they've done with it. Reduced the installation iso to 700 MB, EXTREMELY fast boot times (matches XP), runs fast, and lower hardware requirements for the same effects. I mean, I'm running it on 512MB RAM with full aero and it's not slow at all. Illegal, but this is how Vista SHOULD be. Regardless, if you're going to stick with xp at least UNbloat it or use a custom distro.
If M$ wasn't hellbent on DX10 being a Vista exclusive and the Server 2003 had a decent 64bit version (lets face it, XP 64 sucks beyond anyone's wild imgnation), I definitely wouldn't mind using it at all. (I am assuming here it can do anything XP can, games and stuff)
you'll have to pay me to pull me from xp. the requirements of vista are too much wasted resource and imo, i don't see m$ moving away from integration of garbage products. never tried vista but probably has more junk i have to bust ass to convince it to allow me to delete, than xp did, xp was worse than 98.
you don't need 64 bit server 2003, 32 bit supports 64GB of ram (enterprise does anyway, not sure about standard). Only issues I have run into are: nividia disabled SLI support in 2003 (FUCK YOU NVIDIA) They lost a lot of customers as a result, but they haven't backed down yet to my knowledge, so if you want SLI you have to use 89.26 or older forceware. Additionally, the Asus Xonar XP drivers are badly written and bluescreen 2003 on boot. Other than that, once you've made a couple of adjustments (following the tutorial here: http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/) its just like XP only faster and more stable.
Yeah, enterprise supports that much, Standard only supports max of 4GB though. I just installed W2k3ENT on my desktop computer. Works like a charm, nice and quick. =)
Am I one of the only people in existence that hasn't had a problem with Vista in any regard to my usual computer activities? I mean, yeah, User Account Control was annoying; but I turned that off. Other than that I'm actually having less (you heard me right kids) less problems than I did with XP.
Wow, I'm going to have to try this Windows Server 2003 out when I build my next desktop . 64GB of RAM, you say? Oh, and Vista, without the bloat, is a quite decent OS. Not as bad as some people make it out to be. I emphasize the phrase, if you remove the bloat/ what's not needed . Then again, every OS is better without bloat (duh), but just in case you're stuck with Vista...
Vista aint that bad.tiough some of its features suck donkey balls.But as my pc is a quad core with 3 gb ram it ain't a prob for me.Its preety decent.
i run mostly old games and xp has the most compatability. games made for win95 and such. once i reach the physical limitations of winxp, i'll upgrade. but with 1 gig of ram and a 10gig master 40gig slave, a duallayer burner and a cd drive. i'm nowhere near anything.
Ones things for sure, Microsoft is not going to be supporting XP at all very soon. They're cutting off all XP updates in the coming months basically forcing anyone who doesn't want to get screwed to upgrade to Vista. I agree Vista wasn't exactly the best experience I had when I tried it out like two years ago, and on some old ass hardware. I'm running on a P4 notebook and it's doing me pretty well. However, computers parts have been cheaper than ever these days. People need to stop bitching about how "Vista sucks" when most haven't even tried it, and most neglect to see how much of an improvement SP1 has made. People also need to stop bitching about hardware requirements. I just built a complete PC (not for myself) with monitor for like $450 that runs Vista as smooth as butter. I mean seriously, stop bitching about hardware requirements. Sure 2-3 years ago I would agree, but it's a sad excuse to use these days when basically anything can run Vista just fine. If you can't run Vista, it's cause your hardware is fuckin' ancient. My notebook fits in that category. People need to seriously just STFU about Vista already. I've heard the same shit for years now about how much "vista sucks" and "vista blows" ect. I'm sure it does "suck" on "sucky" hardware. I tried it out recently on, what I now consider standard hardware, and it ran much better than XP. Really can't see why people keep bitchin'. Mind you, I don't even use windows myself.
I've waited months to respond to this to prove my point further -- it's blown up propaganda. Windows has not given up with Vista, and I'm seeing more advertising and support for it now than I ever have. Most consumer-computers still ship with Vista installed. Windows has not given up.
i had to save up for a 1gig upgrade, 18$ a chip, 2 chips. never you mind about my pre win95 5400maxtor hdd "free" and slave drive, 5yrs old stock dimension 2400 drive. new drive is a little over 38$. I am interested in the hardware you used in that build. holidays coming up and may be able to scrape the money from holiday cards and not paying some bills. sons pc barely handles xp and runs 256ram. but has older chips that run a premium. xp will have to run on a non internet pc soon, for security i'm guessing, as people find more loopholes to exploit, vista WILL have compatability issues with some of my games, or running a dual OS pc, xp and vista might work.
I say vista sucks from having the experience of using it on a computer containing virtually identical hardware to my own, which was running 2003 server. This was a brand new top of the line dell (6 months ago it was top of the line) and it was unbearably slow with vista. I replaced it with XP and the MD stopped complaining, job done. While I actually used vista on it, I bet my dad £5 that the K6-2 366Mhz running the video wall could open control panel faster (OS was win 2k3) Needless to say, I won; the vista machine was locked solid for 20 minutes from plugging in the network cable while it downloaded updates (WITHOUT permission, mind you; another black mark against vista - doing things behind the user's back)
Well personally i haven't had many problems with vista. It boots up beautifully on a Toshiba Satellite L40 series notebook, only problem i have had is trojans, but mcafee sorted those out for me. Plus, sometimes after installing some software and i restart it may spend a couple of minutes on a black screen before it shows the taskbar and background. But i can live with it. (it only does it the one restart after) Finally i find it hard to believe that microsoft have gave up on vista. They haven't reached there 3rd year of release, it'd be more believable in 2013 maybe but not now. When they release service pack 2, which i'm pretty sure they will they will have all the big bugs fixed. SP1 fixed lots of them but remeber, it was the same with xp. It's just the same situation.
