I'm getting tired of Vista. The bells and whistles feel just like that, bells and whistles and not much extra benefit. I have 1 gb of ram on my laptop, but for a machine used basically for internet, email, office, etc, I don't feel justified in upgrading to 2 gb just for the basics. It runs ok (maybe sluggish), but I know it would be much more snappy on XP. So I'd like to go back to XP, but it just occured to me: does it play nicely w/ 64-bit dual core processors? I know it's not able to take advantage of 64-bit (at least my copy, which is a few years old), but will I run into any problems? Will it take advantage of both cores? Perhaps the under the hood benefits of Vista is a worthwhile trade off after all?
i dont know about rolling back to xp, but i recently got a new computer w/ a core 2 duo processor thingy and stuck w/ xp pro - runs great - no problems. glad i didnt get vista.
I just rolled back my desktop from Vista to XP because I thought it sucked. Lots of bugs in my opinion and XP has been pretty stable for me.
seems to work fine on my laptop, got ultimate for free but i dont really see the "need" for this upgrade. got 1 gig ram on a 1.83 ghz single core.
XP will see your processor as a dual core, thus showing you that you have 2 processors in the device manager. You can then use the task manager to assign programs to use 1 or both of the processors. There are not enough stable drivers and programs that take advantage of 64 bit architecture yet, so it won't matter whether you are using Vista or XP. My advice is to switch back to XP or get a Mac. The only advantage Vista has over XP is that it can recognize more RAM (XP can only see up to 3 gigs)
I ran into some problems running Vista 64 a few months ago and rolled back to XP. Last month I finally reinstalled Vista and have been running smoothly. I did notice a few more updates the this time around after a fresh install so I believe its only going to get better from now on. I have a beta version of SP1 for Vista installed also and it fixed a problem I had running 4GB of ram at its rated speed. Other then that, since vista was running smoothly for me already, I haven't seen a difference. PM me if you want the beta SP1 for Vista.
I currently have Vista Ultimate waiting to be installed. I'm waiting for Penryn to be released and will probably build a new PC next JAn/Feb. I'm really on the fence about Vista, but I got it for dirt cheap and already have 4 gigs of ddr2 ram waiting.
I've just finished backing everything up, but I might give this one more try. Anyone have any tips for making Vista run smoother? I've turned off almost all of the Aero stuff and the UAD (I think that's what it is). I might give this one more day and see if it doesn't annoy me as much. It just feels bloated. Thanks for all the advice so far.
Thats not true. I have XP Home edition with service pack 2 running on a Macbook and an HP laptop, both with core duo cpus. XP recognizes them and you can set programs to use 1 or both the cores.
This is a common misconception do to the Microsoft documentation. The correct statement is "XP Home will not allow you to access more than one physical socket". This means if you were building a machine with two physical processors you would need professional. If only one physical processor (regardless if that one processor has multiple cores) then Home will work just as well as XP Pro if you do not need the extra features of the OS.
