Windows 7 or Windows xp?
Want to say something off topic? Something that has nothing to do with Trek? Post it here.
posted on January 21st, 2011, 12:28 am
Need to Add " I use multiple OS button" to the poll options. Since I have XPro on one and Windows 7 on my other computer.
posted on January 21st, 2011, 1:50 am
I currently run win7, but I have all of these except linux (can't figure it out)
As for the debate on win7 vs winxp, I'd say that win7 is superior in many aspects, mainly (as has been stated) startup.
As for the debate on win7 vs winxp, I'd say that win7 is superior in many aspects, mainly (as has been stated) startup.
posted on January 21st, 2011, 2:02 am
I have to say I love windows 7. They cut out alot of the fat that was in vista and came out with a damn solid OS. Altho it is much more resource intensive then XP ever was. Fact is XP was created in a time where a stick of 512mb of RAM cost you over 100$ and hard drives were just getting to the 100GB mark, so XP was designed to be slim and trim, you simply couldnt have 2gigs of data loaded into your memory back then, and couldnt afford to use 20gigs of hard drive space to fit an OS. These days with cheap RAM and crazy large HDD's Microsoft said to hell with it and added alot of nice features and loaded everything windows needed right from the start for faster response times. Hell even crap computers come with 4gigs of RAM these days. I ran XP for 7 years and loved it but once I upgraded my rig to windows 7 I lost alot of points on my 3Dmark 06 score (5000 to be exact) and there was definately performance drops in some of my games, at least untill I got my 6 core chip. So yeah 7 is much more resorce intensive but its still a great OS.
posted on January 21st, 2011, 3:49 am
Yeah I should have had a multiple operating system option... Lol I use Linux and windows 7 And a very old Mac laptop. And an iPod touch 
posted on January 21st, 2011, 6:15 am
Windows 7 all day every day (for the last four months any way). Personally I think Windows 7 far surpasses XP between integrated device support and the interface upgrades. When it comes to speed though, one can only really compare the 32-bit OSs to each other and the 64-bit OSs to each other. Since only a x64 machine will have access to more than 4 GB of RAM, it's unfair to compare that to a x86 machine which must work with limited resources and uses a completely different architecture. I think we also forget that all of these tests are done on clean machines, i.e. nothing but Windows and maybe a few other programs all freshly installed. Meaning most of these tests are done on computers in their optimal state. Use it for six months and then run the tests; the times will be slower across the board, I guarantee it.
Now I apologize in advance, but Mac is a waste of hard drive space. Using a Mac is like working in a padded, white cell; everything is hidden and tightly controlled. I see no benefits over Windows.
I've played around with Linux in Virtual Boxes and all I can say is "meh". Again, I don't see anything which makes it "better" than Windows. I also don't think much of the Linux ideology. Not the open source bit or the free bit, there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it has led to one big mess. What I don't like is the lack of centralized uniformity if you will. How many bloody version of "Linux" are there; at least two dozen. And what the hell makes A different or better from B especially if they're both supposedly based off C. As I see it, the upshot of all this is a hodgepodge of bits and pieces, all made by different groups, all tweaked and cobbled together by yet another group, and no one group is necessarily answerable for it. Following right behind all that is the "new version every six months". What a waste of time! What ground breaking changes have you made in six months that warrant releasing a new version. Better to put effort into making a large number of significant changes over a longer period of time and release that as a new version. Here's another good one, no integrated shell; that's no better than Window 1 running on top of DOS. I know I'm ranting, but it's non-sense like this which will prevent Linux from being anything other than the 3rd party candidate used by uber-nerds and the daring, at least that's my belief.
Now please, this is not an invitation to start a flame war, I'm just stating my views.
Now I apologize in advance, but Mac is a waste of hard drive space. Using a Mac is like working in a padded, white cell; everything is hidden and tightly controlled. I see no benefits over Windows.
I've played around with Linux in Virtual Boxes and all I can say is "meh". Again, I don't see anything which makes it "better" than Windows. I also don't think much of the Linux ideology. Not the open source bit or the free bit, there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but it has led to one big mess. What I don't like is the lack of centralized uniformity if you will. How many bloody version of "Linux" are there; at least two dozen. And what the hell makes A different or better from B especially if they're both supposedly based off C. As I see it, the upshot of all this is a hodgepodge of bits and pieces, all made by different groups, all tweaked and cobbled together by yet another group, and no one group is necessarily answerable for it. Following right behind all that is the "new version every six months". What a waste of time! What ground breaking changes have you made in six months that warrant releasing a new version. Better to put effort into making a large number of significant changes over a longer period of time and release that as a new version. Here's another good one, no integrated shell; that's no better than Window 1 running on top of DOS. I know I'm ranting, but it's non-sense like this which will prevent Linux from being anything other than the 3rd party candidate used by uber-nerds and the daring, at least that's my belief.
Now please, this is not an invitation to start a flame war, I'm just stating my views.
posted on January 21st, 2011, 1:57 pm
i agree with u on macs, u get similar features, better looks, less games, equal hardware, you have to let steve jobs control your device cos he has control, not you, and for all that u pay double. Just not worth it.
About linux, it will always remain for computer savvy i think since its free and no oem is gonna start installing it since everyone wants windoze, since ppl already know how windoze works. each distro has its uses. ubuntu is simple and is the most mainstream and polished distro, knoppix is great for mobile users etc. there are plenty of distros without shells, but plenty come with shells too. each user can go find the distro that suits them. Thats another reason oems wont install a linux distro, cos one size doesnt fit all. Some smartphones have linux now. Ps3 used to run it. But thats limited. Most ppl still dont understand linux.
About linux, it will always remain for computer savvy i think since its free and no oem is gonna start installing it since everyone wants windoze, since ppl already know how windoze works. each distro has its uses. ubuntu is simple and is the most mainstream and polished distro, knoppix is great for mobile users etc. there are plenty of distros without shells, but plenty come with shells too. each user can go find the distro that suits them. Thats another reason oems wont install a linux distro, cos one size doesnt fit all. Some smartphones have linux now. Ps3 used to run it. But thats limited. Most ppl still dont understand linux.
posted on January 21st, 2011, 2:10 pm
I use XP, with not hurry to change that.
posted on January 21st, 2011, 7:45 pm
yeah am agree'ing with tyl;er prefer xp it serves all my needs,and works for almost everything i throw at it
posted on January 27th, 2011, 11:06 pm
Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on January 27th, 2011, 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Myles wrote:thats not true, tests can be invalid if they are performed on a machine nobody in the population (the fleetops community here as we are on the fleetops forum) will have.
these performances tests only serve to confirm that windows xp has fewer features than windows 7, something we all know. nobody can expect a new operating system with many more features to use less resources, that is just ridiculous. if you take any 1 system capable of meeting both requirements, and install an old OS on it, then of course more resources will be available on the older OS as it uses less of everything. the entire OS9 OS could fit on a 128mb usb stick, while windows 7 comes on a DVD, obviously OS9 uses far less ram.
comparisons on the same system should be taken with a pinch of salt. you could get 2 identical machines, install win7 on one and win95 on the other, and a simple number crunching program would run faster on win95 because it uses less ram and less of the processor etc.
a more meaningful performance comparison is comparing windows xp on an average xp rig, vs win7 on an average win 7 rig. it will show that win7 isnt bad at all. plus you get new features.
I'm covering the last two paragraphs first, as they are a complete misconception about comparisons.
The tests were done on the same machine because hardware has a significant impact on speed and even resources used.
You cannot make comparisons between different hardware, as then both the OS and the hardware will affect results. The idea is to eliminate the variable of hardware, so that OS is the only variable changed, and thus results can be measured against it.
Checking results against two variables is an educated guess at best (if you have good data on the performance differences between the hardware.)
Was it just the hardware that made the difference? It could be, that's why you need to use the same machines in testing.
The point about old hardware not being what people will use is indeed a good one.
The best way to test would be to test XP and Win 7 each on several (more data points to make sure one particular hardware configuration doesn't screw with data) old machines and several new ones.
A single hardware configuration tested on both OSs is still better for OS comparison than a different OS on each of two very different machines.
You haven't taken many science classes in school I'm guessing? They make sure to teach how to conduct experiments (eliminating variables being one of the essential concepts, and thus why we all proper experiments need a "control" group.)
As for the performance difference being because of new features, that probably is true, but the only real useful feature I've seen that Vista and 7 have that XP doesn't is the start menu search.
As for the aesthetic improvements, you can download programs that do that stuff in XP with only a few dozen more MB of RAM taken up.
Which brings me back to the RAM minimum requirement point: you do need more than 128 MB if you're going to do stuff, but between XP and 7, XP will take up less and thus give you more RAM free to do stuff with.
posted on January 27th, 2011, 11:48 pm
The story of Windows Vista is actually very deep and fascinating, I learned about it from an insane computer-savvy group at my college.
Basically, Vista was a failure ON PURPOSE.
Standard computer uses (internet, email, media, whatever) have been growing in complexity for 2-3 decades, and hardware has been improving along with it. Most companies upgrade their computers every 3 years to keep up with the steady growth. But then 2 critical things happened.
1. Computer needs started to level off. The average user doesn't NEED more than a GB of RAM and 2Ghz processor speed, and companies were starting to produce the same specs for longer and longer before moving up.
2. Y2K. Most people think of it as a bit of a joke, but the fact is it truly, actually would have wiped out most of our computer architecture but people worked around the clock to fix the problem. They succeeded, but a lot of companies bought new computers all at once to solve the problem, resulting in a quick boom followed by 3 years of bad computer sales as the companies accidentally synchronized their upgrading schedules.
These two factors would have destroyed the computer hardware industry. If you were paying attention at the time, some vendors were still selling 512mb RAM computers and showed no intention of ever getting more. At the same time, gaming systems and advanced computers wanted to make the switch to 64-bits, but without economic support they would be trapped under the limits of 32-bit computing.
Microsoft foresaw this crisis and made a bold, painful move: they came out with a new operating system that had so much fat, it refused to run on a 512mb machine. Naturally it was seen as a stupid move that ignored the well-being of the user, and anybody who understood computers went back to XP. Microsoft lost a lot of people to Mac and Linux, as well as a lot of public opinion for being so mean. But they DID move the industry forward and they DID get people to use 64-bits.
Then once Vista had served its purpose, they released Windows 7, which is basically an optimized version of Vista. It runs cleaner, has the advantage of all the bug-fixes they found for Vista, but escaped the negative stigma because they didn't call it "Vista Service Pack 1"
Nowadays there are 2 reasons to get Windows 7 over XP: DirectX10 and over 2gb of RAM. XP has a basic structure that can't utilize more than 2gb of RAM, and DirectX10 (and now DirectX11) is a SIGNIFICANT improvement over DirectX9 and below. Completely redesigned for 64-bit computers, DirectX10+ can handle 3D visuals faster and with fewer resources.
Dangit I told myself it wouldn't be long. Oh well...
Basically, Vista was a failure ON PURPOSE.
Standard computer uses (internet, email, media, whatever) have been growing in complexity for 2-3 decades, and hardware has been improving along with it. Most companies upgrade their computers every 3 years to keep up with the steady growth. But then 2 critical things happened.
1. Computer needs started to level off. The average user doesn't NEED more than a GB of RAM and 2Ghz processor speed, and companies were starting to produce the same specs for longer and longer before moving up.
2. Y2K. Most people think of it as a bit of a joke, but the fact is it truly, actually would have wiped out most of our computer architecture but people worked around the clock to fix the problem. They succeeded, but a lot of companies bought new computers all at once to solve the problem, resulting in a quick boom followed by 3 years of bad computer sales as the companies accidentally synchronized their upgrading schedules.
These two factors would have destroyed the computer hardware industry. If you were paying attention at the time, some vendors were still selling 512mb RAM computers and showed no intention of ever getting more. At the same time, gaming systems and advanced computers wanted to make the switch to 64-bits, but without economic support they would be trapped under the limits of 32-bit computing.
Microsoft foresaw this crisis and made a bold, painful move: they came out with a new operating system that had so much fat, it refused to run on a 512mb machine. Naturally it was seen as a stupid move that ignored the well-being of the user, and anybody who understood computers went back to XP. Microsoft lost a lot of people to Mac and Linux, as well as a lot of public opinion for being so mean. But they DID move the industry forward and they DID get people to use 64-bits.
Then once Vista had served its purpose, they released Windows 7, which is basically an optimized version of Vista. It runs cleaner, has the advantage of all the bug-fixes they found for Vista, but escaped the negative stigma because they didn't call it "Vista Service Pack 1"
Nowadays there are 2 reasons to get Windows 7 over XP: DirectX10 and over 2gb of RAM. XP has a basic structure that can't utilize more than 2gb of RAM, and DirectX10 (and now DirectX11) is a SIGNIFICANT improvement over DirectX9 and below. Completely redesigned for 64-bit computers, DirectX10+ can handle 3D visuals faster and with fewer resources.
Dangit I told myself it wouldn't be long. Oh well...
posted on January 28th, 2011, 12:04 am
The report is damning to microsoft.
You got half the PC users using a 3 version old OS and and Half of them are not even using a OS that is supports the resign people come to this site.
You got half the PC users using a 3 version old OS and and Half of them are not even using a OS that is supports the resign people come to this site.
posted on January 28th, 2011, 12:21 am
Nebula_Class_Ftw wrote:You haven't taken many science classes in school I'm guessing? They make sure to teach how to conduct experiments (eliminating variables being one of the essential concepts, and thus why we all proper experiments need a "control" group.)
first off dont be condesceding, i got the highest grades in my science exams and study degree level statistics, so i know what im talking about. dont talk like anyone who disagrees with you is uneducated.
secondly its been a week lol, way to necro an old debate.
Nebula_Class_Ftw wrote:The tests were done on the same machine because hardware has a significant impact on speed and even resources used.
You cannot make comparisons between different hardware, as then both the OS and the hardware will affect results. The idea is to eliminate the variable of hardware, so that OS is the only variable changed, and thus results can be measured against it.
Checking results against two variables is an educated guess at best (if you have good data on the performance differences between the hardware.)
Was it just the hardware that made the difference? It could be, that's why you need to use the same machines in testing.
in a general experiment, reducing the impact of variables is a good move. but what you talking about is creating an idealised environment where u will generate technically accurate but completely meaningless statistics.
who cares if windows xp can perform better on the same machine as windows 7, the statistics are worth very little since xp and 7 are nearly a decade apart and designed for and installed on different systems. comparing them on the same system is ridiculous since such a thing wont happen in real life. whats the point of calculating statistics for things that are never gonna happen? there is no point.
comparing 2 different OSs in itself is a risky task since they are different. all the numbers generated in these tests arent gonna help anybody, nor are they gonna add features to an old os.
Nebula_Class_Ftw wrote:As for the performance difference being because of new features, that probably is true, but the only real useful feature I've seen that Vista and 7 have that XP doesn't is the start menu search.
As for the aesthetic improvements, you can download programs that do that stuff in XP with only a few dozen more MB of RAM taken up.
aesthetic improvements are not my cup of tea, so i disable themes/aero/dwm
there are plenty of new features in 7 such as better laptop exclusive features (battery management, projector stuff etc), better more functional taskbar, better handling of graphics drivers crashing, better general system stability, easier updating, better explorer, better handling of formats, better inbuilt software firewall, better move/copy times, addition of readyboost, the ability to handle isos directly, better security for some users, better alternate input methods and support (speech, graphics tablets etc), addition of directx 11. and these are just the things i have noticed in my day to day use of windows 7 and previously windows xp. and i probably missed some due to lack of sleep.
some of these things can be added to xp with third party software, but that opens a whole new can of worms. 3rd party software can be unstable/buggy or use loads of resources.
Nebula_Class_Ftw wrote:but between XP and 7, XP will take up less and thus give you more RAM free to do stuff with.
all new OSs will take up more ram, but ram is now extremely cheap and easy to fit and will rarely be the bottleneck in any system.
posted on January 28th, 2011, 4:34 am
I thought you were uneducated in science because you don't seem to understand the idea of keeping a variable constant to eliminate the influence of its effects on changes in data. Introducing a second variable (and keeping certain variations of it paired with certain variations of the other variable) just because it's like that in the real world will just screw up the data.
Imagine you wanted to study the affects of two particular diets on weight gain/loss. Wouldn't you decide to have the study group divided up by personality, with one personality type take one diet and another take the other? It would only be logical if each personality was predisposed to a certain one of the two diets. It's not like personality type 2 would ever eat a diet like diet 1 in the real world.
Whether or not 7 or XP will ever be on a particular system in the real world is completely irrelevant. The point is to compare certain situations and then extrapolate from them which OS uses more resources , loads faster, etc.
As for OSs being designed for different systems: that is something I talked about much earlier. I admitted that the tests could be invalid if there was something hardware-specific.
This almost-taboo against necroing is starting to get on my nerves. There are situations where necroing is not alright (like a technical issue that was resolved a long time ago), but I really think that if you have something to say, don't hold it back because the thread was inactive for a while.
Now as far as those features, some of them are pretty good, but they are nothing revolutionary. Microsoft could've just released XP service packs, but an entire $120 OS gives them more money.
Imagine you wanted to study the affects of two particular diets on weight gain/loss. Wouldn't you decide to have the study group divided up by personality, with one personality type take one diet and another take the other? It would only be logical if each personality was predisposed to a certain one of the two diets. It's not like personality type 2 would ever eat a diet like diet 1 in the real world.
Whether or not 7 or XP will ever be on a particular system in the real world is completely irrelevant. The point is to compare certain situations and then extrapolate from them which OS uses more resources , loads faster, etc.
As for OSs being designed for different systems: that is something I talked about much earlier. I admitted that the tests could be invalid if there was something hardware-specific.
This almost-taboo against necroing is starting to get on my nerves. There are situations where necroing is not alright (like a technical issue that was resolved a long time ago), but I really think that if you have something to say, don't hold it back because the thread was inactive for a while.
Now as far as those features, some of them are pretty good, but they are nothing revolutionary. Microsoft could've just released XP service packs, but an entire $120 OS gives them more money.
posted on January 28th, 2011, 5:44 am
Last edited by Atlantisbase on January 28th, 2011, 5:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Myles wrote:in a general experiment, reducing the impact of variables is a good move. but what you talking about is creating an idealised environment where u will generate technically accurate but completely meaningless statistics.
who cares if windows xp can perform better on the same machine as windows 7, the statistics are worth very little since xp and 7 are nearly a decade apart and designed for and installed on different systems. comparing them on the same system is ridiculous since such a thing wont happen in real life. whats the point of calculating statistics for things that are never gonna happen? there is no point.
While this is a valid point for say Windows 98, XP still has enough popularity and loyalty to justify comparison. Yes, it's true that XP is structurally different from 7, but with SP3 its still got more than enough life to fight. Thus it's entirely conceivable that people would still be installing XP on new systems. If anything, comparing them serves to illustrate that the changes in Windows made in the Vista/7 family are significant improvements over previous systems. And these changes are more than just aesthetics and little bits of bling if you will; there have been plenty of internal changes since XP. What do you think caused the Vista-drivers fiasco? Remember though, you can only really compare 32-bit to 32-bit and 64-bit to 64-bit, since architecture differences mean completely different performaces.
Nebula_Class_Ftw wrote:Now as far as those features, some of them are pretty good, but they are nothing revolutionary. Microsoft could've just released XP service packs, but an entire $120 OS gives them more money.
First of all, the last "featureful" service pack was XP SP1. Since then service packs are mostly a combination of past bug fixes and some new ones. So no, Microsoft isn't just going to give away new stuff for free unless they really have to.
Secondly, many of the new flashy bits depend on the new window system introduced in Vista/7. That means that not only those core components directly related to those features would have to be updated, but components which depend on those updated components have to be rebuilt and updated. And this applies to more than just Windows components, but some programs as well. And if you want to give XP the new UAC internal security system, that means recoding everything to use those security features; if you don't, there's no point. The end result: a completely different OS. So, unlike Linux, Microsoft has (probably wisely) chosen to keep major changes to the OS separate from each other.
Bottom line, Windows XP is not Windows 7. And it doesn't matter how little RAM either will run on since any machine still running 512 MB of RAM is from the pre-XP era and probably couldn't run Windows 7 even if you tried. No new system is going to come with less than 1 GB these days, or a processor running under 1.5 GHz. So in the end it doesn't really matter since people either know the limits of their own systems and won't bother to upgrade it, have no clue and just get a new machine, or are perfectly happy with whatever they're using now.
posted on January 28th, 2011, 6:28 am
In a world of insanely long posts, one man stands up and declares,
"You guys are done."
There are dozens of variables involved in each component of a computer, thus it is impossible to have a true scientifically correct experiment. And nobody is going to fund a thorough study because the industry doesn't need or want such a thing. XP is what we had, 7 is what we have, and in 10 years neither of them will be around anymore. It was never about the computing power, it's about making money to fuel an industry.
"You guys are done."
There are dozens of variables involved in each component of a computer, thus it is impossible to have a true scientifically correct experiment. And nobody is going to fund a thorough study because the industry doesn't need or want such a thing. XP is what we had, 7 is what we have, and in 10 years neither of them will be around anymore. It was never about the computing power, it's about making money to fuel an industry.
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