Vista vs. XP - please post your pros/cons

[Spragleknas]

I (and probably others) are considering switching to Vista - IF the benefits are greater than the disadvantages.


*Please post your experience. I'll update this post if/when needed. *


Advantages:

• EVR: Better PQ with less bugs (like lip-sync, tearing, stuttering)
  Rumour that standby is somehow more reliable(never seen any evidence of this)
• Eyecandy for the way longer boot process (If you know how to enable it)

Disadvantages:

• More resource hungry
  -- Far slower than XP in normal operation
  -- Takes about twice as long to boot and get to a usable state
• Even more performance issues to come (?)

Notes:

• Upcomming Service packs will increase the performance difference even more. See this article for more details.

[zag2me]

Advantages
Rumour that standby is somehow more reliable(never seen any evidence of this)

Disadvantages
Far slower than XP in normal operation
Takes about twice as long to boot and get to a usable state

For the perfect HTPC app, the operating system should be irrelevant.

[ThaClown]

I never used Vista, but im very happy with XP.
With a 'clean' install (only codecs and MP installed) my startup is very very fast.
I doubt that Vista will add anything for me. and will make my startup slower for sure.

[level20peon]

Upcomming Service packs will increase the performance difference even more. See this article for more details.

Following this threads format:

Advantages: Eyecandy for the way longer boot process (If you know how to enable it)
Disadvantages: Even more performance issues to come


-level20peon

[Pascal]

I personally have a partition setup with Vista and noticed the following:

advantages:
- mediaportal itself launches more quickly compared with running on xp.
- nice looking GUI

disadvantages:
- could not manage to get full 50fps stutter free, compared to XP.
- I have onboard soundmax audio card. In XP sending to default direct sound, gets sound at both SPDIF (which I use) and speakers. In Vista these are separated direct sound devices. To me this would never get sound locally at the computer. I can imagine for some this would be an advantage.
- Nvidia drivers are not full featured like in XP. For example the overscan feature (s-video) is not supported by default.

So for now I still use XP, but wait for vista to get better support.

regards,

Pascal

[wishywashy]

Disadvantage:"Are you sure you want to allow that?" "Are you sure you're sure you want to allow that?"

[JackTramiel]

Just disable the UAC to get rid of this question. Doubt this is a disadvantage in matter of this thread.

[diehard2]

Its more stable, and makes finding things easier. That said, I've had my share of difficulties with MP and Vista. I would suggest sticking with XP for now.

[Nogge69]

Have been running MP on both XP and Vista. (Vista at the moment on a Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H)

Can't really pinpoint anything that is better or worse on XP vs. Vista, I had really problems getting my MCE remote to work on XP, and have had some other issues with Vista.

At the moment I have a fairly stable setup on Vista(As stable as it was with XP, apart from the remote), and will not revert back to XP.

[tourettes]

Originally Posted by zag2me

For the perfect HTPC app, the operating system should be irrelevant.

In theory yes, but in reality HTPC applications rely much more heavialy on the system components than other kind of applications. BDA/directX/directshow/drivers etc. So in practise the operating system is not irrelevant.