[Markulous]

Well, according to CustomPC - Vista vs XP: Performance tested, and Vista is slower | News | Custom PC

Interestingly, Vista is faster for games - not something in which I'm remotely interested (nor the people I deal with). They reckon you need to overclock your hardware by 12.50% just achieve parity on media applications!

Since I've only put in new systems with Vista and no upgrades, I wouldn't want to comment one way or the other - tho' I will be even more reluctant about recommending upgrading to Vista

[GainfulShrimp]

I don't think this should surprise many people. Generally they add features with each new generation so you'd expect the older, leaner, versions to be quicker. The same was true for Win98 vs XP for certain applications when it was first brought out but then as PCs get beefier and able to cope with more complex OSs, we forget about it.
It's pros and cons like anything. I prefer NTFS nowadays but FAT32 is quite a bit quicker for some stuff. It's just, for me, there are advantages to NTFS over FAT32 (and of course if I bother with Linux I'd probably use summat else entirely!).

However... I'm not sold on the advantages of Vista over XP. At all. I won't be upgrading any time soon and if I do, I'll be comparing Vista with whatever flavour of MacOS is out at the time.

[silkstone]

Talking of which... Has anyone tried Leopard yet?

I was slowly selling myself the iMac until I read about the screen problems - brightness gradient from left to right on the 24" and top to bottom on the 20", plus I'm not keen on the reflective screen - but nevertheless OS-X looks more attractive than Vista right now.

I still prefer Ubuntu but I don't see enough commercial software companies supporting it, which is really sad because it offers the security, convenience and (if you want it) the eye candy of OS-X but is free and will run very quickly on a cheap machine.

Maybe I'll just wait a while...

[stepheno]

I run Vista Ultimate at work and XP at home. Vista is a tad slower to open programmeslike CS2 and Lightroom but when open they fair tear along. Where Vista falls short, for me, is silly things like a print routine, it seems to take a few seconds to think. Now whether it doesn't like networks I don't know Generally speaking I do like Vista.

[GainfulShrimp]

Silkstone - I reckon a lot of the security benefits of using Ubuntu would go out the window if it was highly adopted/supported. At the moment, there's just no incentive for the weasels out there to try to break it because the only people using it are generally tech-savvy types who might not respond as well to popup ads, fake warnings, browser hijacking, and all the other money-making activities that Windows users are subjected to through malicious code. There are billions of Windows users which means even if only 0.1% of your attacks get a result, that's still a million suckers to fleece. Those kind of numbers just aren't there with Ubuntu... so it kinda helps to keep it secure, being less popular. That's one angle on it, anyway.

[GainfulShrimp]

I hadn't considered getting an iMac as the 'everything in one small box' solution is a bit too scary for me with my old fashioned self-built-PC heritage. I like things to be fixable, changable or at least accessible... and the iMac looks too neat to be any of those things. Maybe I'm wrong?

Some reviewers moan that the lack of display with a new Mac Pro is some kind of hidden cost, but I think they're missing the point. I'd much prefer to add my own display rather than being tied to a less-than-perfect Apple offering. Generally the consensus on Apple's displays seems to be 'good but not that good', which isn't quite what I'm after. My next box (whether Wintel, Mac or Linux) will be primarily for working with photos so I'll be wanting a suitably excellent display - the NEC 2690 is looking quite attractive in that regard.

But I admit the iMac would look nice in the average living room and you can't really say the same about a Mac Pro...

[silkstone]

The attraction of the iMac is that it avoids the wiring clutter and is a lot more sensibly priced than the Mac Pro. I think of it as a sort of 'desktop laptop'.

Re security, yes you're right that the script kiddies focus on Windows because of the huge user-base, but I think that Linux is inherently more secure because of the way it's structured - in particular there is no Registry which IMO is the worst feature of Windows. Not only is the Registry easy to corrupt or hack, but it gets itself into a mess and needs a complete reinstall every so often. Then there's defragging the drives - again no need to do that with Linux and EXT3 filesystem.

[Markulous]

Originally Posted by GainfulShrimp

I don't think this should surprise many people. Generally they add features with each new generation so you'd expect the older, leaner, versions to be quicker. The same was true for Win98 vs XP for certain applications when it was first brought out but then as PCs get beefier and able to cope with more complex OSs, we forget about it.

Hear what you say and don't entirely disagree but Win98:XP and XP:Vista are anything but similar upgrades. Former was large change, latter hardly anything at all

[VinnyP]

Vista is, in OS terms, new and the difference is tiny; PC pro did the same test and found Vista marginally ahead. It loads much faster but seems to take an age to print. It will hopefully get faster like XP did with service packs (XP release candidate was much slower) and as more software is optimised for Vista. Already it's more secure, has built in adware/spyware supression and backup and is so far much more stable than XP. It's like all the advantages of Mac but with much more software and hardware support and of course it is faster than a Mac as well. It's way to expensive though for an operating system.

[Markulous]

Originally Posted by silkstone

- but nevertheless OS-X looks more attractive than Vista right now

ITPro: News: Leopard users fall prey of install problems

[silkstone]

Hmmm... Yes, I'd heard that the Leopard was in a spot of bother.

Apple haven't done themselves any favours recently - the iPhone is an expensive toy that doesn't work as well as the competition (but it's pretty), the iMac seems to have screen problems (but it's pretty) and Leopard has caught blue-tongue (but it's pretty).

Mr Jobs' decision to delay Leopard in favour of the iPhone seems a bad move, especially since there must be an enormous number of XP users who don't know which way to jump next time. A wasted opportunity, I think, and not helped by the apparent hardware and software issues which should not exist given the prices Apple charges.