Ok so I skipped Vista & 7....should I download Win 8?

[TridenT]

Lol windows 8.. They're going a weird place with the UI.

If it's Windows 7 underneath but that UI on the top, OK. As long as I can fully disable that shit UI.

 

[LikeLinus]

I'd wait to see what they've removed and totally disabled before I purchased.

You may lose the ability to open any old files. Period.
You may lose the ability to use any colors other than black.
You may lose the ability to save your files in the format you want.
You may lose the ability to Multitask
You may lose the ability to use it in a professional environment because they've dumbed it down to a consumer grade POS program and alienated tens of thousands of professionals.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

*disclaimer* I use linux for my desktop, but my SO and her daughter use Vista, so I am no fanboy.

XP was utter garbage before SP3, and VIsta was utter garbage before SP3 (Win7 = Vista SP3+), but Vista SP3 is many times greater than XP SP3 ever was. Outside of business use, there is absolutely no reason anyone should be installing/reinstalling XP anymore.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Creative released extremely limited drivers for Vista, as a result, card owners who upgraded to vista lost many of the 'premium features' that were unique to their card.

A Brazilian hobbiest programmer analysed the drivers, and found that the drivers were deliberately deactivated the features on vista. He hacked the drivers to remove the OS check, and found that the drivers worked just as well as on XP. While he was digging inside the drivers, he also fixed a couple of bugs that creative had refused to do so.

He eventually got into trouble, and Creative tried to sue him, because he discovered that all the different 'advanced premium' features that differentiated the whole family of soundblaster variants was simply switches in the driver software. When he published his 'fixed' drivers he simply deactivated all the 'feature' switches, so that a base-model soundblaster card, would be detected as, and work as a top-of-the-range model.

Wow. Your post has been filed in my YLSNED folder.

 

[shortylickens]

For all you guys who dont know better: There is no Windows 7.

Go to MSCONFIG, enable verbose booting, restart your system and tell me what you see.

 

[TridenT]

For all you guys who dont know better: There is no Windows 7.

Go to MSCONFIG, enable verbose booting, restart your system and tell me what you see.

It's even underneath called Windows 6.1 :awe:

 

[matas]

windows 7 is the best os i've ever used.

 

[ultimatebob]

Lol windows 8.. They're going a weird place with the UI.

If it's Windows 7 underneath but that UI on the top, OK. As long as I can fully disable that shit UI.

Yeah... this new Start screen will get disabled as quick as those desktop widgets got shut off in Windows Vista.

 

[Raduque]

Any OS with UAC is trash.

Oh good. I assume you like software that silently installs with administrator permissions, hooking itself into system files without you even knowing it happens?

You can't be that stupid.

XP is crap. I wish they'd EOL it last year.

They will have to pry XP from my cold, dead hard drive.

That'll be easy enough. Just force install something silently that will empty your %systemdir% without you even knowing it did.

BTW, new PC games are going to stop including XP support.

I cannot support this initiative enough! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::awe:

BTW: I noticed OP said "download Windows 8" in the thread title... filthy pirate? Maybe he's still using Windows XP because he doesn't know how to steal Vista/7?

Edit: Oh, I see. Pentium 4 processor, 2gb ram. Your PC sucks, keep using Windows XP, Felix.

 

[iGas]

I went from Win 2K to Win 7.

I tried Vista and it was terrible (what a waste of money), but so far Win 7 haven't give me any grieve except for the annoying updates at start up and reboots. Linux is my primary OS for more than a decade, and I only boot into Windows when I play games or run a few apps that only available for Windows.

 

[BoomerD]

Creative released extremely limited drivers for Vista, as a result, card owners who upgraded to vista lost many of the 'premium features' that were unique to their card.

A Brazilian hobbiest programmer analysed the drivers, and found that the drivers were deliberately deactivated the features on vista. He hacked the drivers to remove the OS check, and found that the drivers worked just as well as on XP. While he was digging inside the drivers, he also fixed a couple of bugs that creative had refused to do so.

He eventually got into trouble, and Creative tried to sue him, because he discovered that all the different 'advanced premium' features that differentiated the whole family of soundblaster variants was simply switches in the driver software. When he published his 'fixed' drivers he simply deactivated all the 'feature' switches, so that a base-model soundblaster card, would be detected as, and work as a top-of-the-range model.

I tried a myriad of the "modified SB drivers when I changed to Vista in 2008. NONE worked with my old SB Live! card.
I finally got tired of fighting with it and tossed the card into a box of outdated junk...and went with the on-board sound. When I updated my computer 7 months ago, I tried again with the SB Live! card and some "new" modified drivers...same problem. Fortunately, the on-board sound in my P7P55D-Pro board is very good...perhaps even better than the SB Live! card.

I still have a ton of old games that won't work on Vista...32 bit or 64 bit...but they work well with XP, so I have a couple of them loaded on my secondary hard drive along with XP Pro. (the secondary drive is primarily for some non-Vista 64 bit printer and scanning software from Canon...but since I installed the secondary drive, I went ahead and installed a few of the older games...I'm amazed at how crappy the look by comparison to the newer games...

 

[xcript]

I tried a myriad of the "modified SB drivers when I changed to Vista in 2008. NONE worked with my old SB Live! card.

The kX Audio Driver works fine with the couple of soundblasters I have (a Live! and a Live! 5.1).

 

[lxskllr]

I have little interest in any Windows anymore. I'll keep a small Vista or Win7 partition for the occasional game, but it's looking like Debian will be my primary O/S.

XP can go to hell. It was alright a decade ago when the tech was somewhat current, but it's nothing but a bad joke now. The sooner it's gone, the better for everyone.

 

[BoomerD]

The kX Audio Driver works fine with the couple of soundblasters I have (a Live! and a Live! 5.1).

I remember trying those with no success. I tried a ton of modified drivers...none worked.

 

[schneiderguy]

I remember trying those with no success. I tried a ton of modified drivers...none worked.

I'm sorry BoomerD, but considering your "advanced" age the problem is probably between the keyboard and chair :|

 

[shortylickens]

Oh, and:

 

[GagHalfrunt]

From my experience the dumb people skipped Vista and complain about it to this day, mostly because of their ignorance.

No, the imbeciles used Vista knowing it was a pile of crap just so they could adopt a childishly superior attitude about using it. It's like eating soup with a fork, doing it doesn't make you noble or enlightened, it just shows that you have too much time to kill and no common sense.

 

[lxskllr]

No, the imbeciles used Vista knowing it was a pile of crap just so they could adopt a childishly superior attitude about using it. It's like eating soup with a fork, doing it doesn't make you noble or enlightened, it just shows that you have too much time to kill and no common sense.

Then the same could be said about Win7 since they're the same O/S....

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

It pretty much comes down to what pc you have, or what you want to do with it

For anyone with an old pc, XP >>>>>>>>>>>
But for gaming, obviously you need 7 since XP doesnt support DX10/11

XP is still the best OS ever for me, super fast and reliable, never gave me any problems

 

[xcript]

I remember trying those with no success.

By default 'swap front & rear' is toggled ON in the kX Manager, which was the only problem I had IIRC.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I used to say Vista was good too, and its ok, but do a fresh install and then do updates on it. Its a fucking nightmare. I did that with a Dell recently, the install disc was even SP1. It then proceeded to install over 5GB of updates before it would install SP2. To top it off, I think it actually ran worse after the fresh install (which also included a RAM upgrade from 3GB to 4GB). It was the 64bit version too. It took like 4 hours and was updated

I also did a fresh install of WinXP MCE 2005 at the same time, and it took maybe an hour to get it all the way updated (SP3 and beyond), on older, slower hardware (an Athlon 64 X2 with a whopping 2GB of RAM and old slow 160GB HDD).

People who say XP was the best apparently forgot what a mess it was off and on until about SP2. It wasn't ever completely terrible (certainly no ME), but it wasn't all that great either.

 

[foghorn67]

Then the same could be said about Win7 since they're the same O/S....

Two misinformed posters.

 

[lxskllr]

Two misinformed posters.

Then inform me. Unlike most here, I actually benchmarked both O/Ss, and there wasn't enough difference between them to be worth mentioning.

 

[killster1]

Then inform me. Unlike most here, I actually benchmarked both O/Ss, and there wasn't enough difference between them to be worth mentioning.

who gives a shit about benchmarking os's? and everyone knows vista is pos and uses tons of ram to do nothing.. windows 7 is great, windows 8 is windows 7 with 3 tweaks.. is it even for sale?

 

[lxskllr]

who gives a shit about benchmarking os's? and everyone knows vista is pos and uses tons of ram to do nothing.. windows 7 is great, windows 8 is windows 7 with 3 tweaks.. is it even for sale?

Go grab another drink champ. Try not to drool on yourself ;^)