Need advice for OS

Hey guys........this is the best place for me to put this

I just ordered a new build with 2 Gigs and an 8800GT (not ordered this yet, seeing about the 3800 and new 8800GTS)

Wondering if I should get Vista or XP? (Would like DX10, unless Vista is so bad)
If Vista, I will get Home Premium and Home/Media Center for XP

And, should I get 64-bit or not?
I know it can read 4 gigs. (and I only have 2), but are there other advantages or disadvantages?
(and future-proofing, if I upgrade to 4)

Lastly, will SP1 for Vista be a download or will you have to buy an upgrade?

Please help, I need advice

so get 64-bit am i right?

I will not be getting 4 gigs but might upgrade eventually to 4x1 gigs.

You can definitely order a 64 bit CD from Microsoft for about $10.00, just so long as you have a retail licence. They don't do that for an OEM installations. Be advised that Vista 64 is NOT UPGRADABLE from anything else at all. You must do a clean install.


Regarding 64 bit: I am running Vista 64, and haven't had any troubles with it. It recognizes the full 4GB of RAM, configured *itself* for my home network without me pressing a single key, and as done everything I used to do on XP, smoothly and stably. I attribute this to doing my homework before upgrading, and not expecting all my old stuff to run on the new OS. Cutting the XP cord cleanly seems to have saved headaches.

Quite frankly a *lot* of people, including professional technology writers, absolutely LOVE to rip on Vista for sparse support of older devices and driver troubles. While based in reality, this is a little mystifying to me when it comes from people who should know better. The makers of said devices are the one's responsible for drivers and compatibility. I decided that the 3rd party makers would rather force you to buy new stuff than pay their employees to extend the old stuff. But the common denominator is Microsoft, and ripping on MSFT sells magazines, gets web page hits, and is good for increasing popularity, so there you have it. It's a good thing I'm just Some Guy On The Internet, cos if I actually had the job of answering these peeps, I'd get into contant trouble for saying things like "I am so very sorry for the inconvenience and trouble your dumbass self got your dumbass self into because you are too much of a lazy and stupid dumbass to verify compatibility before changing your Operating System... The problem here is obviously the loose nut on the keyboard" But stuff like that fails Customer Service 101 class. So I'd be fired.


I have definitely had a few annoyances related to it's tighter security settings: It nukes expired/unsigned digital certificates (probably for my own good in the general sense, but there's things that are known good that it doesnt' allow), and the defaults are such that you have to click to provide admin permissions for certain actions. A lot of install programs do not understand this and abort. But in general, if it ran before, it runs now. Quite frankly, I have had no issues with the OS that couldn't be solved by opening the book I bought to learn the thing...

This isn't everyone's experience tho. As you probably guessed from my first paragraph, make very sure you do your homework on your devices. Video cards aren't a problem, as ATI and nVidia both have stable and well functioning software. But Creative apparently has better things to do than write functional drivers for their sound cards. I'm using the audio module that came with my Mobo with no issue. But audio seems to be a common complaint - again Creative is the prime suspect.

One thing I can definitely point at MSFT is that there are updates and patches which are NOT publicized and NOT put into the regular update process. AND they are difficult to find if you don't know exactly what you are looking for. Why this is so absolutely mystifies me, and is the thing that annoys me most. A simple list accessible by following a 'Support' link from the Vista home page is stupidly easy to do. And making these things clear for people who just want so solve the error and move on to what they actually *wanted* to do would simplify so many things. And for all concerned.


Performance-wise, benchmarks show Vista as being a few frames a second slower than XP. It is VERY aggressive in managing system resources: Pre-caching frequently used programs (shows higher RAM usage), and automatically indexing the hard drives are the ones that get the most attention because people see 1.25GB or RAM being used whild "idle" and their HDD spends the first week constantly churning. You can shut that stuff off if you want. Or you can ignore it, and get on with whatever you wanted to do. The RAM gets surrendered when a program wants it, and active programs take HDD priority anyhow. So meh..


Regarding Vista SP1, service packs have always been downloadable. And you can already download the Beta version of SP1 form 3rd parties. I haven't tried it since I don't want to be bothered with potentially having to roll my system back when the real thing becomes generally available.



HAVING SAID ALL THIS: It is absolutely true that Vista doesn't bring you much of anything that you can't already have with XP. It's prettier to look at. You get DX10, which really isn't being used at the moment. And you have to spend some time re-learning where MSFT moved this, that, or the other thing. It's different, sure, and there is some neat gadgetry under the hood. But I can't say it's much of an improvement. But whatever.... If you're going to stick with MSFT, then you're going to end up on Vista sooner or later.

I nominate this for best answer to the "32-bit vs 64-bit" and "Vista vs XP" questions. Spot on, mate!

thanks for the advice

but what about other drivers like Optical drive and RAM (Hard drive has drivers with Vista according to Western Digital)

where do I get those drivers or does the Vista software have them?