[turtle]

I am moving away from PCs as a whole but I still have 5 of them in my house doing various things and don't plan to get rid of them. Only one of them isn't capable of running Vista at full performance (less a few GPU upgrades).

However, I still love the Mac OS and I'm glad to have switched. I'm asking for honest answers from people who actually know the software not just a Mac lover without anything more than a user level of knowledge. Please, this isn't to start a war on why I should throw my PCs out the window and never look back. I just need to know why it would be advantageous to go from XP Pro to Vista ver. X?

Granted, I have this habit of getting the latest and greatest as soon as it comes out too. I think this might be why I'm even thinking about upgrading to Vista. It might help if I designate what my PCs do too.
One is my Media Center in the living room. It's only running XP Pro, not a Media Center edition. I have an All-in-Wonder Card in it and Catalyst software. I won't mind swapping the graphics card since I don't use the cable input at all anymore and it's really a big DVD player that also plays AVI's, MOV's and such. This one also acts as a file server holding 3 large drives right now.
Next up is a 64bit Athlon that pretty much is a file server and F@H machine. I don't do too much with it.
The weakest of my PC desktops is most for me to have a PC to fall back on in my home office since my office Mac is a G4 Mini and can't run Parallels.
I then have two laptops. One's a Dell Latitude D610 and the other is a Gateway M500. The M500 is my daughters school computer and I don't know if the school program is Vista compatible yet.
The Dell is not used too much anymore, so it currently folds all the time.

So from looking over this list, my Media Center would be the one in question really. Why should I upgrade? Is it worth it?

[Wyatt]

Like you said, none of those would be worth upgrading other than the media center.

Personally, I'd recommend you try to get XP MCE rather than Vista for your media center. If you want to go without buying new software, there are Free/Open Source media center front ends available for XP. When I still used my old PC as a media center, I was using Media Portal as my software solution. It's not as robust as the MCE front end, but it more than did the job for me.

[Windowsrookie]

Vista is shiny.

[thegeriatric]

Can you go to a shop take a look/playabout with vista and see what you think.

I am running Vista ultimate and think it's miles better than XP. But it depends a lot on what you are looking for.

Good luck with whatever decision you make.

[Ominx]

Here's a completely honest response. I have a HP Athlon 64 3200 with 2 gigs of RAM and a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. I previously had been running XP (Barely Naked Edition) for nearly a year without any problems. The XP edition I have flies...I mean it is really, really fast. Coupled with the fact that the PC itself has really good specs, I had a very capable machine.

Then Vista was released. Despite the fact that I read the underwhelming reviews, like you, I always want the latest and greatest. Well Vista is clearly not the latter. I installed the Ultimate edition and received scores all around 5 on all tests with a base score of 4.8...which should demonstrate I had more than enough power to run the OS smoothly. Well, I didn't really have it on my machine long enough to diagnose why it slowed the computer to an absolute crawl, but my guess is the bazillion amount of services that are always running as well as the intense strain it put on my video card. I KillDisked after a week and went back to my trusty Barely Naked Edition of XP.

There really isn't anything you gain from Vista. There are some security improvements, but they are a complete waste when you need to shut them off to keep yourself sane. Plus you're a mac user and smart enough to avoid the security breeches most "common" computers are effected by, so I wouldn't consider security a major advantage, especially when they will be cracked in a matter of weeks or months. The rest is all eye candy, which as I said, will bring your machine to its knees.

I'm really curious why thegeriatric thinks it's "miles better than XP." I found it unbearable.

Oh one more thing...file sharing between Vista systems and macs is very hard to configure. To be honest, I couldn't even get it to work without severely opening up the Vista security policy. On top of that, I had to run a script on my mac just to gain access to the shares...a complete pain. I know that sounds like a plus for Vista, but I found it completely unnecessary. My network is so locked down, the last thing I am worried about is war-drivers and eve's dropping. So if you share any of your data from the Win system with any macs, I would really suggest you stay clear of Vista.

[Kraetos]

I love new and shiny things too. But I am waiting until SP1.

Eventually I will have to upgrade to Vista for DirectX 10. But all current DirectX 10 games are backwards compatible with DirectX 9, so I see no rush.

[Ominx]

Oh yes, DirectX 10 for gaming and resolution scaling are two other worthy additions to Vista. But if you don't benefit from either of those I would definitely hold off.

[turtle]

Thanks for the input. I'm only hearing the reason to upgrade is for shiny things and gaming. I don't do either of them on the Media Center. Not really a reason to upgrade then it sounds like. Oh well, thanks for keeping my money in my pocket. It just means the Mac Pro is going to get here sooner.

[Graphguy]

I've been running Vista since October, and I'll give you my input...

Startup-speed and speed in general: It feels significantly faster than XP, also during starting up, which was a nice surprise.

Searching: Really good, I can find missing files faster than in XP.

User Interface: Quite a few improvements, that would make me really hesitate to go back to XP.

The Media Center: I haven't found that much use for it yet, but since you use one of your computers as a media center, you might want to check it out in Vista. Personally I also like the improvements in the graphic department, but you wrote that this really isn't an issue for you.

[turtle]

Originally Posted by Graphguy I've been running Vista since October, and I'll give you my input... Startup-speed and speed in general: It feels significantly faster than XP, also during starting up, which was a nice surprise. Searching: Really good, I can find missing files faster than in XP. User Interface: Quite a few improvements, that would make me really hesitate to go back to XP. The Media Center: I haven't found that much use for it yet, but since you use one of your computers as a media center, you might want to check it out in Vista. Personally I also like the improvements in the graphic department, but you wrote that this really isn't an issue for you.

Yeah, most of the reasons you list as why Vista would be good are irrelevant to me. I don't loose files on my computer because I'm an organization freak on computers because for years search has sucked. I made a way to never loose my files, I put them where they go.

Startup is faster: My answer is to never shut down. I never shut down my PCs so this isn't an issue to me either. Plus I minimize the crap that loads in the background and try to keep my Program Manger slim.

For now I think I'll stick with Catalyst and my standard XP Pro UI. I like the link fcgrizlinked to, but I don't do the TV input meaning all I really use are DVDs and ripped DVDs or other media stored locally or on my local network.

Thanks for your input, though it really is more of a user experience and I was hoping more for technical reasons why I should upgrade. So far there is none.

[specter]

Originally Posted by Graphguy I've been running Vista since October, and I'll give you my input... Startup-speed and speed in general: It feels significantly faster than XP, also during starting up, which was a nice surprise.

Have you been running it via Parallels or Boot Camp or Fusion. Or you mean you run it on your PC?

[PKIDelirium]

Originally Posted by specter Have you been running it via Parallels or Boot Camp or Fusion. Or you mean you run it on your PC?

PC.

[Windowsrookie]

So, I've been using a Vista Laptop for a few days. And I have to say. It aint half bad. It's not OS X, but it is better than XP.

[rasmits]

If you've got the specs, Vista is actually pretty nice. I'm amazed by the requirements for Aero though.

[turtle]

Yeah, I was convinced by my need to be updated. I got Ultimate on my Media Center now. I'm still going through the learning curve. Annoyed by the security, but somewhat glad it's there. I have AVG Free since my school doesn't have an updated Symantec Corp edition yet for me to install. I also need to update my CD burning software, Nero 6 just won't cut it. Overall I like it, just a little annoyed by a few things here and there. It won't be bad at all once I get past the upgrade bugs and incompatibilities. I was able to install my daughters homeschool software on there, so this is a good thing. Seems Vista has a background operation that will convince a program it's XP Pro for install reasons. My program won't install on anything that isn't XP Pro or Home. XP Pro 64bit isn't even compatible.

My machine was given a 3.9 grade by Vista without any upgrades too. So I don't know if I'll bother upgrading my All-In-Wonder 9600 or jumping to 2GB of RAM. Everything seems to work well with it for the most part too. I still don't mess with the system much though, but I'm glad I went ahead and upgraded. Parental controls are going to come in real handy for me.

[Windowsrookie]

The Vista score is dumb. I'd understand if it was a total of all the scores. But it just bases your system on the lowest score.

[turtle]

Originally Posted by Windowsrookie The Vista score is dumb. I'd understand if it was a total of all the scores. But it just bases your system on the lowest score.

Yeah, all my other scores are 5. Just memory and GPU that are 3.9. I'm not offended. It does everything I need it to do.