Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and assorted bits of hardware new and old.
Friday 25 January 2008, 1:00 PM
Status Update, Vista to XP Retreat (Advance?)
In a nutshell, yes, I am completely satisfied with both systems. They are both running perfectly with XP, and that is more than could be said about either of them when they were running Vista. As things stand now, I would undoubtedly make the same decisions again. I still have the disks with Vista loaded for both laptops, and when Vista SP1 is finally available (non-Beta), I will load and test that on both of them. I would still like for Vista to be "better" than XP, and I would settle for it if it were even "as good as" XP in terms of speed and stability. On the other hand, XP SP3 is also on the way, so when it arrives I will test it as well. In an ideal world, I will end up with one of these laptops running Vista and one running XP, but I wouldn't bet on that.
Here are some detailed observations about each of the laptops:
The S6510 gets a serious workout, because I carry it back and forth to work every day, use it at home and in the office on port replicators with external keyboard, mouse and display and on the bus/train in between on its own. I use 100 Mb wired ethernet in the office, 1 Gb wired and 130 Mb Wireless-N at home, and EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA cellular on the road. I use suspend/resume most of the time; I doubt if I have done a full shutdown or restart more than five or six times in two weeks, and most of those have been because of software installation or updates. I don't recall that I've had a system crash since loading XP, and I certainly haven't had a BSOD. That might be in large part because I never run Skype on this laptop, but I don't think that is the only reason.
The S2110 has been the real surprise. I was having so many problems with it when it was running Vista that I was convinced that there was something wrong with the hardware. In the two months since I went back to XP, it has been absolutely rock solid. Not one USB hang, which happened daily with Vista, and the only BSOD crashes have been when I was testing Skype video and/or audio (which I have come to expect from that rubbish software), whereas it was crashing on a regular basis when running Vista. I don't carry this one back and forth every day any more, it stays mainly in the office, but I still use suspend/resume every day, and seldom reboot. The truth is, if I had known that the S2110 was going to work this well with XP, I would probably not have bought the new S6510. Ah well, it's not the worst mistake I ever made - the Core Duo CPU, larger screen, and built-in camera and microphone are really nice.
One last thought, specifically about the S2110. Why was it having so much trouble with Vista? Granted, it didn't come loaded with Vista, but it is listed on the Fujitsu-Siemens web page as "Vista Capable" and "Vista Premium Ready", so one would assume that it should work properly. Is this a problem that is common to many, most, or all "pre-Vista" PCs? Or specifically to "pre-Vista" laptops? Or is it because of the AMD Turion 64 CPU and associated chipset in the S2110? I don't know, but I would love to find out!
jw 25/1/2008
PreviousComments on this post
Thanks for the update! Wonder if other people are having the same problem with Vista on older PCs? Here's something that might be of interest, though at a tangent, that I came across while looking around for info on this: It's a blog purportedly written by someone working on the next version of Windows. In this post, he (she?) goes through the major changes introduced in each version. Take a look: http://shippingseven.blogspot.com/2008/01/big-changes.html.
Forget about the 'Save XP' activism - I think Vista's the endangered species...
"I think Vista's the endangered species..."
Microsoft are very effective at force feeding us, especially in the business sector; all they have to do is stop supporting XP and many will panic and switch to Vista!
I thought microsoft was fixing vista. chuckles- 2008 and vista still isn't consumer ready wow, microsoft are just so ahead of themselves. I think microsoft will have to learn the hard way that failure to listen to the users will result in failure. in the mean time i recommend you try ubuntu.
Yes, I think that a lot of people are having similar problems with Vista on older PCs. The ones that are really surprising are those which "should" be able to run Vista, and perhaps actually appear to at first, but then turn out to have stability problems. Poorly written drivers, or XP drivers that have not been updated adequately (or at all) account for much of this, I suspect.
Combine the current resistance, or even backlash, against Vista with the rumors of "Windows 7" coming soon enough that it might be possible to simply "skip" Vista, and it may well be that Vista will be an "endangered species". Look at how many people, and business, are still running Windows 2000, and there were compelling reasons and advantages in upgrading to XP; without any such obvious advantages in upgrading to Vista, the percentage who "stay behind" is likely to be even larger.
It may be true that cutting off XP support would provide some impetus for businesses to upgrade, but then Microsoft has certainly not done Vista any favors by making Windows XP SP3 - it's imminent release is undoubtedly making a lot of people feel more secure in continuing with XP. Likewise, extending the cutoff date for OEM XP sales certainly isn't helping Vista. In fact, the changes that I have seen in OEM sales have really reflected the hype and expectation turning into quiet disappointment and then open rejection. In the first weeks after Vista was released, it suddenly became difficult to even order a new computer with XP; then it slowly started reappearing as an alternate configuration; then they quietly started shipping Vista systems with "Microsoft Downgrade Certificates" and XP recovery disks, and now they are actually starting to advertise that their systems include both Vista and XP disks. This looks to me like the exact opposite of steadily-growing acceptance and "uptake" that we keep reading about in the Microsoft press releases!
jw
XP is better
