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Windows 'XP' vs 'Vista Home Premium'

Save your Money!

Not everyone will agree with this, but thought I'd make a guide for your consideration before purchasing Microsoft's Vista.    Please do some website searches for more info.

The first thing I'd like to mention is if your running Microsoft Operating System like 98, 98 (Second Edition), ME, 2000, or XP or any other MS Windows format and thinking of upgrading to 'Vista' these programs may give you heaps of problems if you purchase and upgrade.

(UPGRADE being a word in dispute as most may think a downgrade) to Vista.

Remote Access Memory (RAM)     You will have to check first if your computer can take more RAM as 'Vista' takes up a huge amount of space on your Hard Drive.

If you do not have enough 'Random Access Memory' (RAM) of a minimum of 128MB, (more the better) to run your computer on 'Vista' and even if you do it may not only run your computer  extremely slow, but also some of the new features which come with 'Vista' may not work!

Other programs for instance, you can forget about using 'Google Earth' or Playing 'World of Warcraft', as it is too slow and does not respond, and closes down these continuously.

Also if your a serious 'GAMER' you will need to upgrade your RAM.

If you do computer aided design (CAD) 3-D modeling or animation or heavy data processing or your computer acts as a server of some sort of Webpages databases, applications, FTP or networks.

Even with my 512 MB of RAM I still had to add more to 2GB and still not all 'Vista's features worked like Microsoft's 'AERO'  & 'FLIP 3D'
Expect to pay quite a few hundred dollars more to upgrade your RAM.

OTHER PROGRAMS:- As there are too many different programs we all use and some I use listed below not only did not work with Microsoft Vista, but could not upgrade them nor delete them, and found they where totally useless taking up valuable hard drive space.

If you do not know your way around your computer you may end up paying a lot of cash for upgrades and getting someone to make them work.

Microsoft Tech's will not help you out with so called '3rd Party programs' (those other than Microsoft's) and 'software' you may of purchased or downloaded for free may cost you heaps to upgrade ...  Some are:

Vendio / IncrediMail / Nero 6 - Cd Burner / AVG Free Edition Anti Virus / Ashampoo WinOptimizer 4 / Microsoft Office 2005 / Microsoft WORD / Help Programs

Turbo Lister - Unlike Windows XP - Vista does not come with a DHTML program or WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get)       So your Turbo Lister's 'Design View', will not work and you cannot view or change anything in Turbo Lister -    You can however go to 'Microsoft Downloads' and download these programs.

Vendio - Is a Website Image server which also displays 'Gallery' in eBay auctions. In XP you could download an Express (XPress) image uploader to there website, but not in Vista.

IncrediMail-  in Vista is missing the d3drm.dll drive which runs IncrediMail, you can also download this from Microsoft downloads website, which I did and has not run properly yet!

Nero 6 - Cd Burner - Will not run on Vista, Vista has it's own Cd burner, but without an expensive upgrade to Nero 7 to run on Vista, you cannot use other programs which come with Nero 6 like CD cover designer and others.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 4 - Doesn't work on Vista either, you need to pay extra to upgrade to Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2007.     

AVG Free Edition Anti-Virus - Doesn't work either on Vista, and MS want you to purchase there 'Window's Live One Care' which is a firewall, anti-virus, Tune -Up, Spyware detector.  The thing is Live One is run in your Quick programs - near your time down the left hand side bottom of your computer, when working well is green when needs attention is RED.      The AVG runs against 'Live One' and needs your attention, the thing is it says AVG is running as well would you like to delete it - Click Yes, and it says 'Cannot Delete!     So you get updates daily from AVG and the pop up for Live one goes off all the time.    Vista cannot even delete it from Uninstall.     The way I got around this was to download a free Trial of Winoptimizer 2007 which has a 'File And Folder WIPE' I then went into Programs and typed AVG and deleted all, that worked. 

MS Windows - 'Vista's - User Account Control - Anything you basically wish to do like run cleaners or open certain programs etc, your computer freezes and a 'Window Pops Up' Saying Do you want to allow this..   Can be annoying after awhile, well quickly actually.

Microsoft ' Word' - Does not come on vista -  Vista has 'Wordpad' -   Not only does it not open 'WORD' but any documents or anything you have done on your old 'WORD' program and saved, you cannot alter or even view anymore. To get around this you need to download from Microsoft the 'Microsoft Word Viewer 2003'.  After it is downloaded you open it and search for your old WORD Documents. A trick here is to 'Select and Highlight All' and copy and save it to Wordpad, then re save it.    So you need to uninstall 'WORD' 

Vista's New WORDPAD - Does not have a spell checker!

Microsoft 'HELP'- In many programs, well about all programs actually if you where in trouble you 'Click' the 'HELP' tab up the top which would open and you where able to find problems or hints and tips with the program - but this will not open anymore and 'HELP' is not included in Vista'   So you can not view Help in your Camera / Scanner /  for instance or any other software programs etc.

Borrowed Software - If for instance you borrowed someone else's software say Microsoft Office or even non MS programs it will not uninstall it unless you have that exact same disc it came from, thus your 'Live One' will play up as updates sent for it daily.

DEFRAGMENTATION  First this is something we all should do with our computers either weekly or monthly to make them run efficient. Another thing with Vista is it has to be set to automatically deframent and unlike other MS programs you can not see it running and have to rely on it doing the job - not like XP or Windows 98 where you can actually see the prcocess.

Someone Told me Vista stands for          Very Interesting S**t To Avoid

Thank you for your Vote !        

Regards Possum -