Another Computer Os Question

[Kit Kat P]

Last night my dad bought a new emachine and I got a new acer. Both are desktops. I want to downgrade them to XP to prevent any future problems (at least for the next year or so) and was wondering if anyone had any advice.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

First, if they were mine... i would try installing SP1. It fixes a lot of things and speeds it upa bit. Still not perfect... but you paid for Vista.. you should use it.

Also, I know a few trick to get more speed out of Vista and get it to stop thrashing your hard drive. Lemme me know if you want to do the.

[Kit Kat P]

Well, we didn't pay for it. They came on the system and I already own XP.

[Kit Kat P]

Also I should note that this will be my parents first computer ever and I want them to feel comfortable on it since I'll be moving 2 hours away pretty soon.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

You paid for it. It's buried in the price.

[Kit Kat P]

Okay, true, I'll concede that point. That aside......

[Soulrev]

Personally I have my own problems with XP and Vista. I'm a gamer so I push my computer to its limits. The only reason I'm running Vista right now is because I have the 64 bit version of Vista which takes advantage of my processor. If it weren't for that, I would just stick to XP and tweak the hell out of it. I can tweak XP to run on a 233Mhz processor with 512mb of RAM and it will run like a race horse. It's possible to tweak Vista almost as well as XP but it's more of a PITA in my opinion so I wouldn't do it by preference, as I said only reason I run Vista is because it's a 64 bit version. Vista and XP are both decent OS's, it's just a case of one OS is good in some areas where the other isn't as good. In other words, it's like comparing a pickup truck and a dump truck. Both do the same thing, just in different ways and they each have their own individual flaws.

So, to make a long story short, I'd put XP on your parents machine and keep Vista on yours. Assuming your parents aren't very computer savvy, XP would be the better choice for them because Vista is a bit more complicated when it comes to it's problems. XP problems are solved more easily than Vista. Or, I should say, there's an abundance of resources to solve XP problems, and Vista problems are a bit more complicated to solve, and solutions are harder to find, simply due to it's callowness.

Just ask Mark or myself if you have any other questions about computer problems, we're both rather knowledgeable in the IT field. I don't know who else here has much experience and knowledge of the field, though I'm sure we're not the only 2.

-Brian