Windows XP vs. Vista Ultimate SP1?

Will someone please weigh out the pros and cons of using Windows XP Pro (SP 2 I think), vs. using Vista Ultimate SP1? My specs are 4400+, 2GB DDR400, and 2x7800GT 256MB (what I hear is that Vista uses video memory too?)

I will soon be looking at an C2D 8400, 8GB DDR2-800, and I will reuse the video cards. Would that change anything?

I am a mild gamer, but I use a lot of small scale apps, will those still be usable on Vista?

Windows XP vs. Vista Ultimate SP1?windows xp home

I use Vista and XP a few times a week (my main OS is Ubuntu), and I don't really like the interface of either of them. Vista has a lot of change for the sake of change and things that are very disorganized. Not that they don't work it's just that they reorganized the Control Panel so I no longer know where things are, especially since they are not always where names would indicate (Welcom Center under System Settings!?). So that's my first gripe: if you are used to XP and it's weirdness, you'd have to now invest in unlearning it, and learning all the nonsensical stuff in Vista.

My second gripe is that the hardware support seems a tad bit less than perfect. I'm having trouble switching sound devices (have to unplug or turn off all but the one I want to use, and restart the program if I switch). Also, CD burning doesn't work here. Ubuntu, on the same machine, has different problem with apparently the same devices, but where Vista fails, it succeeds.

Windows XP has more applications for it than Vista, and Vista's backwards compatibility is less than perfect.

On the other hand, everyone keeps saying Vista is a resource hog, but I just don't see it. It seems to be running just fine on my AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ with 768 MB RAM and nVidia GeForce 6100 nForce 405 (and no, I have no idea what the nVidia entry means). And I have Aero turned on.

It seems to me that the main attraction of Vista is Aero, and I think that's pretty lame, since Mac OS X and Linux surpass it in that regard. there are a few more goodies, like that partition manager that was added, the breadcrumb navigation for file management, and maybe a few more things, but it seems that most of the change is on the surface.

Windows XP vs. Vista Ultimate SP1?microsoft visual studio internet explorer

windows xp no question about it
Vista was a big, big mistake and Microsoft is fully aware of it's dismal failure. Google "windows seven" if you want to see what will replace it just as soon as they can.
Vista is a huge resource hog. It also doesn't even have all the kinks worked out. I would recommend XP. (Actually I think SP3 is coming out soon for XP.)

I'm using Vista Basic and I am encountering all kinds of problems.
windows XP for gaming, linux for everday tasks! you will be much happier this way!
xp
Windows XP. Vista is still in trial and lots of unsupported programs.
Vista of course.

don't belive the people who never tried it.
I have Vista and if i were you i would stick with XP because even with the soon to be reeased Vista service pack one it's not going to help us one bit.

Good luck
thats plenty of power for Vista

but............

Vista has alot of backwards compatibility issues and not alot of older programs will run on Vista so you will have to sacrifice afew things for the eye candy of Vista

since your a mild gamer then i would have to say that most (if not all) of the games you use will not be compatible with Vista and on some occasions some video graphic cards aint compatible with Vista so i would check your games and video cards and see if they will even run on Vista

but i havent gotten my hands on the Vista SP1 update yet so if it will fix all of those problems with backwards compatibility then i would say just go Vista but until then i would just wait it out unitl you see if the SP1 will fix all of the bugs cause XP has a SP3 coming out in a month and XP works with everything unlike Vista

but i would just get Xp just cause as of right now everything runs on it and you can always upgrade to Vista later but Xp will only be on store shelves for only acouple of months longer until Microsoft forces the public to go to Vista by stopping production of Xp..........but thats just my two cents

(fyi i run XP and have Vista on a spare hard drive)
Don't let the others scare you away from Vista, it has improved a lot since it first came out. It's NOT buggy anymore and it's backwards-compatible with 99.9% of XP programs. Plus, XP will soon be unsupported by Microsoft so it's best to move to their new operating system.

The only problems are:

-It uses a little more RAM than XP, but with 2 GB that won't be a problem at all.

-The aero interface does drain your video card a little bit. But you can easily disable Windows Aero by changing the theme to Classic Mode and it will hardly use your graphics card's resources at all.

So for your computer, I'd definitely recommend Vista Ultimate over XP, it will perform much better
The hardware will be fine with Vista, especially the newer hardware. The biggest issues at this point involve backward compatibility with older hardware and software. I've actually had success with more open source apps than with commercial apps under Vista.

Why not decide for yourself - partition your drive and set up a dual boot system. Play with both for a while and see which you prefer. I have been running Vista since its release, and while I hated it at first I found that it grew on me over time.
will for vista 1gig is the minimum but for graphics (since ur a gamer) you have the minimum for vista of 2 but id stay with xp.