Which Operating System is right for me? There is no "one size fits all" when it comes to this topic. Windows XP is mature, stable, and yes "secure". Windows Vista is new, cutting edge, and very secure. So which is right for me?  Windows XP
We are now into our seventh year with Windows XP and it serves every need that I or any of our customers have at this point in time. Your legacy programs are compatible with XP which means no new costly updates. Devices such as your printers, scanners, and wireless devices work, they just plain work and when it comes down to it, that's what we want.  Windows Vista
Vista is now into it's second year with a brand new service pack that adresses some critical issues (see below). Most of these issues are "under the hood" refinements. The big improvement you will see is the stability of the operating system and file transfer within your home network I performed a clean install of Vista Ultimate on a Dell Inspiron E1705 and then applied the Service Pack and never once had to install a driver, not one. So which should I use? Unless you have some overwhelming reason to stay with XP, make the switch . The Dreamscene experience is worth it alone (providing you meet the graphics requirements). **********Updated information about Service Pack 1 for Vista********** General Overview:
What is Windows Vista Service Pack 1?
Windows Vista SP1 is an update to Windows Vista that, along with improvements delivered to users via Windows Update, addresses feedback from our customers. While SP1 contains valuable updates to Windows, organizations don’t need to wait to deploy and can experience the improved security, management and deployment benefits of Windows Vista today.
In addition to previously released updates, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. SP1 also continues to improve upon the IT administration experience. SP1 is not intended to be a vehicle for releasing new features; however some existing components do gain enhanced functionality in SP1.
Windows Vista SP1 is designed to not significantly change the UI or to cause regressions in application compatibility.1
What improvements are there to reliability in SP1?
Windows Vista SP1 improves the reliability of Windows Vista in many areas. Thanks to the rich instrumentation capability of Windows Vista, we are able to understand the type of problems that our customers are experiencing (while respecting their personal information and privacy preferences).
Many of these crashes and blue screens stem from problems with 3rd party applications and drivers, so we are working with our partners to solve these problems together. Other problems occur entirely in Windows code so we are aggressively working to solve as many of these as possible too.
Some of these improvements are made available before SP1 in the August updates available via Windows Update and the Download Center.
What are some examples of additions to the service pack in the “Support for emerging technologies and standards” category? Throughout the lifetime of Windows, new hardware innovations occur and standards enter the marketplace. SP1 includes support for some of these new innovations, which are expected to become increasingly important in the coming years. For example:
· With SP1, Windows Vista can boot via EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) on an x64 machine
· SP1 supports ExFAT, a new file format that will be used in flash memory storage and consumer devices
· Support for SD Advanced DMA Support to improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization is part of SP1
· SP1 includes a series of new API's and software features to enable 3D application and game developers to make more complete and efficient use of the upcoming generation of graphics Direct3D 10.1 hardware
· Windows Vista SP1 includes SSTP (Secure Sockets Tunnel Protocol), a remote access VPN tunneling protocol that will be part of Microsoft’s RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Service) platform. SSTP helps provide full-network VPN remote access connections without some of the challenges that other VPN tunnels face traversing NAT, web proxies, and firewalls
What are some examples of additions to the service pack in the “Improve Management Experience” category?
SP1 improves the administration experience. For example:
· With Windows Vista SP1, BitLocker Drive Encryption has been enhanced to not only fully encrypt the entire Windows Vista volume but also any or all additional locally created data volumes. (Customers can now not only fully encrypt C: but also D: and E:)
· SP1 Improves printer management by addressing problems associated with printing to a local printer from within a Terminal Server session
· Network Diagnostics in Windows Vista SP1 will help users with the most common file sharing problems, in addition to basic problems already supported. SP1 includes an update to Disk Defragmenter so administrators can control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on
Additionally, the tools used to manage Group Policy for Windows Vista will change with the installation of Windows Vista Service Pack 1. GPMC will be uninstalled with Service Pack 1 and GPEdit will default to Local Group Policy editing. Following these changes, SP1 users can download an updated version of GPMC that contains much requested functionality including the ability to add comments to GPOs or individual settings, to search for specific GP settings, and to use Starter GPOs which encapsulate best practices.
Device compatibility is up dramatically, from a bit over 40,000 compatible devices to just under 80,000 devices today with SP1. The number of logoed devices--devices that are certified by Microsoft to work properly with Vista--is also up dramatically, from about 2000 at launch to over 17,000 today. Microsoft director Chris Flores pointed out to me that the improvements to Vista's drivers aren't limited to sheer numbers, either: Improvements to video, audio, and other drivers have actually improved the battery life on laptops from several major PC makers by an average of 7 percent.
Application compatibility, too, improves significantly with SP1. While this area includes consumer-oriented applications, incompatible enterprise applications were the big deployment blockers over the past year. In the past year, Microsoft and its partners have remediated over 150 enterprise application blockers: These are applications that previously prevented one or more corporations from upgrading to Vista.
Reliability is up in Vista SP1, too, Microsoft says. Microsoftdescribed the company's telemetry data, which allows it to analyze various system disruptions in Vista, including such things as non-responding applications, application hangs and crashes, and system crashes. Compared to the release version of Vista, SP1 more than doubled the mean number of hours between disruptions, from about 17 hours to about 34 hours.
File copy improvements. One of the biggest complaints users have had with Windows Vista concerns file copy operations, both locally on a single PC and over networks. Microsoft isolated the cause of these and provides the fixes in SP1. A number of areas are affected, including the performance of file copy operations and system responsiveness during these operations. According to the latest data, file copy operations are 44 to 71 percent faster with SP1 than they were under the original version of Vista. Microsoft has also improved the speed at which Vista resumes from Sleep or Hibernation in SP1.
Security is another oft-discussed aspect of Vista, and Microsoft points to a number of recent studies of the system compared to rival OSes and its own predecessor, Windows XP. "Users are far less likely to be infected with malware or spyware on Vista," Flores told me. "We're really happy how Vista stacks up, security-wise." One interesting item that came up during the development of SP1: The highly-criticized User Account Control (UAC) feature in Vista only needed to be changed in two small ways for SP1 because Microsoft's data shows that the majority of consumer sessions don't require any UAC prompts at all after the first 30 days of use.
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