Thats the dumbest thing I’ve EVER heard.

That’s like saying that a V8 (insert local rev-head car make here) is faster that my 1100cc motorcycle, because it can make use of more fuel!?!

Vista doesn’t support more ram BECAUSE it uses more, it supports more because it has more memory addressing, it uses more because it is typical MS bloatware.

Gaming doesn’t NEED vista, windowsXP uses up to 3.2GB of ram if your running 32bit, and more than you’ll find in a consumer system when running 64bit.

So… lets say I have a system that supports Vista. We’ll call it a 3.0Ghz 64bit with 3GB of ram and an nVida 8800GT (with 768MB ram). Now this is well within the specs required to run Vista Ultimate. Anything I do on this system (be it gaming, surfing the net, desktop publishing, developing, other) WILL BE SLOWER under Vista than XP. If we push into the 4gb+ workspace for memory I can use 64bit and anything I do will be slower under Vista than XP. But your argument wasn’t about the performance, cause that’s be proven in benchmarks that XP is fast, you’re talking about ram.

So…say I’m playing spore, which lets you set how much system memory to let the game use to cache graphics, and I have a 4GB system. Because Vista will use at least 1GB of my RAM for pre-read caching and system processes, I’m left with up to 3GB for Spore and any other apps I have running.

Now, say I’m doing the same on XP. XP averages ~200mb ram use (provided you have more than that, XP home will actually run on 64MB, but I digress) when “idle” if any OS is ever truly idle. that leaves me (on 32bit) the same 3GB for my game and apps OR or 64bit 3.8GB for my game and apps.

(I actually run Ubuntu64bit and usually have 2xVirtual Machines, a chat program, a music program, and multiple terminal windows running while I play spore – or any other game – try that on Vista).

The argument that Vista can address more ram in the 32bit version than XP can is really irrelevant to it superiority or inferiority as an OS.

Welcome linux convert brother! may you have many years of not having to get new hardware to acheive the same old results. enjoy… that reminds me, I need to do an 8.04 upgrade here too.

@Ryan

To see that vista is in fact slower, there is a simple test;
Do a clean install of XP on your Dell, you’ll find it will run every bit as quick as it did when you first bought it (and you prolly thought it was pretty quick then)

Now do a clean install of Vista… and watch your system jerk and lag and not run properly.

See, we get to thinking that computers get slower with age… they don’t. You system is as fast now as it was when you bought it (short of hardware failure). And it’s not even that your perception has changed all that much, it’s just that windows tends to get slower the longer it is used. Vista will be no different, but it will start significantly slower on the same hardware (new or old).

This means that with a clean install (or alternate OS… Ubuntu? Mandriva?) you old PC will give you years more use.

My current system is a first generation AMD64 3.0 (that makes it a 2003 vintage) and it’s currently being used as a multi-seat PC, and it flys with Ubuntu64 and runs well with an XP VM going at the same time. Try the same old 5 year old hardware with Vista and it barely runs.

Sure if I throw $1500 at a new box and $500 for vista ultimate, then vista will run almost as good… but why upgrade to a broken OS and make my hardware less effective?

Technology does wait… if you know how to ask it to wait.

Newer != better