I personally love XP, a friend of mine purchased a notebook with windows vista and asked me to format and install XP.
I noticed that for that computer (512 MB of ram) windows XP performs LOT better
Let’s vote and see what’s the community feelings
I won’t vote, even though for me it’s XP because I don’t need Vista’s new features and XP is what I bought the computer with and also I hate bloatware.
As far as I know, Vista includes advanced features XP doesn’t. Then again, if you belong to the 99 per cent of non-gaming world population who doesn’t need those and even won’t in a couple of years, XP has the advantage of being much less bloaty, both because it’s lighter on resources, and because it doesn’t try to go beyond being an OS at least as far as Vista.
Of course Vista won’t work properly with 512 MB of RAM, XP will work better with less. 512 is the minimum requirement according to Microsoft but you should never work with the minimum requirements because they’re below the recommendable requirements.
How to make Windows XP last for the next seven years
Hands On: A Hard Look at Windows Vista
I agree. Vista’s minimum requirement is 512MB of memory & I’m not surprised that XP performs better (its minimum requirement is much lower). As for the new features that Vista has & XP does not… don’t forget XP’s SP3 (Service Pack 3). XP’s SP3 (current in testing) apparently has “lots” of Vista features.
It is not only RAM that counts in Vista. I have 2GB and Vista was extremely slow on my computer when I had Smpron 2600+. I changed it to Athlon 3200+ and my system accelerated like a rocket 
I’ll use Windows XP Pro for as long as possible. It only requires 233MHz and 64MB RAM to run(tho 300MHz and 128MB RAM is recommend), which almost all computers have. I only have 768MB RAM and 2.3GHz, so I’m going to get at least 2GB and a 3GHz CPU(or dual core) before I even think of updating to Windows Vista.
Cheers,
Ragwing
My current hardware configuration is certainly not up to running Vista, even if I wanted to, which I don’t.
Personally, if it comes to it, I’ll go the Linux path before submitting to Vista.
Toggie
This is what I feel as well. I don’t like MS shoving something whatever it may be down my throat. It took me til last year to get XP. I was happy with Win 98, but support stopped.
John
The poll result is almost a no-brainer ;D based on the fact alone that most users have XP.
Have you considered the world of linux?
Opensuse and PCLINUXOS are very good for previous xp users.
Sure Vista is bloatware, but I think there are some Vista features that XP will never have, not from Microsoft at least, even with the upcoming SP3 or even if a SP4 was issued some day. The most famous one is DirectX10. Even Aero (whatever it exactly is) is though as silly eye candy for Windows’ sole use, but likely other programs will start to rely on it soon, so they won’t work in XP. I’ve also heard things about enhanced hardware support for dual core processors, SATA, etc., I really don’t know about it I’ve just heard about it. Also with Vista SP1 coming shortly, stability (which is not bad I hear) will be improved and the whole Vista will be polished according to customers’ feedback.
But XP does the job here and it will get MS support for a very long time, so since I don’t need Vista I’ll keep it.
Microsoft's support road map currently says that extended support for Windows XP ends in April 2014. You need to be on the latest service pack within one year of its release for continued support, which at this point means you must be running XP Service Pack 2.So the earliest date that XP SP2 support will end is 2014, but history has shown that Microsoft often gives customers a reprieve as these dates draw near. For example, support for Windows 98 was to be dropped in January 2004, but Microsoft extended it by two and a half years to July 2006.
XP’s life would also be extended if Microsoft were to issue an XP service pack on or after 2013. Microsoft has a tentative date for XP Service Pack 3 in the first half of 2008. If SP3 is released anywhere near on schedule and turns out to be the last service pack for XP, it won’t affect XP’s 2014 end-of-support date.
Linux is always a nice option, but if XP is starting to be Vista’s poor brother concerning hardware support, and that will worsen in the future, for Linux the story is even way worse of course.
Linux is increasingly popular. Many manufacturers are now using linux, mostly ubuntu and the walmart linux pc sold extremely fast and gos is not very good linux for a new computer.
As far as I know, support for XP is supposed to stop in 2014, although MS will stop shipping XP on new PCs at the end of 2008.
I think it’s possible we’ll see some Vista like hardware support being added to XP, either from MS or third parties, for example there is already a preview of DX10 libraries available for XP. See this:
Also don’t forget Windows 7 is theoretically going to be released in 2010.
Anyway, until I can afford to buy the hardware necessary to run Vista and until Vista comes down significantly in price, I’ll keep running XP.
Toggie
I know this cannot fit this poll, anyway if you are not going to upgrade your pc for the next 7 years then give a look to http://www.reactos.org/
I hope they can improve faster though 
BTW I tried Vista. I had a hard time to find were they moved all the settings I needed.
The network status is too many clicks away now :-\
This ulways ;D happens. Despite a thread title specifically naming 2 products, there will ulways be other names mentioned (:NRD)
Linux is a different OS though and it was already mentioned …
I know I used your post as a scapegoat and post about haiku. ;D
That’s an old antimod warfare (it works only for few words) 8)
anyway if you are not going to upgrade your pc for the next 7 years
LOL, that does sound bad doesn’t it I just have to convince the wife that I need a few new bits and bobs for the puter and then explain why I want to spend 300 bucks on a new OS…
[sigh]
Don’t do it Toggie! If she says yes & then later actually tries to use Vista… you’ll be in trouble.
Geez I really hope that sometimes Reactos will reach final.
They started in 1996 :o…
Think about it no more lousy updates, no more buck for a new gui.
This will be If MS will not sue them first. :-\
What I hate the most is that MS crippled some connectivity function in the consumer flawors.
The last one was the 10 half open connections… :o
Windows NT 4 versions were only different for few kbites and registry keys. But the price diff was huge