Windows Vista or XP?

[DJ N]

Hi all,

I am close to purchasing a new desktop and notebook for home. The question begs – do I purchase the above with Vista, or do I try and see if I can get XP instead. From an astro point of view, at this stage I will be using the computers for the following,

Laptop
Aiming to autoguide the HEQ5 with either PHD (apparently Vista OK) or GuideDog. Once I have purchased the laptop I will probably purchase the Qguide camera for guiding.

Desktop
Predominantly for processing/stacking photos……..(eg. Deep Sky Stacker, Registax) taken with the Canon 400D.

Really confused to how much of an issue people are still having with Vista.

Look forward to some replies.

Cheers,

Daniel

[acropolite (Phil)]

Try to get XP, Vista is a dog IMO.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Vote 1. XP

You may be able to get most things going on Vista, but I don't know anyone that has Images Plus working on it yet. Maybe there was a secret I was missing out on. Besides Vista really needs a gig of ram to work even moderately well whereas XP will get by with 512 meg. That extra 512 will make quite a difference with photoshop and other memory intensive programs (registax, Deep Sky Stacker ) They will operate without the extra ram but boy doesn't it make a difference when you have it.

[programmer]

Vista, unless..

You have a really old (slow) computer (yours are new, so no problem).
or
You have some software that definitely won't run on Vista

Memory 'issue' is a non-issue, with 1Gb (Edit: make that 2Gb) of RAM well under $100 (get at least 2 for Vista). Notebook RAM higher in price though. (Edit: 1Gb as cheap as $50! but vendors add lots of markup in notebooks)

What are the rough specs of your new pc's? I just bought a new notebook, lowest-end I could find, and it runs Vista fine on 512Mb (I will probably upgrade RAM soon). Higher spec notebook should romp it in.

I'd be happy to Vista-test any software you might want to use, if you tell me where I can get a demo. I've been using Vista for a year or more.

[DJ N]

Hi again,

Thanks for replies so far. In terms of what I am looking at to purchase I should have been a bit more specific.

For the desktop, I will probably go with an Intel Core 2 Duo (E6550/E6750 or E6850 ??), with 3 Gig RAM (not sure if there is any point 4GB - from what I gather, the processor can only use a max of 3.2 GB). As for the laptop, I would hope for a Core 2 Duo as well, but in terms of RAM probably 1 GB RAM. As mentioned, the laptp will be predominantly utilised for autoguiding. All the photo processing and so forth would be done on the desktop (when the wife will not be using it!!)

[iceman (Mike)]

You might want to get an external hard-drive to capture your data to.. that way, you can just unplug from the laptop and plug into the desktop, without having to transfer gigabytes of files everywhere.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

If your laptop is only going to used for autoguiding why not go back a few years and see if you can pick up one that still has a serial port or parallel port on it. Even if you decide to us a USB to serial adapter you will still have a serial port for applications such as DSLR Focus/Focus Assist/DSLR Shutter.

[DJ N]

I have been checking the used/secondhand market for a laptop, as I don't think I need anything too fancy just for guiding, but for anything in a half decent condition seems to fetch a few hundred dollars (and who knows the 'real' condition). I suppose if that is the case I would rather put a few hundred bucks on top and purchase new. Seems to be quite a lot around for around the $1000 mark.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

My autoguiding laptop is an old T20 think pad running 98SE and apart from a bit of an idiosyncracy starting up, (it likes to be turned on, left for 20 min, turned off and then back on before windoze boots up ) it operates just about everything I have including my SBIG with CCDsoft. Sweet as!

[Ric]

Hi Daniel, I find that Registax runs quite happily under Vista on my laptop and I can't see any difference between that and my desktop running XP.

Cheers

[programmer]

Originally Posted by DJ N

I have been checking the used/secondhand market for a laptop, as I don't think I need anything too fancy just for guiding, but for anything in a half decent condition seems to fetch a few hundred dollars (and who knows the 'real' condition). I suppose if that is the case I would rather put a few hundred bucks on top and purchase new. Seems to be quite a lot around for around the $1000 mark.

I found the same thing. People paying way too much on eBay for rubbish. So I bought an Acer Aspire 5315, going for $640 after $99 cashback, with Vista home basic, wireless, DVD, 3x USB2, 80Gb HDD, 512Mb RAM, 15.4" widescreen... (no serial though! not the old fashioned type anyway).