<p>So Vista's been out for 3 years now, and it still sucks. It's slow and, from my experience, it's not very good at copying files (waaaay longer than XP). And of course, XP is a good (not great) OS ... it's just been around too long, and it's time for something new. </p>
<p>Well, as college students, $$$ is a big deal, and sometimes computers cost too much in terms of $$$. Apparently, since they know Vista is such a failure (UMich still installs XP on computers instead of Vista, for example), Microsoft is offering Windows 7 Home Premium for $29 for all students enrolled at an eligible college/university. </p>
<p>NOTE: If you bought a computer over the summer with Vista on it, this doesn't apply to you, b/c you get get Win 7 for free from the manufacturer, like Sony, HP, Dell, etc.</p>
<p>If your University doesn’t do MSDNAA you can get a membership from IEEE or ACM for like only $15 and $20 respectively and get the same thing. Only difference is NO support but if you’re a geek like me you don’t need it. </p>
<p>I’ve lived with Vista on this Thinkpad for a year and it’s STILL a piece of **** after turning off a ton of stuff and tweaking it. Hopefully Windows 7 comes out to be what every reviewer is saying (less resource utilization % of base system versus Vista).</p>
<p>You do know that Windows 7 is already up on MSDNAA right willzzz88? Why don’t you install it? It certainly is one of the better operating systems that I’ve used. Clearly better than Vista.</p>
<p>When I bought my ThinkPad in 2007, I chose XP Pro instead of Vista Home Premium because I had heard “stories.” While my friends who opted for Vista bemoaned their choice, I smugly enjoyed the aging but stable XP.</p>
<p>In January 2009 - ostensibly to prevent myself from playing WarCraft III but actually to justify the 4GB RAM set I bought for Christmas - I did a clean install of Windows Vista Business x64 and I followed sage advice: leave Vista alone and let it do its thing.</p>
<p>The results were excellent. I never had any issues with Vista; in fact, my experience was quite pleasant. As an example of how your mileage will always vary, Vista Business x64 booted up faster than XP Pro SP2, logged in faster, opened programs faster after SuperFetch cached the handful of programs I routinely use, and shut down faster when asked.</p>
<p>Anyway, when Windows 7 became available through MSDNAA, I couldn’t resist, despite my good impression of Vista. I did a clean install of 7 Professional on Labor Day, and I basically felt that I got an improved version of Vista. That is, it simply made what was already good better. In particular, the little things such as Aero effects disappearing when windows are maximized were fixed.</p>
<p>I feel that many people misunderstood Vista. They attributed its admittedly higher RAM usage as evidence of being bloated. In fact, it was largely SuperFetch at work behind the scenes. The problem was that when Vista was released, people were still stuck in the mindset of “less RAM usage is better.” That may have been true back in the Windows 98 and early XP days, when 1GB was rare and 4GB was obscene, but it is not true now.</p>
<p>I really don’t think that Vista’s RAM usage was what caused most people to dislike it because most users have no idea what RAM is. For most people, the Vista experience was just plain bad: the drivers weren’t there, the system wasn’t stable, and it was just plain slow. Granted Vista eventually did shape up to be a decent OS, Windows 7 seems to still be leaps ahead of Vista in terms of performance. It simply ‘feels’ faster. Also I love the new taskbar.</p>
<p>The driver issues were a problem upon launch. By the time I adopted Vista (January 2009), I didn’t have any driver issues. Lenovo provided every driver I needed.</p>
<p>Perhaps a case of YMMV, but I did not experience any system instability with Vista Business x64; I never once got a BSoD.</p>
<p>As I said, in my case, Vista Business x64 was faster than XP Pro in several aspects: startup, opening programs after SuperFetch had cached my most commonly used programs, and shutdown.</p>
<p>Would programs programmed for Linux that work on Red Hat also work on Ubuntu? What are the differences between the two? Would Red Hat be better for engineering studies or it doesn’t matter?</p>
<p>I’m looking into Linux for my computer, and as you can see I’m linux-stupid. </p>