Tip of the Month - January

Stick to Windows XP

Now we’re not trying to say that Windows Vista is a bad operating system, because it isn’t, but in our opinion if you have a choice of buying or pre-installing a Windows Operating System then we’d say that currently XP is the better bet.

What’s more “Windows 7” will appear at around about the end of this year and it may turn out to be better all round than Vista. According to PC Pro Magazine ( November 2008 ) “Vista is unequivocally slower than XP when running on exactly the same hardware”. If this is the case and you’d like Vista then make sure you have a minimum or 2GB RAM and a good processor like the Intel Core 2 Duo. XP can happily and speedily run on 1GB.

Now let’s not pick on Microsoft because there is an Industry wide problem with virtually all of the latest software; those who buy it become to an extent “Guinea Pigs” for any bugs and glitches. Sure the big software houses have large departments that extensively test new software but they simply can’t cover all eventualities. Some programs on some models of computer will cause conflicts, sometimes with the Operating System. That’s why software providers issue “Service Packs” and “Patches” to fix problems that have only arisen after their products have been in the market for a while and often it’s Joe Public who’s alerted them in the first place.

So we think that it’s always a good idea to stay one step behind in software and Operating Systems specifically. For our business customers we still run Windows Server 2003 because it’s had 3 Service Packs issued since launch and it runs beautifully. That’s not to say that Windows Server 2008 isn’t great too, but caution is always a good idea in IT, that’s what we’ve learnt from experience!