BuckoA51 wrote:
On modern hardware it most definitely does NOT run faster and smoother, Windows 8 and 7 boot faster, lock up less (both temporarily and permanently) and are better optimised for multi-core CPUs. XP probably has the edge when it comes to older hardware but certainly not on anything new.
None of the NT versions of Windows are going to lock up unless something is seriously wrong. Speed wise, I've sometimes felt my web browser on 64-bit linux was a bit quicker than it is under XP32. I suspect the use of 64-bit instructions may explain that. Maybe also the additional RAM, but I don't think so, as it shouldn't need that much RAM anyway. I'd like to try XP 64-bit sometime to see how it runs. I know it's abandoned but I'm still curious.
Boot speed doesn't matter IMO, but from what I can tell XP boots faster than 7, and at least as fast as 8. Since 8 is using that "hybrid boot" trick, where it's secretly half hibernating and not fully shutting down, I think XP gets more credit overall. If you need to truly shut down Windows 8, the only way to do it is with the command line, and then the subsequent boot shows itself to be very slow. Granted, this isn't something that would be needed very often.
XP doesn't have hybrid boot, but even without that it still boots quickly. Personally I always liked using S3 standby, which is very fast.
I've never made a thorough comparison between XP/7/8 using matching hardware, but they're all fast enough. I used to have a computer that took 5 minutes to boot. 4 minutes for the stupid BIOS and 1 for Win2k. Even that didn't bother me.. much. 😀
Plus on XP there's the 4gb memory cap
Certainly true, but even now I hardly notice any problem with it. It's very rare for me to fill the 3.25GB usable RAM on my machine. I don't keep up with the latest games though, so I'm sure it might matter by now for some of those. The RAM thing is one more reason I'd like to try XP64 some time.
you're limited to two monitors (I run 3)
I'm using a 3 monitor desktop right now. It's easy to do, I just plugged them in and enabled them in the control panel.
Are you talking about ATI/nVidia's driver support for stretching a game across multiple monitors? It's true that they both chose not to implement driver support for that on XP. I was disappointed by that. I've used a software utility "softth" to do this, but it's a pain to set that up. From the little bit that I tried a game on 3 monitors, I'm not sure if I actually like playing that way, but I'll be fiddling with it some more. The driver support probably does make it easier to set up on Vista+.
Finally XP has always been a security nightmare due to it having no SUDO/UAC equivalent
"runas" is similar to sudo, it's in Win2k and XP, I don't know if it's in NT4. There's a right click option to run things as an alternate (presumably elevated) user. Most people run XP with full-time administrator permissions, but that's just a user preference, it doesn't have to be that way. You can right click and run things as an admin account when needed, while otherwise staying as a restricted user.