A

ASSIGNMENT of

INFORMATION &
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
IN EDUCATION
ON
“COMPARISON BETWEEN
WINDOWS XP & WINDOWS
VISTA”

Submitted to:
Mrs. Vijaylakshmi

Submitted by:
Sanjay Prajapati

R H Patel English Medium B.Ed College,

Gandhinagar
Introduction
With 90% of the consumer desktops running it, Microsoft Windows is the
de facto standard operating system. Love it or hate it, it's what most of us have to
work with every day. So when MS decides to introduce a new version of Windows
to the market, there's an understandable uproar. Converting your system to run
with the new version can introduce headaches, from things as minor as rearranging
desktop icons to showstoppers like major application incompatibility. Historically,
the improvements to Windows with each successive version have been worth the
hassle—Windows ME notwithstanding. With this latest transition, however, many
people have been asking whether it really is worth the trouble to upgrade. To
answer that question, here's a head- to-head comparison between the current
incumbent, Windows XP, and the newly arrived successor, Windows Vista.
You may be wondering, why make this comparison now? With the recent
release of Service Pack 1 for Vista, the new Windows has more or less settled into
its permanent form, giving us a chance to realistically compare the two systems on
their own merits. Comparing Vista to XP in the first months of its release was not
a valid measure of their relative merits, as many issues not under MS's control
were causing Vista to misbehave. Now though, issues relating to driver support,
third-party vendor foul-ups, and other such teething issues have been mostly
resolved.
For clarity's sake, this comparison will be broken up by topic, covering each of the
major functions that a modern operating system is expected to fulfill. Following
that, there will be a list of any miscellaneous issues for each OS that weren't
covered in the general overview. So, let's crack open the crypt, and see what
shambling horrors emerge!
Look and Feel
One of the first things people notice about an operating system is how it
presents itself. As much as people might like to say they don't care, appearance
does effect our perception of how a system works. More than just graphical style
though, look and feel is also about the responsiveness of the system. How fast do
menus open when I click on them? Am I getting enough feedback on what the
system is doing when it's busy? Does the system present me with the information I
need in a useful manner?
All of these are questions
that are important to look
and feel.
Windows XP's Luna
interface was criticized by
many as having a childish,
toy-like look. The
conspicuous use of bright
blues and greens throughout
the interface was a radical departure from MS's historically staid black on gray
interface. Colors aside, though, the use of large blocky buttons and oversized icons
lent XP a somewhat childish look. This was not helped any by the addition of
search avatars that looked more appropriate to a saturday morning cartoon show.
Even so, XP's interface offered real improvements in usability. The addition
of thumbnail and gallery view modes to the Explorer file manager meant that
finding a single image in a folder of hundreds was no longer a mind-numbing
chore. The Start menu also saw improvements, with links to the most commonly
used folders added, as well as an automatically updated list of the most frequently
used programs. Windows Vista sought to avoid the "tinkertoys" image that XP had
garnered, and consequently, Vista's Aero interface is dominated by glossy buttons
and smoked glass. The conspicuous use of transparency in many interface
elements is æsthetically
appealing, though it can
lead to some confusion
on a busy desktop with
a dozen or more
windows open at once.
The inbuilt search bar
on the Start menu is a
nice touch, although the
use of cascading slide-over menus in the Programs submenu can be confusing at
times. Improvements to the Explorer file manager include the use of breadcrumb-
style navigation in the address bar, which speeds up navigation without need to
resort to the folder tree side pane.
 Performance and Functionality
Historically, every version of Windows has had more overhead than the
last, requiring a more powerful machine to run than the one before. Traditionally,
this has been offset by improved functionality; each version adds its own bells and
whistles that—hopefully—make life more convenient. What improvements, then,
did XP and Vista each bring to the user experience?
XP's main
improvement to the
user experience was
stability. The version it
replaced in the
consumer market—
Windows ME—was
widely reviled as the
most unstable version
of Windows yet. By
switching over from the aging Win9x kernel to the newer and more stable Win NT
5 kernel, Windows XP eliminated a lot of the crashes and DLL Hell issues that had
plagued users before. Driver rollback gave users the much-needed ability to revert
back to an older version of a given driver, if the update did not produce the desired
results. The addition of sub-pixel font rendering, known as ClearType in MS
jargon, greatly improved the readability of text on LCD-based displays. DirectX 7
(and later DX9) greatly improved 3D graphics quality and performance. With
Service Pack 2, XP also got improved integration with anti-virus and anti-spam
software, as well as a fully functional software firewall. These changes were more
evolutionary than revolutionary, but as a whole they served to make XP a more
stable platform than its predecessors.
 Vista brought a number of changes, both in end-user functionality and in
"under the hood" functionality changes, among which are: newer versions of
Internet Explorer and Windows Media player, and improved search functionality.
Expanded speech recognition and text-to-speech functionality, improvements to
memory management and
process handling, and a whole
new screen rendering
framework were also included.
The new Vista Desktop
Window Manager replaces the
older GDI screen-drawing
interface altogether, effectively
treating the screen as a 3d
image. This allows for
smoother screen-drawing, as
well as amusing visual tricks like live thumbnails of minimized windows, Flip 3D,
and using video files as desktop wallpaper. Windows Gadgets—mini programs
that live on the desktop—give the user at-a-glance info, and make the desktop
useful as more than a place to plop down a bunch of shortcut icons. Overall, Vista
brings a number of badly-needed improvements to how Windows functions in
day-to-day life.
 Compaison
Installation phase
Let us start discussion on comparison from the process of installation itself.
In Windows XP, the system prompts for user information, CD-Key, and other
information etc. after the process of copying files is done. In Windows Vista, it
will ask for information such as computer name, CD-Key before the copying
process. One cannot install Windows Vista in drives formatted using FAT32 file
systems! One need to have NTFS formatted partition for installation of Windows
Vista, which aims at secured future operating systems. Security in FAT32 is less
compared to NTFS. Installation process was also fast, compared to Windows XP.

Booting process
Next significant change is in the booting process. The NT Boot Loader
which was present in the other older operating system has been replaced by
Windows Boot Manager. Windows Vista does not allow storing our own or
application files in Windows installed boot drives such as ‘C:’ for security reasons,
for users including administrator.

Start Menu
Microsoft redesigned the desktop items, such as start menu. The task bar
which consist of start button, which is similar in look of Windows XP start button.
But, the default color of the task bar has been changed. Instead of classic blue, the
default color has been changed to coffee black.

Aero & 3D Effect

 There is a new feature called “Aero” which is enabled for use if the system
contains a high graphics card, which supports DirectX 9.0 and higher. This feature
which is not present in Windows XP enables one to view the open windows as 3D
windows. The task bar and open windows can be given translucent, which means
semi-transparent effect, through “Aero” option.

Larger Icons on Desktop

The address bar of the Windows Vista Explorer is redesigned to show path
as “Computer > Local Disk (C:) > My Folder > My Next Level Folder >” instead
of “C:My FolderMy Next Level Folder” which was in Windows XP. The icons
appearing on the desktop has been made larger compared to Windows XP.
Microsoft has done away with word “My” in the terms such as My Computer, My
Document, in Windows Vista.

Sidebar to save time

Microsoft brought a side bar similar to the side bar of MS-Office 97.
Programs can be quickly accessed, through customizable buttons provided for the
purpose. We need not navigate through Start > Programs > Program Group >
Program Name” to run a program. Instead, we can create a short cut on the side
bar such that Program Name can be directly accessed.
Adding an old hardware devices have a problem in Windows Vista too,
similar to Windows XP. It is said that Windows XP Compatible hardware doesn’t
have any problems. Hardware devices which are not detected by Windows XP
have problems in Vista too. So, look for a logo “Windows Vista or XP compatible”
before buying the hardware. Some old devices can be made to work, if the
manufacturer of the device can provide the needed XP or Vista compatible drivers.
But, some old devices or the system itself may start to behave differently when we
install a XP or Vista compatible drivers which are provided by the manufacturers.
Parental Control- Lets you control your Kid's activity
Vista on the other hand, has a new feature called Parental Control, which is
not present in Windows XP. Parents can control their children who make use of the
computer for playing their popular games. Parents can now deny access to the
computer, deny playing games, and deny even surfing internet. Parents now even
can check the status of guessing passwords.

Better Gaming performance

Performance wise, vista surges ahead compared to Windows XP. The
various tests such as iTunes encoding, Photoshop CS2 image-processing, 3D
games testing using F.E.A.R., has shown that better performance can be achieved
in Windows Vista, than Windows XP.

Additional cost to computer user

But, with Windows Vista, it is hard time for people with old systems, as
they need to burn some of their extra energy, in purchasing hardware. The RAM
needed to be at least 256 MB. One cannot run Vista Aero feature, without a good
3D graphics card that too should support Direct X 9.0. Performance will be slow,
if the processor speed is lower than 2.0 GHz.

Final Thoughts
One thing is sure, Windows Vista surely will be a replacement for Windows
XP, in terms of performance, number of rich features, the way it manages the
computer resources etc. As Vista is in beta phase, we can expect decent
performace when it finally comes put. Let us wait & watch.
Problems
Warts. Lumps. Flaws. Call them what you will, every OS has its defects,
the places where it stumbles, comes up short, or just plain fails to deliver. XP and
Vista both have a lot to recommend them, but they also have their fair share of
problems.
XP's main faults centered around security. Being the first consumer-grade
Windows version to be based on the NT kernel, XP had a combination of
questionable security practices and powerful networking features that made it an
irresistible target for malware authors. Prior to Service Pack 2, a Windows XP
machine would find itself irretrievably compromised within minutes of being
connected to an unprotected internet connection. The default behavior of giving
new user accounts Administrator privileges only compounded this, and the severe
crippling of non-admin user accounts meant that even conscientious users couldn't
do much to proactively limit the damage. Service Pack 2 did much to fix this, by
fixing the previously unusable Windows Firewall, and adding prominent
notifications when anti-virus programs were missing or out-of-date. Even so, users
can still find themselves horribly compromised with little-to-no warning, and
frequent reinstalls are a depressingly common remedy to the numerous infections.
Much of Vista's early criticism has centered around stability, rather than security.
The introduction of a new driver model, as well as heavy DRM provisions, served
to bring back the sort of instability and frequent crashes that many users had hoped
were left behind with WinME. Much of this has since been fixed, as hardware
manufacturers have become more familiar with the new driver model, but issues
with stability remain, especially when legacy WinXP drivers must be used to
maintain compatibility with older hardware.
A problem that has not gone away, though, is Vista's new privilege
management system, known as User Account Control. To be fair, it does allow for
more flexibility in privilege escalation, letting people run as limited users most of
the time without too much difficulty. The problem lies in its implementation.
Constant, persistent, annoying nag boxes pop up whenever you do anything that
requires privilege escalation. This escalation, by the way, is required for not only
actions taken by third party programs, but for many things within Windows itself,
including a fair portion of the Control Panel. An operation as simple as copying
files from one user to another can generate UAC prompts for every copy and move
operation, as well as for opening folders and subfolders

One criticism common to both is the use of product activation, known in

MS jargon as Windows Genuine Advantage. Intended to combat piracy, WGA
serves mainly to frustrate and punish users who purchased their copies of
Windows legitimately. An inventory of a system's hardware is done at install, and
thereafter, every time a significant change is made—i.e. one you have to open the
case for—the user is required to re-activate Windows. This activation process
should, in theory, be easily done over the internet, but it often fails due to internet
connectivity issues, corrupted hardware indices, or any number of other unknown
issues. Additionally, if the number of significant changes passes a certain
threshold, the user is required to call Microsoft and spend time groveling to a
customer disservice lackey in order to get a new product key. Ironically, though,
this does little to impede those who would obtain their copies of Windows
illegitimately. WGA cracks, keygens, and other bypass mechanisms are plentiful
and easily obtained, and frequently used. In all, the main accomplishment of WGA
seems to be the continued alienation of MS's primary customer base.
Conclusion
So, the question remains, which is better, XP or Vista? The answer is: it
depends. Aside from a few easily-forgettable games from Microsoft Game
Studios, there are no games that require Vista to run. Older programs, on the other
hand, can sometimes misbehave or outright fail to function in Vista, due either to
bad coding practices on the part of the application writers, or irregularities in the
backwards-compatibility modules of Vista itself. Unless you run into one of these
edge cases, however, the choice boils down to cost vs. benefit. Vista offers
improved æsthetics and a more featureful user interface, at the cost of increased
overhead, occasional glitches, and in the case of laptops, somewhat reduced
battery life. XP offers the broadest compatibility with older hardware and
programs, but still suffers from all the old complaints. In the end, it's up to you to
decide.