XP vs Vista: the crappy pc test

well, like most geeks out there, i have quite a few 'crappy' systems.  basically computers that have been 'frankensteined' together with parts i've gotten from pals, co-workers, random strangers. 

one of these systems consists of an Athlon 64 3000+, Winfast mobo, 512mb memory, 100gb hd, and using onboard memory (64mb shared).  for a while i was using this pc as a living room pc and had vista business ed running on it, however dvd playback on it was horrible, unbearable and the OS just seemed to lag.  i decided to bring it back to the parent's farm so i had a pc to watch movies at night when up there.  after struggling through the choppiest movie i've ever seen (major lag probs in vista, video playback just seems to blow). 

so this last weekend i decided to put good ole XP Prof back on it.  dvd playback was perfect, no lag or anything.  os was much snappier and music playback also was smoother.

obviously this makes sense since vista requires a much higher set of hardware requirements and i was using onboard video.  however i never thought the difference in video playback would be so much different (unbearable in vista and smooth in xp).

this actually leads me to my rant on vista. where is the video driver support??  seriously, i'm a little sick of not having the ability to use full screen overlays on my secondary monitor.  for being an OS that claims to be aimed towards multimedia, it sure seems to fall flat on its back. however most of the blame still goes towards the video card manufacturers and their horribly slow updates to drivers. come on! you've had over 2 years to get drivers working.

i'll get off my box now, but seamonkey's 'mr. obvious' tip of the day, stick w/XP for those crappier, slower systems.  vista just is too much of a hog for these notsopowerful systems. 

peace