Compatibility mode works with some software and not other.

The only way to tell if your software will run that way is to try it.

As far as compatibility to XP SP2 being the same as XP Pro, yes and no.

XP SP2 can be XP Home or XP Pro or even XP media center.

Programs function the same in all 3, but each has a slightly different set of default settings and capabilities. For example, XP Home won't join a domain.

If they are insisting on Vista on your machine instead of W7, make sure it is Ultimate or Business NOT Home basic or premium.

From my testing of W7, compatability mode seems to work better than it did in Vista (like almost everything else). But again, not ALL programs that were designed for XP will work, but many more will than with Vista.

W7 seems to be what Vista should have been, an actual improvement to XP.

IMHO, Vista was a step backwards from XP, it was not even as good as W95.

Okay since NOBODY correctly answered what XP SP2 is take a lot of whats said by them witha grain of salt added.

XP SP2 is simply Windows XP SERVICE PACK 2 which closed many real bad security gaps in XP but also caused many programs to crash after SP2 was added. microgreed added a patch to SERVICE PACK 2 in the form of a weekly update which fixed that issue.

Now about Vista. From my son who is in IT.

1 Most issues were caused by people upgrading from xp without really knowing what they were doing . Remember win95 same deal. Vista needs more Ram 1 gig absolute rock bottom XP could run on 256 megs. Most folks who had issues DID NOT ADD RAM.

2 OEM installs issues were caused by folks cutting corners on RAM when getting a system and found gee its slow well duh.

I have 3 pc's running two versions of vista all are Vista premium which gives you more toys then basic. ultimate is a waste of money unless your a hard core gamer and need unlimeted ram in the 64 bit version.

I have never had a crash freeze or other issue with anyone of my sytems running vista which is far more then I can say for XP.

System 1

Area 51 Liquid cool tower Athlon phenom 2.56 ghz Vista Home Premium 64 sp1 8 gigs ram dual Nvidea gforce crossfire enabled 512 meg graphics cards 12 T total SATA harddrives. My main system for rendering photos and gaming.

System 2

Acer Athlon 64x2 4000+ 2 gigs ram nvidea graphic card Vista Home Premium 32 bit

strictly business machine for wife.

System 3

Dell insprion laptop Intell Core dou 2.56 ghz 4 gigs ram nvidea graphics card

Vista Home Premium 64 320 gig solid state hard drive.

Win 7 i tried it on a demo system it is the worst yet for serious users for casual home users yeah your gonna cream your self but for gaming and photo work GAG very resource dependent 2 gigs of ram just to run the os stupid.

You are the first person I have ever herd say they like vista. That's good, I am glad its working for you. I went around it to Windows7 64 bit OS and I love it, I have not had any problems with it except problems stated above which are not a problem. I like the way it handles graphics, then again my pc is set up for gaming. I like that I can add memory to it and I am not restricted to 4 gigs, I have 8. It works for me, having said that I really did not like XP the last OS that I used that I liked was 2000 pro. Then again I do like linux but there on my other boxes.

River

For me Vista was slow...

No let me rephrase that: S L O W ! ! ! ! ! ! !

I am the lead (actually now the only) IT guy where I work. My experience with Vista was on my machine at work -- an Intel Core2 Duo 2.8 Ghz, 2 Gigs Ram NVidia GeForce 8600, WD 500 Gig "Black" series SATA2 (7200 RPM, 32 Megs, 12ms true Access Time, 70 Megs/sec sustained data transfer rate). That is a machine that should have just FLOWN "at the speed of light". Yet, Vista was slow. Not unuseably slow, but VERY noticeably slower than WinXP on the same machine. Vista SP1 helped some. But right after I installed Vista SP1 and noticed not much of a change in speed, I was so frustrated with it that I blew away Vista and installed Linux onto that drive instead. The other drive is still WinXP as it has always been since I got the machine.

On the few lesser computers I tried, Vista was irritatingly and unuseably slow. Whereas WinXP runs fine (and fast) on them. No exceptions to that rule, period. I have yet to find a machine that can run Vista at what I would call a reasonable speed (but all of them run WinXP at a reasonable speed). I haven't tried a "Quad Core" or 8 Gigs of RAM -- maybe that's what you need to run this bloat.

Of course my "bar" is way high for speed. I'm one of those people like you see in the movies who can click here, then there, then there, so quickly that most other people have a very hard time following it. I'm also somewhat of a speed-reader. So even a few seconds delay is quite irritating to me especially when I am in the middle of something major and need to get stuff done quick (happens frequently at work since I'm one guy doing the job of 3). Vista FILLED with "few second delays" everywhere. WinXP is fast and responsive.

On top of the loss of speed, they went and changed all the settings around in Vista, and hid stuff behind many clicks. Over time I've learned where stuff is hidden and I can now find most of what I need -- but to this day there are still times on a Vista machine where I end up spending minutes just trying to find the damn setting I want to change. Which is quite frustrating.

Vista to me has been a complete and utter dissappointment. About the only good thing I can say for it is it does look kind of nice (ie: graphics are good) and I do kind of like the Desktop Widgets. But is that enough to make me actually use the thing? Or consider deploying it on most of the computers where I work? Hell no!! We are still a WinXP shop. Windows 7? Maybe. That remains to be seen.

Thats my 75-cents worth...

Here are the actual physical RAM limits to all versions of Vista.

Physical Memory Limits: Windows Vista

The following table specifies the limits on physical memory for Windows Vista.

Version Limit in 32-bit Windows Limit in 64-bit Windows

Windows Vista Ultimate 4 GB 128 GB

Windows Vista Enterprise 4 GB 128 GB

Windows Vista Business 4 GB 128 GB

Windows Vista Home Premium 4 GB 16 GB

Windows Vista Home Basic 4 GB 8 GB

Windows Vista Starter 1 GB Not applicable