GottaBeMobile - OQO model 02 Battle: XP vs. Vista : Tablet PC & Mobile PC News & Video Reviews, and Tablet PC Forums

Thursday, June 14, 2007

« Look Ma, No Keyboard | Main | Please Don't Wear an OQO Model 02 on Your Belt! »

OQO model 02 Battle: XP vs. Vista

- Hugo Ortega

Some of you have been following my movements and spotted the fact that I am on my fourth OQO model 02. To cut a long story short, and catch the rest of you up to speed, the first model 02 I received died three days after booting the machine, and the second one did the same shortly after that. Both had flawed cooling fans which caused the motherboards to overheat (and conversely created a putrid smell of burnt PCB to bellow from inside the chassis). So enamoured with the device was I that after two weeks of unrest I decided to crack open yet another OQO model 02, my third!

Staring at two dead machines I started doing some research. I not only found happy users all over the Globe but to make it worse I was playing spectator to a sport that I normally excel at...Vlogging. So in order to stop watching and start posting again I regained confidence and spent a week getting to know my third OQO, this time with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition out of the box. Still discontented however I missed the WOW so much that I sold my Tablet enabled device last week and purchased a Vista Ultimate Version this week. It was actually the Vista version I wanted from the beginning but the XP one I settled for upfront because of delays in April this year. Strangely enough, in some perverse way, I have ended up where I began...with the Vista Ultimate version I so badly wanted.

So where does this leave me? Well for a brief moment in time I was the proud owner of two OQO devices simultaneously. So if seeing-is-believing is your thing then see-and-believe this. Vista actually runs faster on an OQO model 02 than XP does (IMHO). These findings are not purely scientific however in order to obtain comparable results I have used two devices in this video, i.e. one with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (installed out of the box) and one with Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (installed out of the box). Both are of the OQO model 02 “BEST” breed and both have all their Service Packs and exactly the same apps installed. I have plugged in the exact same Mouse into the base of each unit and done my best to launch each instance of the application simultaneously to not give either a distinct advantage.

You be the judge?

Watch it on YouTube

OQO

6/14/2007 6:35 AM MST

OQO model 02 Battle: XP vs. Vista Comments [9] | Digg This | del.icio.us | Citations

Thursday, June 14, 2007 7:21:24 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Great video Hugo, but why does the display on the OQO Tablet look worst then the Vista? It's more darker.

Michael Venini

Thursday, June 14, 2007 7:29:46 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Hi Michael,

Great to hear from you again. Truth be told I think it is only that the Screen Brightness was turned down. The camera always highlights this as to the eye I could not tell the difference. Oops. For the record, the two screens at full brightness are identical.

Hugo Ortega

Thursday, June 14, 2007 9:01:49 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Were all features (such as wireless) enabled/disabled on both to match?

Jeff

Thursday, June 14, 2007 10:01:50 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Did OQO have an explanation for how two separate systems died so rapidly?

This does not sound good!

Cuhulin

Thursday, June 14, 2007 11:08:44 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Love the video. Really shows how the speed difference between the two operating systems.

About that acrid smoke smell: Hubby and I call that "magic smoke". After all, once it leaks, the magic is gone from the machine and it won't work anymore. :)

Kathy Jacobs

Thursday, June 14, 2007 1:14:51 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Hi Hugo.

Nice video.

This is a factory build you're testing here right? Have you checked the status of the usual indexing, gaurdian, sidebar etc etc to see if OQO have already optimised Vista?
Would be nice is they've done some of that for the customer.
If not, i'm suprised by the results. I wonder if those Office apps are well cached though. Mmm.
Not convinced but you've raised my eyebrow a bit!

Regards
Steve.

Steve Paine

Thursday, June 14, 2007 3:08:44 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I have to second what Steve Paine said. I've been running both on mine and I think (not subjective, I know) that XP is faster. Was your Vista optimised? (prefetch etc turned off). I'm actually going to do a clean install of just Vista this weekend anyway because the better tablet features make it worth it.

What about battery life? (I haven't watched the video yet!) Did you notice any difference?

PS: Hope you haven't been affected by the weather.

John in Norway

Thursday, June 14, 2007 6:45:04 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I haven't ever seen a vista machine being faster than xp without optimizing it...
... and i have seen a lot.

.. please Hugo, check and report difference of this setup.

jkk

Thursday, June 14, 2007 10:05:05 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

@Jeff:

Hi Jeff, as you can see I sent an email so wireless was definitley switched on (on both). Bluetooth was switched off on both. Iwas trying to get the most comparable look I could. Cheers.

@Cuhulin:

Hi Cuhulin. All they could suggest was that what I experienced was extremely abnormal and was not the same experience they were finding with other clients. If you read blogs related to the model 02 I think they're right. Seems I just got unlucky.

@Kathy Jacobs:

Hi Kathy. So funny that you and hubby have coined a phrase for this. Does that mean that there is "Magic Smoke" in the Jacob's Household pften? LOL. Maybe you should stop p[utting them in the Microwave Oven. LOL

@Steve Paine:

Hi Chippy. "Out of the Box" is the term I used, which I think transaltes to Chippy speak for "factory build". WRT Vista optimization by OQO I can confirm that out-of-the-box the model 02 had SideBar turned off. All other settings were as per Vista installs from a Retail Pack. The only thing I optimized was Indexing for Outlook (only) and this should not have affected the video. Also with regards to your comment on caching I performed all these tasks from a Cold Boot to avoid anything sitting in the RAM. (Does Vista create a file to remember usage for every cold boot?)

I would think that OQO has done something for the OS to work this well as I have done nothing at all. I'm glad your eyebrows got a workout.

@John in Norway:

Hi John. (See my comments to Steve Paine above). Battery is about the same as far as noticed but becasue I only had the two units simultaneously for 48hrs then I could not give you a reliable answer.

@JKK:

Hi JKK. That's why I posted the video. It is NOT optimized at all other than whatever OQO does. If what they do has made this work this well then I am happy to give kudos to them. I am using this device fulltime and it IS faster than the XP Tablet PC version I had. Maybe the XP Tablet version was crap out-of-the-box, LOL.

Hugo Ortega

Comments are closed.