Stop Bashing Vista.

[Wheelchair]

Alright, So about a few days ago I made a thread asking why People don't like vista, Now I'm telling you why they should and the truth behind Vista.


Stop Bashing Vista

Vista haters are a many. Most of them have not even used Vista and complain about it just because what they see and other users who do not understand what Vista is about. Microsoft must have big headaches for peoples lack of understanding Vista's hardware requirements and how to run it properly. All you need is a little googling and exploring, and Vista will rock your socks.

First of all, let me state a fact of the minimum requirements for multi-tasking and gaming on Windows Vista.

AMD / Intel Dual Core at least 2ghz - 3ghz or higher.
At least a good set of 667-800 2GB of RAM. 4GB for 64bit
A 7200RPM HDD or higher

Let's start off some of Vista's key point features.
-User Account Control (UAC)
-Superfetch (Explained later)
-More advanced Diagnostic Tools(Event Viewer is improved, Reliability and Performance monitor. Windows key + Pause, and go to Performance. MANY useful tools there.
-More advanced Security (Windows Defender, UAC, Better Windows Firewall
-Improved Stability (Better OS code, and again better diagnostic tools.
-Advanced TCIP Protocols (You will notice web pages load faster. Note, on a program called "Tune Up Utilities" it will already claim that TCIP is already optimized!)

Superfetch is the cornerstone of Vista's new memory management.
You can basically say "Free RAM is wasted RAM"
Superfetch will cache lots of needed boot/system/games/app files into your RAM, for faster start up time and performance in those applications. If you have 2GB of physical RAM, and at least 75% of it is not being used, that RAM is being wasted. Superfetch uses your RAM to improve your system performance over time. It will improve your general responsiveness of your system.
Superfetch will not keep filling your RAM till it is run out, it knows its limit. If you 4-8GB of RAM(Recommended on 64bit) it will used even MORE! 64bit goes even farther than 32bit, which is one reason why I & most recommend 4-8GB for Windows Vista 64bit
Vista also uses part of the XP's crippled Prefetch, it enhances it, and slaps it in there to work with Superfetch.


User Account Control was made annoying on purpose. Other than the annoying prompts it has some good features. A lot of times spyware / viruses / misc can be considered a virus in your "profile" not your system, with UAC enabled.
UAC is another layer of security, requiring Administrative rights to launch a program ensures this too.
UAC will also protect you from official DVD infested with bad rookits (Anyone remember Sony's Rookit?). This is important as to why you should use Tweak-UAC and set it to quiet mode. This will not reduce your protection, this will not run in the background. It will remove the prompts, and just requiring you to run as administrator.

Get it here: http://www.tweak-uac.com/

Games may run worse not due to Vista being a horrible operating system. It is drivers that are not made well for Vista(For example: Intel IGP drivers can give a 20% performance decrease in Vista over XP)
Also most games are simply coded badly, and have horrible support for Vista. It is a shame, really.

People have claimed that Vista is using a lot of RAM(I explained a while earlier) but people do not realize that Vista does what is called: "Processing Idle Tasks" which makes your HDD light go crazy. I recommend to not do anything or play a game while this is happening. To monitor what it is doing, do the following:

Press Ctrl+Shift+Escape (This is Task Manager)
Go to the Processes tab
Click Show processes from all users
Click the CPU tab until System Idle Process is at the top.
You will see processes stopping and starting, wait till System Idle Process is at 99. If it is running DfrgNtfs, this is optimizing your boot time.
I recommend to also force it once in a while, to do this:
Right Click On Any Blank Space (Such as your Desktop)
Go to New
Create Shortcut
Put in in: rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
Click Next
Name it anything you want

Now right click the shortcut and run as Administrator. Use my tips above to monitor it.

I also recommend using Vista's diagnostic and cleaning tools. Press Windows Key + Pause, and go to Performance.
Check Event Log often, look for Application, System and Security. Help and Support and Microsoft's Online help will help you fix these errors for the best stability and performance out of your system.

Overall Vista has a learning curve and steep memory requirements, but it has advanced tools and memory management skills and security and TCIP enhancements.

Credit to eXe for Information.

[Serious J]

I will stop bashing Vista when the next Windows OS comes out and Vista is nothing but a forgotten crappy OS like ME was.

Your post seems to have a lot of "here's how to get Vista working properly" and it reads a lot like Red Hat installation instructions circa 2000. Why would I want to go through all that trouble to be able to do the exact same things I can do with XP?

If you like Vista, then all the power to you. Everyone has their preferences, but I refuse to buy into a graphical update to XP tied in with DX10 for a few hundred bucks.

Edit: And yes, I have used Vista and am basing my opinion off of experience.

[Wheelchair]

Yeah its all related to Opinion, and fact.

But Opinion is 90% of people judgment, If it doesn't feel right, then It's not.

[Strelok]

I will stop bashing Vista when the next Windows OS comes out and Vista is nothing but a forgotten crappy OS like ME was.

The sad thing is Windows 7 will have the same problems. You cannot expect an Operating System, especially Windows, to function properly without proper user care and updates released by their makers. Windows 7 will have the same complaints. XP had the same complaints that Vista has had.

Your post seems to have a lot of "here's how to get Vista working properly" and it reads a lot like Red Hat installation instructions circa 2000. Why would I want to go through all that trouble to be able to do the exact same things I can do with XP?

I don't believe you read his post carefully.

Last time I checked, XP does not have the same Superfetch and memory management capabilities Vista does. Last time I checked, I don't believe XP Event Viewer and Help & Support is as advanced as Windows Vista is.

Everytime I scavenge through Event Log to make sure my system is stable, I simply go to the Microsoft Help and report the error, and most of the time there is a fix or a recommendation for it.
Have you tried to customize a bit more? I don't remember XP monitoring boot time and telling me my HDD needed to be defragmented.

Vista also once told me that my hard drive was failing and to backup all data. Sure enough, after a week or so, it failed.

There is lot of advanced gpedit.msc customizations for Vista that XP did not have. Vista's GUI is a lot more flexible and customizable than XP was.

So far: Vista can diagnose problems more efficient and differently than XP. It has it's superior memory management for a lot more and different than what XP does. You customize to the extent that you cannot do with XP.

People complain a lot of stability and performance issues for Vista. More than half do not get the latest updates and service packs. They are also using outdated drivers for their hardware. NVIDIA had bad drivers for Vista back in the day, and caused 20% of crashes on Vista. Vista has grown up, there are even a lot of hotfixes that are not even availible on Windows Update. I have never had a BSOD on Vista yet, only when an overclock has failed.

Sure you can browse the web and play games on XP, too... I don't think you want to be playing a game when your system is instable. I don't think you want to browse the web with performance issues.
Like Wheelchair has said, Vista has more advanced TCIP protocols, that makes you browse the web a lot different and a lot faster.
Vista and it's Superfetch and memory management capabilities speeds up launch times, reduces stuttering and loading times in games. Again you are having a different experience on gaming and web browsing!

Vista is a completely different experience, and if you take care of the OS you can do what you need to do more efficiently than you can with Windows XP. Windows XP has support up to 2014, but that doesn't mean any critical updates. Vista is having a lot of reliability updates that Windows users don't get.

Again, Vista has a different way of protecting you. So again you are doing things differently than XP.

If you like Vista, then all the power to you. Everyone has their preferences, but I refuse to buy into a graphical update to XP tied in with DX10 for a few hundred bucks.

It is more than a graphical update if you research more.

Edit: And yes, I have used Vista and am basing my opinion off of experience.

Perhaps you did not dig far enough into Vista. As you obviously do not understand it.

Proof please? I hate Vista because it is buggy, has unnecessary functions and security protocols and is incompatible with tonnes of software already available. I'm on a Computer Science degree, and 80% students I talk to have used and despise Vista. The other 20% either haven't used it, or it came with their computer and they haven't used any other OS yet. Not one of my lecturers use Vista, because it makes simple tasks a pain in the arse. Didn't IBM recently state they weren't upgrading over 80,000 computers to Vista because there was no plausible reason to do so? To claim most people hate Vista without having tried it is quite a statement, and one that requires some form of evidence to back it up.

Vista is in no way more buggy than XP can be. Have those students and you really have gotten all the latest stability updates. Have you even tried to diagnose the problems with the tools Vista has given you?

Most stability issues are caused by bad drivers from such as NVIDIA, Intel, ATI, AMD, etc. Intel IGP drivers get a 20% performance loss over XP. Again you cannot blame microsoft for other peoples software not working properly on their operating system.

Have you seen how badly coded applications and games are now? Do you really expect them to get off their lazy butt's and code it properly for a new operating system?

Most complaints I see are user errors, and those ignorant enough to think Microsoft has control of what other people do with their software. If a piece of software does not work well on Vista, that is not the operating systems fault.

Overall Vista is actually a big jump over XP if you look at it's advanced features and ways of handling things. I will always prefer Vista over XP, it is faster, more stable, and it gives me the tools I need for the maximum stability and performance. At least Vista gets faster over time. XP as it gets more bloated with software, has nothing better to do than to get fat. It is out dated.

[Serious J]

I like Vista and you don't. You want a medal? Maybe a gold star?

I prefer cookies. Chocolate chip if you have them.

stuff

Why do I feel like I just got schilled?

[Strelok]

Why do I feel like I just got schilled

It was an informative post, maybe if you actually read it it will enlighten you. I believe it is actually pathetic to refuse to read anything good about it!

I'll make this short.

Why blame Microsoft for the makers of other software that it does not work with their operating system? Printers are a good example. If they do not release proper drivers for Vista, then it is not Microsoft's fault. It is an obvious thing, and you clearly lack the ability to understand that.

You obviously clearly don't want to know why Vista is not just a new code of paint. I can't believe the low comprehension levels these days.

For me this 'philosophy' sums it up quite well.

Do you have resources? Vista will waste them.
Because wasting is good. If your Vista is slow, you are a fool. Buy more hardware for Vista to waste!

What a good pathetic way to insult an operating system. Have you seriously read that post carefully? It is a new way of managing memory that is a lot more efficient and will use your ram for something called a "purpose". If you are used to light weight XP that gets slower over time and does not make use of your RAM you payed for, then go ahead.

[Serious J]

It was an informative post, maybe if you actually read it it will enlighten you. You are pathetic enough to hate an operating system, and not to read anything good about it.

I'll make this short.

I will make this short as well.

I read your post, and it comes across as a post made by a marketing schill who signs up on a forum out of the blue (check) to defend a product (check) with a large amount of technical information that has absolutely nothing to do with the argument at hand. (check)

I might suggest that you actually read the TOS of the forum you signed up for today before you directly insult more posters.

[Odovacar]

What a good pathetic way to insult an operating system. Have you seriously read that post carefully? It is a new way of managing memory that is a lot more efficient and will use your ram for something called a "purpose".

Might I ask you to point out what that purpose is?
For my Vista isn't recognisably faster than my Xp...

If I would notice that the loading time for Word has been shortened with one or two seconds, would that it be a sufficient result, for having sacrificed my gaming advantage?

Because I dont think under Vista my 2giga ram produces the same speed while running games, as under XP.

[boofhead]

Some people just want to play games/cruise the net and couldn't give two shites about anything else. 'Extra features' translates as 'unnecessary space hog'.

So basically you spend heaps of money on the bollocks and then disable 95% of it.

Great. Paying for crap I don't want or need.

[Nicholas H.C]

[Serious J]

Cool, a video demonstrating the values of spending a few hundred bucks to do the exact same things you can do with XP.

Here's a video for you.



This is what innovation and uniqueness looks like, the things that can make an OS worth the ridiculous pricing scheme that Vista has worth it.

Except, it's free.

[roy34543]

Isnt that the same thing though? Same stuff you can do on XP but flashier graphics?

[Serious J]

Isnt that the same thing though? Same stuff you can do on XP but flashier graphics?

I wasn't suggesting that it wasn't. Which is why I was pointing specifically to the innovate and unique aspects of it. I was suggesting that for the price of Vista, if it comes down to just being a shinier XP, then it should at least go to these sort of levels.

[Bleda]

I like Vista and you don't. You want a medal? Maybe a gold star?

[Wibbler]

Vista haters are a many. Most of them have not even used Vista and complain about it just because what they see and other users who do not understand what Vista is about.

Proof please? I hate Vista because it is buggy, has unnecessary functions and security protocols and is incompatible with tonnes of software already available. I'm on a Computer Science degree, and 80% students I talk to have used and despise Vista. The other 20% either haven't used it, or it came with their computer and they haven't used any other OS yet. Not one of my lecturers use Vista, because it makes simple tasks a pain in the arse. Didn't IBM recently state they weren't upgrading over 80,000 computers to Vista because there was no plausible reason to do so? To claim most people hate Vista without having tried it is quite a statement, and one that requires some form of evidence to back it up.

[Odovacar]

Superfetch is the cornerstone of Vista's new memory management.
You can basically say "Free RAM is wasted RAM"
Superfetch will cache lots of needed boot/system/games/app files into your RAM, for faster start up time and performance in those applications.

For me this 'philosophy' sums it up quite well.

Do you have resources? Vista will waste them.
Because wasting is good. If your Vista is slow, you are a fool. Buy more hardware for Vista to waste!

[Saturn]

I'm not sure if I want to get Vista with Windows 7 coming out next year. Seems almost like a waste of cash. I'll probably end up getting it anyway do to Microsoft's unbreakable monoply.

[Saturn]

What's the best version of Windows Vista for gaming? I was going to get 64 bit, but I wonder if I should get ultimate or just go with barebones basic.

[Strelok]

What's the best version of Windows Vista for gaming? I was going to get 64 bit, but I wonder if I should get ultimate or just go with barebones basic.

64bit will always have driver and other stability and compatibly issues. However a lot of my hardware has been absolutely fine and drivers work well. Make sure you get all the latest updates.

However no matter what I have done I had always gotten increased stuttering and FPS loss especially in games that support 64bit. This is due to me not having 4-8GB of RAM. If you have 2GB, stick with 32bit for now.

[Simetrical]

Vista haters are a many. Most of them have not even used Vista and complain about it just because what they see and other users who do not understand what Vista is about.

I see news stories on like a monthly basis about companies that are deciding not to upgrade to Vista, even well over a year after its release. To classify all Vista-haters as ignorant is unreasonable.

-User Account Control (UAC)
-Superfetch (Explained later)
-More advanced Diagnostic Tools(Event Viewer is improved, Reliability and Performance monitor. Windows key + Pause, and go to Performance. MANY useful tools there.
-More advanced Security (Windows Defender, UAC, Better Windows Firewall

Nobody claimed that it had no new features. Just that they didn't justify the monetary and compatibility costs of upgrading. For most people, I'd say they don't.

-Improved Stability (Better OS code, and again better diagnostic tools.

Don't believe it. Give some evidence for this. Barring buggy drivers, XP is already rock-solid, and the same is true of Vista.

-Advanced TCIP Protocols (You will notice web pages load faster. Note, on a program called "Tune Up Utilities" it will already claim that TCIP is already optimized!)

I assume you mean TCP/IP, that is, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. TCP and IP are both standardized protocols that Windows Vista does not and cannot change. The vast majority of network overhead stems from the network itself, which the operating system simply has no control over. No home user's network use is bottlenecked by their OS. Maybe for some servers it might be useful, although even there other factors practically always dominate.

Superfetch is the cornerstone of Vista's new memory management.
You can basically say "Free RAM is wasted RAM"
Superfetch will cache lots of needed boot/system/games/app files into your RAM, for faster start up time and performance in those applications. If you have 2GB of physical RAM, and at least 75% of it is not being used, that RAM is being wasted. Superfetch uses your RAM to improve your system performance over time. It will improve your general responsiveness of your system.
Superfetch will not keep filling your RAM till it is run out, it knows its limit. If you 4-8GB of RAM(Recommended on 64bit) it will used even MORE! 64bit goes even farther than 32bit, which is one reason why I & most recommend 4-8GB for Windows Vista 64bit

Little to none of the RAM is wasted on XP, any more than on Mac, Linux, or for that matter MS-DOS 4.01, released in 1988. Every file you access gets cached in RAM automatically on all operating systems written within the past twenty years by someone other than a student taking a course on operating systems. In practice, this means that at most times, "unused" RAM is actually almost completely full. For instance, on this site's server (which runs Linux), out of 7990 MB total RAM, 7890 MB is used and 100 MB is unused.

The difference is that most operating systems, including XP, rely most heavily on demand paging, not putting files into memory until the user tries to access them. This means that the first time you access a file in a while, it will have to be retrieved from disk, and only subsequent accesses are cached. This works quite well in practice. Vista, however, tries to improve incrementally on that design by prefetching things that it notices the user often accesses, so that ideally the first hit will grab it from memory and not have to go to disk.

Of course, this means that if the user doesn't act as Vista predicts he will, it could perform worse than if all RAM had been devoted to the standard LRU page cache. In practice, I'm sure it performs better on average, but I haven't seen any benchmarks.

In general, people's observations tend to be that Vista is slower overall, not faster, so I wouldn't get too carried away here. The time it takes to boot is ridiculous, from what I've seen.

User Account Control was made annoying on purpose.

Er, no it wasn't.

UAC will also protect you from official DVD infested with bad rookits (Anyone remember Sony's Rookit?). This is important as to why you should use Tweak-UAC and set it to quiet mode. This will not reduce your protection, this will not run in the background. It will remove the prompts, and just requiring you to run as administrator.

Get it here: http://www.tweak-uac.com/

That's more or less crippling it. If you're disabling the dialogs, any program that runs runs as root. The entire point is to avoid that. UAC is the best improvement Vista made, and people persist in attempting to emasculate it because it has some implementation failures.

You will not be protected against rootkits if you disable the dialogs. Sony's rootkit would run as soon as you put the CD in the drive, and attempt to install itself in system directories. With UAC properly enabled, that action will raise a dialog. You can then deny it access, since an audio CD should not need root access for anything, and the rootkit will be foiled. If you have the dialogs disabled, it will install itself silently and you won't be able to prevent it.

Games may run worse not due to Vista being a horrible operating system. It is drivers that are not made well for Vista(For example: Intel IGP drivers can give a 20% performance decrease in Vista over XP)
Also most games are simply coded badly, and have horrible support for Vista. It is a shame, really.

Yeah, a real shame that games written in 2004 don't have good support for Vista, huh? It's the job of operating systems authors to ensure reverse compatibility. Some regressions there are to be expected, mind, and I'm not particularly criticizing Vista for that. But the attitude that it's the developers' fault makes no sense, when most of the developers wrote their code on XP (or earlier) with no access to Vista.

I'll point out here that if Windows didn't maintain such unreasonably complicated system call interfaces, you might have better compatibility. Programs written for Unix in 1970 can compile on modern-day Linux fine, assuming it's for a supported architecture. That's probably because Unix only offers a couple dozen quite simple functions. The mess of the Windows API probably contributes a lot to incompatibility of user-space programs. (But I say this, admittedly, as someone who does no serious programming using any OS's API; my serious programming is limited to MediaWiki, which is PHP and so intrinsically cross-platform.)

People have claimed that Vista is using a lot of RAM(I explained a while earlier) but people do not realize that Vista does what is called: "Processing Idle Tasks" which makes your HDD light go crazy. I recommend to not do anything or play a game while this is happening.

This makes your hard drive light go crazy, but Vista will not do it if anything else is trying to use the disk. In principle, it should cause no serious performance issues. (But it's unavoidable that if an unexpected disk request comes in, the disk head will be in a different place from where it would otherwise have been.)

I will stop bashing Vista when the next Windows OS comes out and Vista is nothing but a forgotten crappy OS like ME was.

Yep. Vista apologists always claim that the same complaints were made about XP, but they weren't. They were made against ME: bloat with no extra useful features, not worth the price tag. They were not made against XP, which was a strikingly worthwhile improvement over its predecessors.

XP had the same complaints that Vista has had.

Not according to my memory. I very distinctly remember recommending XP to others. It was the first consumer Windows OS that didn't crash constantly, and it had many other improvements besides. People's reaction to Vista is much more like their reaction to ME, although toned down (ME was actively worse than 98, Vista actually has a couple of good points).

Last time I checked, XP does not have the same Superfetch and memory management capabilities Vista does.

Last I checked, XP runs at least as fast as Vista on typical tasks anyway.

Have you tried to customize a bit more? I don't remember XP monitoring boot time and telling me my HDD needed to be defragmented.

XP did monitor boot time (via Prefetcher). I don't think it told me my disk needed to be defragmented. Then again, on other operating systems you don't actually need to manually defragment, or pay attention to defragmentation at all.

Vista also once told me that my hard drive was failing and to backup all data. Sure enough, after a week or so, it failed.

That's quite handy, I agree. There are definitely some redeeming features in Vista. I just don't think they're worth upgrading for. XP will last fine until Windows 7.

Vista's GUI is a lot more flexible and customizable than XP was.

Not remotely as customizable as Linux's . . . but that's not entirely fair.

I have never had a BSOD on Vista yet, only when an overclock has failed.

My parents' Vista computer has gotten routine BSODs at various points due to some driver issue. They updated all the drivers they could think of, but I don't think it went away. I agree that it's completely stable if your drivers are good, but so's XP.

Sure you can browse the web and play games on XP, too... I don't think you want to be playing a game when your system is instable.

Are you implying XP is unstable?

Like Wheelchair has said, Vista has more advanced TCIP protocols, that makes you browse the web a lot different and a lot faster.

And as I said, that's nonsense. Give me a source for that, preferably with benchmarks.

Most complaints I see are user errors, and those ignorant enough to think Microsoft has control of what other people do with their software. If a piece of software does not work well on Vista, that is not the operating systems fault.

It is if it's because of an unnecessary change in behavior from a previous version of the OS. Microsoft could also take more steps to ensure driver stability. Linux and Mac drivers are totally stable just because third parties don't write many drivers for them: Linux drivers are all reverse-engineered by Linux kernel hackers, and Macs have tightly restricted hardware so that they can provide all necessary drivers.

Microsoft could encourage third parties to submit drivers to them for maintenance by Microsoft, if it wanted to spend the money. It would allow people to get driver updates through Windows Update, and not have to manually install the original drivers in the first place for new devices (since they'd be packaged with the OS).

Why blame Microsoft for the makers of other software that it does not work with their operating system? Printers are a good example. If they do not release proper drivers for Vista, then it is not Microsoft's fault.

It's still a problem with installing the operating system, no matter whose fault it is.

I kind of said the purpose more than once by now
The purpose is to use your RAM, if XP is using 50-200mb just for processes, then your system won't perform as it can. Your RAM is being completely wasted for nothing.

Except that that's not happening. The increased RAM usage by Vista is not used by SuperFetch. SuperFetch pages of RAM are marked separately, with the page cache. The increased "real" RAM usage is an increase in RAM that's allocated for private use by the kernel and system processes. This has nothing to do with SuperFetch, which does not increase RAM usage significantly (it mainly changes how RAM is allocated). The SuperFetch angle is Microsoft spin marketed to the those who don't understand concepts like a page cache.

I said before that Vista does get a lot faster over time.

Have any benchmarks?

You should also know that Vista turns off portions of Superfetch (most of it, some of it you need for maximum performance) and Aero and other processes to free up the RAM it uses for your games. So you cannot say that Vista is using too much RAM for your games to run properly.

RAM used by system processes is not disabled for games. Of course, it may be paged out, as on any OS (unless it's unpageable kernel memory, but there's very little of that). It still increases the amount of RAM you need to avoid swapping.

The argument that XP is better than Vista is flawed because it's not true on any level. The two Operating Systems are quite different it'd be like comparing Windows 98 to Windows 3.1 quite honestly because so much has changed behind the scenes.

Are you trying to say that it would be wrong to say that Windows 98 is a vastly superior operating system to Windows 3.1?

Software between Windows versions, on the other hand, has always been a problem. When 95 released a TON of 3.1 Windows software wouldn't work. When XP launched a boatload of 98 software (games in particular) wouldn't work.

Yes, this is a constant across releases. To a large extent it's understandable. Especially with XP, which introduced a totally new kernel. I still have my doubts that it's unavoidable, however.

If you like XP great! Stick with XP. If you don't want to be on Vista then by all means don't upgrade. Coming on here though and just taking an opportunity to rally around a generic, and largely untrue, claim about Vista is not very productive.

The same could be said of the contrary.

What's the best version of Windows Vista for gaming? I was going to get 64 bit, but I wonder if I should get ultimate or just go with barebones basic.

You probably want Vista Home Premium. 64-bit is probably a good idea at this point, since driver issues are largely sorted out by now.

That is my 1 complaint about Vista...

There are WAY too many versions...

There should have been a Pro & a Home edition like XP.

Well, that's pretty straightforward. They need to release multiple versions to make more money. They want to scrape up those extra dollars from people who are sucker enough to buy Ultimate. Mac doesn't have this issue because Apple sells the hardware too, and obviously Linux doesn't because it's free.

64bit will always have driver and other stability and compatibly issues.

Um, no, it won't. It will cease to have driver and other stability issues when people are careful to write drivers properly for it. It's already long been the standard for servers, and will soon become standard for desktops. Probably 64-bit will be the only option for Windows 7. From what I've heard, 64-bit Vista is as usable right now as 32-bit.

However no matter what I have done I had always gotten increased stuttering and FPS loss especially in games that support 64bit. This is due to me not having 4-8GB of RAM. If you have 2GB, stick with 32bit for now.

You definitely don't need more memory: processor architecture has no impact on memory usage. (But you can add more if you want, which in 32-bit you can't.) Programs compiled for 32-bit Windows should work just about the same, while those with proper 64-bit support will in practically all cases run faster. Stability should not be affected unless some extra bugs are exposed, which for user-mode programs they probably won't be (but kernel/driver bugs may be specific to architecture).