Vista == Mojave == Wow?

[pjbliverpool]

You do realize that's literally twice as many steps as it used to be, right? Go ahead and roll your eyes.

Before it was
1) open date/time properties
2) CHANGE ****ING DATE AND TIME!

(not yelling at you, btw - yelling at the ****tards at MS that thought this was a brilliant design decision)

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned but turning off UAC would eliminate step 3. Personally I find the time/date functionality in Vista to be light years ahead of XP and just one of the many improvments in the OS.

BTW, performance in Vista is at least equal to XP now on the latest drivers with SP1.

 

[Davros]

chris everything is at the default settings except indexing which i turned off + system restore which i turned off for all drives except c:

 

[suryad]

Well I thought an interesting experiment is in order. So I built my friend a machine last night and he did not want to put Vista on it anymore considering his bad experiences especially with thhe hard drive thrashing and with poor file copying speeds over his network and just within his own machine itself.

I built a Q600, 4 gb ram machine, Intel p35 mobo and a 1 tb hdd rig for him and I persuaded him to slap Vista x64 on it and to get all the updates first. I want to see what his opinion is over time and if it gets better or not. I turned off that Windows Search functionality first thing so that his disk does not get thrashed. He is an average to a power user of computer systems being a datawarehousing architect.

After his updates are done I am going back again in the evening to his house and probably going to ask him to defrag and make sure that SP1 got installed and then just tell him to load his regular software and start using the system and see if he is ok with it. It should be interesting to see if he can change his mind about the OS after SP1.

As a side note I saw it was using 1.3 gb of RAM while on idle. Seemed a big high for me...especially since we have not installed anything on his machine yet other than Nvidia x64 drivers and updates. Any performance tweaks or anything one can recommend? Should we turn off restore point and that volume copying? Are they both the same or are they 2 separate things? Oh yeah disk usage...he had a 100 gb OS parition created and it was using nearly 16 gb out of it. I dont think he has hibernate enabled...I was a bit stunned at that. Is Vista also storing like all the data from the install disk so one does not have to pop the DVD back in to install software?

 

[suryad]

So? Windows 98 worked just fine with 256 MB of ram. Now go back in time 6 years and work on some XP machines with that little ram.

If it bothers you that much, keep some extra ram sticks around to temporarily speed up the PC's you're working on.

Progress requires progression. I'm pretty sure we learned long ago that "X kb of ram is all you'll ever need" wasn't all we ever needed.

It would not be a problem if vista actually used all those extra resources it is 'utilizing' to give it a bump in speed. And if even with 'utilizing' all those resources more than XP does and if it just is comparable in terms of performance wiht XP thats not called progression now is it? So that means if one were to disable the ram caching etc etc Vista would be slower than XP would it not?

also I have read of people after vliting Vista bringing down their Vista installs to 1.5 gb with x64 versions!

 

[ShaidarHaran]

XP Pro + all the transcoding/burning/AV/office/internet/media apps + updates I need = 6GB. 2.5x this is not acceptable, in light of the fact that this additional space is being taken up by just the OS.

Just my opinion

 

[ERP]

Vista just seems to be very polarizing.

I didn't upgrade my primary work machine until 3 months ago, and I lost 2 gigs of RAM (going from 4 to 3) during the upgrade, not Vistas fault, I swapped motherboards to accomodate a change in graphics hardware, and my new motherboard didn't like my old RAM.

My experience is that even with the reduced memory, Vista actually performs better for my day to day work than XP did the 50% more memory (3.2 GB vs 2). I think this is largely due to better IO handling in Vista, explorer in Vista also seems to deal better with outstanding disk transactions.

Given a large portion of my day is push F7 and compile 2.6 million lines of code, requiring constant reading of 10K+ files it's a big deal to me.

I was going to replace the lost RAM, but it just hasn't been an issue, I think vista does a better job if anything of dealing with the memory as long as your above some threshhold.

Hey I can even run WOW while compiling without any significant impact on the compile time, although I can tell when the app is linking.

My laptop, which scores 2. something is also fine with Vista, but again it has 2GB's of memory.

The only piece of hardware that didn't just work with Vista was my Ergodex DX1, out of interest I wrote a driver for it. I think manufacturers who don't support Vista don't have any real excuse, with the new User Mode drivers it's ludicrously easy to do (obviously doesn't cover more complex hardware like video boards).

If your a hardcore gamer with multiple monitors, I'd stick to XP, because of the lack of span support, you can work around it in some Apps (I run WOW across multiple monitors) but you loose some performance doing it. But for the most part my experience with vista has been positive.

Of course if you have a lot of older hardware, I suspect the experience might be a bit different.

 

[Davros]

XP Pro + all the transcoding/burning/AV/office/internet/media apps + updates I need = 6GB. 2.5x this is not acceptable,

lucky you my install is over 28 times the size

edit:
used treesize and there is a 13gb boot folder

 

[BRiT]

My Windows\Boot\ directory is 27.5 MEG on disk, contains 109 files and 77 folders.

Is this the same directory you're talking about?

 

[Davros]

its not c:\windows\boot
its
c:\boot
(show hidden files + show protected operating system files)

oops sorry i may be worng ive wiped vista then reinstalled xp + vista cos i wanted a dual boot
and now its 13.1mb not gb so i could of been wrong in the first place
ps: is this folder needed cos its on my vista drive and also vista has put it on my xp drive as well it seems to contain multipe language versions of a file called bootmgr.exe.mui

 

[ShaidarHaran]

lucky you my install is over 28 times the size

edit:
used treesize and there is a 13gb boot folder

Holy crap.

My keys to a lite install (manual config)
restore off
hibernate off
recycle bin to 1% of drive space
page file on separate volume

My Windows folder is 2.24GB with SP3 and all post-SP3 hotfixes applied, as well as the latest DX9.0C redistributable and .net 2.0

 

[Blazkowicz]

LESS intrusive than XP SP2 - You can turn UAC off, you can turn Defender off. If you told XP SP2 that you didnt need its software firewall it would still tell you all the time, and leave icons all the over place. Vista doesnt do this. OK, turning UAC off requires a reboot, but get anal about that, and I stop listening to you.

....

MUCH better UI – a friend of mine used Vista for a week, and commented that it was “s**t”, mainly because it doesn’t have an UP button. “Just click the folders before the one you’re in on the address bar”. “Oh, NICE” said he “I didn’t *bother* looking at that”. Case closed.

eh? disable the security center service in XP and it's done. XP never nags me.

as for the explorer UI, yes if I can't add that Up button back, it's crap. I use the refresh, up, copy/cut/paste buttons in the file manager. But with Vista it might be time to look for alternate shells if explorer.exe sucks too much.

XP doesn't run so well with only 512 MB RAM either.

uh? it's lightning fast with 512MB. had it run great on the same machine with 256MB (because of ram stick issues), it's still fast as long as you limit your surfing a bit and close firefox before launching games (not so recent ones but warcraft III, quake 3 powered games and tons other are fine)

 

[Skrying]

So Dooby even posted the replacement for the Up button yet you ignore it and declare it crap because you have no experience with it? Again, that's the attitude Microsoft has to go up against. You have zero experience at all with Vista yet your mind is already made up. Your complete unwillingness to learn something new is shocking.

XP was of decent speed with 512MB but you were limited to how well you could multitask. I didn't feel comfortable with my computing experience until 1GB. You mentioned 256MB being fine and that is a real laugh, first entirely new computer I built after XP release had 256MB of RAM and it wasn't near good enough and reducing your surfing a bit? That's NOT acceptable and a ridiculous idea to support. Comparatively both of my computers (desktop, laptop) have 2GB of memory and both are using Vista and I feel zero need to upgrade those amounts. It took much longer for me to build a computer I truly liked under XP, comparatively I've had the same system besides video card under Vista from day one and feel no need to upgrade even after using faster systems.

 

[Blazkowicz]

had a bit of a try with the address bar, it's nice but I still want the up button because I don't like moving targets. I hate auto-hiding menus, chevrons and the XP task pane as well, just a matter of taste and nothing serious. When discussing tastes I'm not trying to prove anything. I like windoze and Gnome, I don't like KDE and Mac OS, that's it.

little UI things can make my decision along with the more serious technical things.
I have to weigh in how Vista is faster, how it's slower, the technical changes and the little UI things. With your computer hardware and usage patterns, does the fatness matter or not, does the speed matter or not etc.
the pricing is too insane for me to buy it though.

for XP I feel 512MB is the sweet spot, it all depends on the software you use and what actual work you may need doing. I just wanted to mention that 256MB can be usable (with no antivirus, using lightweight software). yes, with limitations (no opening of huge image galleries or multitasking too much with a heavy loaded firefox). but I see Ubuntu really struggling on a 256MB computer, only to drag its own ass.

sure now there's plenty ram, I can do stupid things such as loading an entire ubuntu VM to play gnu chess. with a heavy game in the background.

 

[N00b]

for XP I feel 512MB is the sweet spot, it all depends on the software you use and what actual work you may need doing. I just wanted to mention that 256MB can be usable (with no antivirus, using lightweight software). yes, with limitations (no opening of huge image galleries or multitasking too much with a heavy loaded firefox). but I see Ubuntu really struggling on a 256MB computer, only to drag its own ass.

Cough. Cough. XP SP2 memory usage after boot is a bit over 256 MB, even with services disabled you can barely get it under 200 MB. And with 256MB total memory is behaves like crap. Even with 512 MB it choking all over just web browsing and another decent-sized application running.

 

[Blazkowicz]

cough, cough, double-cough! default ram usage is well under 100MB, and around the 100MB mark with a few tools loaded. sure I don't run norton, OEM software, ati CCC, openoffice preloading etc.

 

[suryad]

And with nLiting you can get it down to 80 MB on startup as I have done on my XP 32 machine. And there are people who have gotten it down to a ridiculous 20 MB. Granted that is not indicative of how good the OS is, but I am once again reiterating my point that with the extra resources Vista is consuming, even after vLiting it, what is it offering me tangibly over XP? Maybe I am ignorant...but then educate me. Enhanced security is not an argument because I dont have any security issues with XP. Speed? Performance? Gaming? DX 10 is no argument either...shiny UI? Windows Blinds + Vista transformation pack should do the trick no?

 

[N00b]

cough, cough, double-cough! default ram usage is well under 100MB, and around the 100MB mark with a few tools loaded. sure I don't run norton, OEM software, ati CCC, openoffice preloading etc.

Yeah, you're right. Sorry. I was citing from memory and got confused.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

XP was of decent speed with 512MB but you were limited to how well you could multitask. I didn't feel comfortable with my computing experience until 1GB. You mentioned 256MB being fine and that is a real laugh, first entirely new computer I built after XP release had 256MB of RAM and it wasn't near good enough and reducing your surfing a bit? That's NOT acceptable and a ridiculous idea to support. Comparatively both of my computers (desktop, laptop) have 2GB of memory and both are using Vista and I feel zero need to upgrade those amounts. It took much longer for me to build a computer I truly liked under XP, comparatively I've had the same system besides video card under Vista from day one and feel no need to upgrade even after using faster systems.

I agree with this (except for the Vista parts ).

XP runs fine with 512MB RAM, assuming you don't have bunch of commercial N0rt0n/McCrapfee/CA/TrendBloat shyteware installed. AVG or NOD FTW! Multi-tasking (particularly opening and closing apps) shows huge improvements moving beyond 512MB, though.

 

[Davros]

Im liking vista more since ive just got a momo -Yay Me (has vista drivers) ms sidewinder had no forcefeedback under vista

ps: how do i remove the speaker icon (next to the clock)

 

[Skrying]

Im liking vista more since ive just got a momo -Yay Me (has vista drivers) ms sidewinder had no forcefeedback under vista

ps: how do i remove the speaker icon (next to the clock)

Right-click the toolbar > Click Properties > Notification Area tab