With Vista, Microsoft is addressing what’s become a sad truth for most people: PCs run more slowly over time. Vista will automatically de-fragment hard disks, make better use of memory to more quickly load programs, and include a new performance control panel that will identify performance bottlenecks, according to the company. Elsewhere, ActiveWin hosts widescreen, high-res screenshots of Vista.
As far as I know, only Windows is affected by that on the x86 platform.
“Vista will automatically de-fragment hard disks” why can’t they just create a file system that doesn’t require regular defraging. You would think the biggest software company in the world could achieve that.
Yeah, expecially since other OSes has had it for ages.
(note to those who don’t know it: the ext2/ext3 filesystem tends to defragment itself overtime, instead of fragmenting)
Thge problem is OS bloat. My dad had a 450MHz (AMD) bottom of the line Compaq running windows 98se. I replaced his PC with a 2.4Ghz (celeron) HP running XP home and the new PC is actually slower at most tasks. In my opinion the problem is not HDD fragmentation, it is too much code bloat and too many services running at startup.
This solution won’t work. No matter how much I defragment my PC, it is still slower than it was when first installed. This is caused by:
1. The services that run in background, such as antivirus.
2. The bad use of RAM and virtual memory. Even with 2GB RAM, the disk is always being accessed. Why can’t Windows optimize disk access?
With Linux, no problem.
Heh, speaking of services that run in the background, how much does anyone wanna bet that this is exactly how the automatic defrag will work (i.e., as a service that runs in the background). Having defrag running all the time is supposed to make the system *faster*?
Couldn’t agree more about virtual memory. With 512mb of RAM, I’ve never touched virtual memory in FreeBSD; in Windows (2000) I can’t avoid it, though my total memory usage isn’t near 512mb.
I have 1Gb and even though I use Linux, wanted to test why Windows keeps the same ram all the timeThing is is uses swap bit by bit to top up main ram, this give you idea you have unlimited memory. Yet another trick to fool the unsuspecting user, no wonder Window blue screens.
Actually, Linux does the same thing if you provide it a swap. It doesn’t use it as much, and this has been argued about, but the running argument is that no matter how much RAM you have good swap use will always increase performance.
There’s a lot of good detailed stuff about it on kerneltrap and I welcome you to read it.
I think M$ has made the same announcent in the launch of every Windows version since Windows ME and it never was implemented.
Sorry, no credit to M$ this time..
Don’t auto-defragment the filesystem, write it properly so it doesn’t fragment! Welcome to 1982 Microsoft.
Mind you, Linux has code bloat these days, I remember 5-6 years ago running RedHat 6.1 and even some of the 7.x series on a 96Mb/P200MMX/13Gb, KDE/Gnome would run fine. Last year I struggled to get a PIII-500/320Mb to run RH9.
My P4 3GHz/HT with 1Gb/400Gb runs FC4 very nicely though thankyou 😉
fragmentation is a fact of life. If you have 5gb of free hd space, but only 500mb of continuous free space, you have to break up a 1gb file into multiple fragments to store it.
>>fragmentation is a fact of life. If you have 5gb of free hd space, but only 500mb of continuous free space, you have to break up a 1gb file into multiple fragments to store it.<<
Apparently you haven’t been paying attention.
HFS +(Mac OS X)
ext 3,
resierFS (i think),
and probably others
will auto sort the files so that the 1 gb file your talking about is put into one continuous space. These systems don’t fragment the hard drive unless it’s really full(ie less than 10% of the drive remaining empty)Also if you have only 5 gig’s free off of a 50 gig disk, you really should consider backup storage anyway. Because one minor error and you ust lost a lot of data.
Lately, Gnome and KDE tend to get faster for each new release that gets out the door. Most modern Linuxes would run just fine on a PIII-500/320MB box. Perhaps you should give some easy to use Linux (e.g. Ubunto) a go.
It is not PC getting slower but new Windows versions getting more bloated and slower. This is a pity attempt of Microsoft to blame PCs for the excruciatingly slow speed of Vista. Shame on them. I am so glad I use Linux which is blazing fast on any PC.
It is not PC getting slower but new Windows versions getting more bloated and slower. This is a pity attempt of Microsoft to blame PCs for the excruciatingly slow speed of Vista. Shame on them. I am so glad I use Linux which is blazing fast on any PC.
Please get your facts straight. You can say all you want about Microsoft and Windows, but *not* that Windows XP is more demanding than a modern Linux distribution. Windows XP can even “run” on a 32MBRAM 20Mhz (yes, 20) Pentium! Proof:
http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini.htm
I’m getting really tired of this argument. Windows XP and especially 2000 run very well even on low-end machines. Claiming otherwise is a blatant sign of zealotry.
Yes, and Linux will run on a 486 with 8MB of RAM. Anonymous is right, though. Each version of Windows is perceptably slower on the same hardware than previous versions (the opposite of Mac OS X, might I note). True, so is Linux if you use the latest and greatest KDE/Gnome. Linux’s advantage over Windows in this situation is that you can still set Linux to use a light-weight WM and disable every service. You can do a little of that in Windows (disable most services, disable theming, disable all effects), but it still feels heavy. Furthermore, Linux offers a greater variety of tools that don’t require the GUI, whereas most Windows software is GUI-intensive.
You do know that it’s very easy to install a light WM on Windows, hmmm? The installer will automatically disable Explorer and use the new WM next bootup.
Contrary to popular belief, Windows also can use various window managers, and Windows is by no means bound to Explorer. Installing a WM on Windows is a mere case of a simple installer, like any other program. Installing a new WM on Linux can be quite a daunting task (allthough not always).
Yeah, been there and done that, too. Using window managers and browsers other than the default is just another way to make yourself suffer an endless string of 3rd party product failures.
You want to know the best one I ever saw? I changed my Windows XP clock to display “a” and “p” instead of “AM” and “PM.” This caused one piece of software to refuse to even run the installer. It claimed it did not support non-American versions of Windows!!
That’s using a FEATURE that is BUILT IN to CUSTOMIZE the system the way the USER WANTS. I didn’t hack or do anything that is not OFFERED by the OS and it BROKE the installability of software (this is a Windows installer, not some custom home brew thing – it was a product made with VB).
Contrary to popular belief, Windows also can use various window managers, and Windows is by no means bound to Explorer
Is this supported by Microsoft? Will Microsoft take my call on MS Word not running well on Windows XP when they realize that I exchanged explorer.exe by blackbox.exe? If not, then “can use” is not 100% true. I bet you a beer that if I bought support for OpenOffice.org, the company providing this support would not ask me whether I run KDE, GNOME or something else.
Anyway, if MS admits “computers with our OS get slower by time”, something is not right. My computers run as fast as when I installed them (most of the do not run Microsoft’s system).
—
Also, why cannot your posts be moderated? Though I understand you run this site, in my opinion, this does not give you “the licence to be always right”. I think that if you want to really join a discussion thread, you should post with an ID that CAN be moderated. Keep your “protected” ID for kicking out trolls and cooling down flamewars.
As it is now, it reminds me of an old saying we used in past to describe our communistic government – “all people are equal, but some of them are more equal than others”.
What does replacing Explorer have to do with Office? Pretty much nothing. People that use blackbox instead usually know what they’re doing. So if you were having problems with Office and were required to actually call them, I don’t see what relevance your shell has.
Please get your facts straight. You can say all you want about Microsoft and Windows, but *not* that Windows XP is more demanding than a modern Linux distribution. Windows XP can even “run” on a 32MBRAM 20Mhz (yes, 20) Pentium! Proof:
This of course is moot point when you realise you won’t be able to do anything useful on that old PC.
Well, let’s compare “apples to apples” (no pun intended:) – noting “xpmini” in the URL, is this a plain vanilla install of XP?
I agree with part of your general point – Win2000 ran at perfectly acceptable speed for me on a 200mHz Pentium with 80mb of ancient RAM (60ns timing). OTOH, the FreeBSD 4.x series performed quite snappily on that hardware, too.
If by a “modern Linux distribution” you mean a GNOME or KDE desktop with lots of eye candy and resource-heavy apps installed by default, then yep, it’ll probably make old hardware groan. It seems to me, however, that it’s easier for Linux or *BSD users to choose lightweight desktops and apps than for Windows users to do so.
BTW, re the remark in another post about OSX becoming faster on older hardware: Though I’ve read this in a number of places, I can tell you that this isn’t my own personal experience of working on my Dad’s eMac, first with OSX 10.1, now with Tiger (latest available updates installed). With multiple apps open, Tiger occasionally hangs for a bit, whereas 10.1 didn’t.
10.1 was probably the worst slowest POS out of all the OS X releases. 10.3 was the fastest, tiger has new tech in it and they need to be fixed up well to run better.
I’ve had windows xp on a 600Mhz cpu with 128Mb ram, windows ran like a crippled snail tied to a cube of tar. But since I haven’t tried linux on such system, so it’s hard for me to compare.
How much stuff did you have to remove and turn into “non-standard” configuration (and therefore not usable for today’s software) to get it to be usable? I used to customize my systems like crazy until I realised that I was causing more problems by customizing. The more different from the default the system is, the less likely software developers have tested with that configuration and the more likely you are to find bad behaviors and “bugs.” There is too much interdependency going on in the system these days. I don’t even mean a few DLLs. I mean Sound Forge 8 will not install without .NET framework being installed on the system (which is another 48MB of space wasted and how many more additions to the already bloated registry). The interdependencies are what is killing the system function and you cannot tell me that a cut down version of WinXP will support anything more than the basic system functions.
I’ve been there and I’ve tried it all. The further away you get from the default, the more problems you will have in the long run. I hate it because I would rather customize and put strict restrictions on what junk is installed and running, but it’s a losing battle that a decade of experience has taught me.
Bro, you are full of it. I happen to like XP very much and use it every day. As far as I am concerned Linux is crap and only belongs on the computers of hobbyists, but you can not tell me that people will tolerate XP on anything less than a PIII 500MHz with 256MB RAM. If you got that much time on your hands, you must be collecting un-employment cheques or you got an extended stay in prison.
Well, I don’t know about XP, but ME wouldn’t even install on anything less than a 150mhz cpu. In my experience, XP wants RAM mroe than they wan’t mhz. I ran it on a Pentium2 266mhz with 256mb of ram… and while it did run, it wasn’t very usable. On the other hand, the same PC with 394mb of ram made all the difference.
The fact of the matter is, it’s not because XP is slow, or the hardware is slow. The reason that XP (and pretty much all versions of Windows) becomes slow after being installed for a while is because of the Registry and adware/spyware. I would say 99.99% of all windows programs will install something in the registry, which makes it grow bigger and bigger. And of course the registry is loaded into memory. Then the adware/spyware/malware will eat away the rest of the resources, making windows unstable and extremely slow. So unless Microsoft can completely prevent that (which I don’t think they intend to do.) then there is no way that Vista will magically start running better for longer times without having to be re-installed.
HAHA, give me some of that crack, seriousely.
you confuse booting with say, DOING ANYTHING useful including opening notepad in less that 3 days.
you are partially retarded if you have the patience to deal with XP on anything less that 750Mhz and 256 of ram
that is a sign of zealotry. i bet you think the fonts on XP are great too
At work, I have a Pentium II 400MHz and XP SP2 is perfectly useable. Of course, you have to get rid of the special effects and the Fisher Price interface and stuff like Photoshop CS and Matlab takes a while to open, but it’s nothing bad. It doesn’t feel slower than the Pentium III 1GHz running FC2 besides me. That said, it has 384MB RAM: I doubt the PC would be useable with 64MB.
I am not exactly impressed with XP’s fonts, but neither I am with Freetype’s. One has blurry letters, the other has kerning issues with fonts.
The “funny” thing is that they’re saying that pc got slower with time as if it were a normal computer behaviour, fooling users.
Somebody should tell users that this is only a Windows behaviour, and that microsoft sould fix their OSes instead of inventing unuseful and ridicolous fix.
I think Vista is going to be the death knell for the Windows OS. I can’t think of any reason for everyday users, developers, or businesses to switch to it. With disadvantages like:
-much more bloat
-slower over time, uses more ram
-still going to be more prone to viruses and other security risks
-crippled OpenGL
-no java
-OS is $$$ expensive
-Office software is $$$ expensive
-Visual Studio is $$$ expensive
-windows-only proprietary stuff like avalon
-not much different than Windows XP
I think Vista is going to be the death knell for the Windows OS. I can’t think of any reason for everyday
The main reason would be that Microsoft will stop supply security patches for very old systems. The fact that they will apply harder control of who is allowd to download non security related patches may inspire people who run pirated windows version to buy legitimate versions. Furthermore it will be on almost all new computers. Most peoople will be too lazy to uninstall it even if they happens to dislike it, and who knows some people might actually like it.
users, developers, or businesses to switch to it. With disadvantages like:
-much more bloat
I doubt it will have more bloat than a the default install of a modern Linux distro. Of course in Linux users can turn things off that they don’t need, what possibilities Vista will have to do that remains to be sean.
-slower over time, uses more ram
Did you read the article, this defragmentation feature should take care of that. If fragmented hard drives is the reason for the slowdaonw of current windows system, Vista will not get any more slow over time than e.g. Linux.
-still going to be more prone to viruses and other security risks
Remains to be seen. Vista will include DRM technology that will make it possible to run or play programs and media that lacks proper signatures. That way it should be possible to prevent viruses and pirated software and music to run on it.
-crippled OpenGL
Microsoft will offer other ways to do graphics acceleration in hardware. The number of programs that currently make use of OpenGL is quite low.
-no java
As far as I know there is know Microsoft java in current versions of windows either, and the one that once was included was seriouly fouled up.
There is no reason to believe that Sun java would not run on Vista in fact, Sun is allready working on that.
-OS is $$$ expensive
-Office software is $$$ expensive
-Visual Studio is $$$ expensive
The price of software license is often very small compared to the costs of integrating it and validating it to function well together with existing computing infrastructure in the company. E.g. if it requires in hous applications to be rebuilt or modified it could turn out very costly. This is, by the way, the reason why most companies would not upgrade to Linux even if you can get it for free.
As for Office and Visual studio being expensive, I guess that Eclipse and OpenOffice.org will run on Vista as well.
-windows-only proprietary stuff like avalon
Thst would be true for most current windows technologies as well, and that doesnt seam to prevent people from running it on their desktops.
-not much different than Windows XP
Cars have not been much different from one year to another since the beginning of the 20th century. Still, may people buy a new car each year for no logical reason. I’m sure there are a lot of people that have similar behavior with respect to software.
A Vista-based PC might even be faster a few weeks after it’s installed, thanks to one new feature called SuperFetch. SuperFetch basically studies the programs that an individual user frequently runs and loads them into memory automatically.
What they need is a new file hierarchy.
Microsoft is like NASA, it makes me think, the 1970s was when America stopped making new discoveries. It must be related to the evolution of empires: the more they spend in weapons, the less resources they can allocate to scientific programs.
This is new hipe from microsoft to get people to upgrade to Vista from XP (cause everyone’s XP box runs slow – at work we buy 3.0Ghz PIV with 1GB ram, and if I don’t rebuild the computers after 8 months the system is alow piece of shyte).
“Vista will automatically de-fragment hard disks” – Defrag in Windows does nothing. (test: run a defrag, let it finish – run defrag again…. then run it again — what the hell did it defrag). Defrag in Windows hasn’t worked since win9.x
Most people’s systems are not slow – Windows is slow.
Want to increase performance in Windows:
1. Down grade to Win2k
2. Turn off every service under the sun (netbios, taskscheduler, RPC, Remote Desktop, Browser, Messenger, Event logs, DNS Cache, everything) – My win2k box uses 39MB of RAM.
Better yet – dump windows all together – My primary box is PcLinuxOS 9.1
OS X pre-links apps and auto-defragments during file operations. More ripping off from Microsoft who is playing five years of catchup.
Seeing that my previous comment was “moderated” at -5, I will post it again without any off-topic references.
The user experience provided by Microsoft products seems to be stuck somewhere in the 1980s, and the scope of available possibilities explored by Microsoft products comes somewhere from the 1970s.
This is, in my opinion, a result of complacency and lack of competition due to the dominant market position.
Yeah, expecially since other OSes has had it for ages.
(note to those who don’t know it: the ext2/ext3 filesystem tends to defragment itself overtime, instead of fragmenting)
Maybe because of compatibility? Think of all the third party crap the MS has to indirectly support. Linux doesn’t have this problem. MS gets most of the blame even when it is the third parties doing stupid things.
Think of all the third party crap the MS has to indirectly support. Linux doesn’t have this problem.
Oh, poor, poor, Microsoft!
About filesystems, Windows supports how many? 1? 1.5?
The Linux mount command supports more than 30 different filesystems, including Windows.
About drivers, they are the responsibility of the device makers. Until recently, most hardware was especially designed for Windows because of inexistence of better alternatives.
The only computers that have that problem are those running the proprietary Microseft Windows XP piece of shit. Those of us who have a clue and run Linux/*BSD have never experienced that.
And those of us who do knows how to run Windows on a PC properly don’t have this problem too. My system (and all the systems I managed) runs as fast, if not faster (thanks to drivers update and new SP), than when I build if a year and half ago. It’s just a matter of knowing what you install and what you do.
The problem has always been on the chair, and it is still there.
As for those OS/X fans out there: no, OS/X is not faster since you need 2-cpu in your system to run as smoothly as a 1-cpu Windows system.
I’m surprised the article didn’t mention this. Nor anyone else.
Since the registry in Windows is an active component of the running OS, registry bloat also contributes to the slow-down of a Windows PC.
Compare the registry size on a fresh, clean system. Then compare its size on a machine that’s had programs installed/uninstalled over a period of a year. Big difference. The default registry size has increased with each release of Windows. How will Windows Vista be any different?
Yes, hard drive fragmentation plays a part in the slow down. But, in my experience, a bloated registry is the real culprit.
This is so right, and not to mention that system stability is tightly linked to this phenomenon. No wonder the window zealots, not mentioning Tom Holwerda who seems to think you can run windows on any crap system you might find in a container somewhere.. They probably reformat (normal procedure, right?) once a month.. Sure, you might be able to make windows boot on junk systems, but how will it run? And how will it run after a week? A month? A year? My bet is I’d be happier with the 8MB 486 with linux..
Thats news to me.
XP is much faster and stable than my previous Win 98SE
My 4 Year old box, Athlon XP 1800+, 1 GB Ram, GF 3 Ti 200, Audigy, Abit KR7A-RAID runs incredibly stable.
I never notice Windows really slowing down over time. That said, I don’t install tons of useless software and bloat to begin with, but the days of it crippling itself so fast like 98 Did are over if you are pretty good at administering Windows.
When I pass my box onto my parents, I expect it to remain in good condition. The only times I reformat are when I screw something up critically, not because Windows has really slowed down. I would do the same for a Linux box.
XP really gets too much flak for this kind of stuff. You guys complain about general users being too dumb for Spyware etc, well its the same, anyone who is pretty competent on how Windows works and is intelligent of what they do on their box really don’t have too many problems like the old days did.
Although a non-fragmenting file system sure would be nice.
anyone who is pretty competent on how Windows works and is intelligent of what they do on their box really don’t have too many problems like the old days did
I agree that if you can keep on top of it, your system can still run (almost) as efficiently as the day you installed it. The main issue here is the assumption that the general user is pretty competent on how Windows works. If you create the major operating system for consumers to use, you should never assume competency. They need to create a system that works great for beginners and has advanced options for the more advanced users.
I also agree that they should consider an updated filesystem design that does not fragment as much. What I find even more amazing is how my 2k to XP migration brought a slowdown to my 1.2GHz Athlon while OS X 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 has brought more responsiveness to my PowerMac 1.2GHz G4.
I really wish i could be stoned all the time too
absolute rubbish….you LINUX users will trash WINDOWS for no reason at all…..my windows installation is about 1.5 years old and still runs as fast as the day i installed it….just have to keep it junk free and the disks defragmented…..as far as windows running on older PCs WINXP rund very well on my brothers P3 500Mhz while WIN2000 works blazingly fast on an old P2 350mhz i have around just for fun…..whereas MANDRAKE 10.0 runs slower on my ATHLONXP 2500+ than WINDOWS XP
May I remind you that this story is about MS talking about Windows getting slower over time and doing something against it?
So what exactly does it have to do with “us LINUX user” trashing WINDOWS?
because thats all YOU LINUX USERS seem to do…thrash windows
The error here is simple – yes you can keep windows running fast if you know how and keep working at it. I use SuSE at home and work – It run as fast to day as the day installed – and what have I done to keep it that way – Nothing realy…. the only maintenance I do on my system is to do a on line update about once a month. At work I maintain 32 workstations – 14 of which are SuSE and 18 Windows machines – I spend most of my time keeping the Windows machines working – it has been three months for the last time that I had to deal with problems on the SuSE machines (and that was a manual upgrade that imcluded new larger/ Faster Hard Drives so I had to go to each site to install the drives with SuSE installed and setup).
In reality Joe Average is not capalbe of doing this service – nor does he want to waste time on. When I switch someone to Linux at first they are mad at me because the switch is somewhat painful – later they are mad at me for not making them do it sooner.
I installed Windows XP on my machine some 3 years back, i even run my website on it. It is a PIII 733 MHz machine with 256MB RAM. I rarely boot it like once in 2-3 months when i install patches. It always run pretty fast. I don’t know what you guys do to make your system slow.
By the way i had an equal number of patches from Redhat on Redhat 9 and i had to reboot almost same number of times due to kernel updates.
If this is not just a press release, which is likely, then it is a good start.
Microsoft needs to do something about their OS performance degradation over time.
Let us hope Microsoft is putting real engineers and not a bunch of offshored interns on this project.
It seems to me that most of the windows perfomance problems come from the registy becoming bloated. If you only install a couple of programs, you are usually ok. But if you install/uninstall and have tons of programs, windows seems to start to slow down. However, my Fedora Box, with tons of software installed (including mono stuff for f-spot) still runs as fast as the day it was installed. The same thing was true with my Fedora Core 4 install. Of course, my macintosh laptop still seems to run as good as is it did when I installed Tiger. YMMV
I wonder if the bottleneck detector will detect their new broken OpenGL..
I wonder if people will ever stop posting the “my linux is better than your windows” junk. Anyway..
I’m sitting on a 3.0ghz p4 workstation with 2 gigs of ram that’s been running well over 8 months and it’s still kicking a long just fine. I personally think the problem seems a lot worse than it is because of the end users of the systems.
So windows is getting more bloated and standard pc’s are shipping with more ram and faster processors for even cheaper prices. I like new features personally. New features make upgrades considerable, otherwise why ever buy a computer again once it does what you already need it to. (Of course they may break, don’t read into that statement too deep because it’s a pretty simple concept)
As it’s already been said, windows performs pretty well on older hardware, even the newest versions. The performance problems go beyond the internals of windows. Lets just pretend this autodefrag stuff is a service. Why would Microsoft be inclined to write such software? Ahh yes, the end-user. The end-user is too irresponsible to defrag the disk him self. The end-user complains about the PC being slow. Microsoft says “Okay, we’ll fix this.” and writes a service that defrags your pc for you.
Your PC is getting slower because you are getting lazier or simply just don’t care enough to take the responsibilty to ensure your system is running well.
It looks to me like the problem goes well beyond windows.
Your PC is getting slower because you are getting lazier or simply just don’t care enough to take the responsibilty to ensure your system is running well.
It looks to me like the problem goes well beyond windows.
You forgot the average user’s response, which would most likely sound like “What is a defrag?” The main issue is that the average user doesn’t usually know that they need to do to maintain their systems, so they don’t. I don’t blame them, as the majority only want to answer e-mails and browse the web.
Why should these users have to remember to maintain a system that can be told to do things automatically in the background. Unlike an automobile that requires an oil change out of necessity, the computer has the advantage to perform maintenance operations on its own. The computer systems are intelligent (when we make them that way) to maintain themselves in common tasks so that the user doesn’t have to take time out of their schedule to perform tune-ups.
What I feel Microsoft really needs to do i fix the problem, not treat the symptoms.
I’m sitting on a 3.0ghz p4 workstation with 2 gigs of ram that’s been running well over 8 months and it’s still kicking a long just fine.
I’m sitting on a bi AMD 2200+ workstation with 1 Go RAM that’s been running well over 4 years with 3 (THREE !! Gnome, KDE, XFCE) desktops running at the same time on Linux. 2 Gigs of RAM for 1 desktop ?
I personally think the problem seems a lot worse than it is because of the end users of the systems.
You mean, like my users ? None of them have these problems on Linux. I understand now that the “Linux better than Windows” will never stop, as long as Windows users blame other Windows users, when Linux users blame the OS.
New features make upgrades considerable, otherwise why ever buy a computer again once it does what you already need it to.
That’s why my main workstation is 4 years old, since I got on Linux.
As it’s already been said, windows performs pretty well on older hardware, even the newest versions.
What you don’t understand, is that we do not run computers to run Windows, but to do some work.
Why would Microsoft be inclined to write such software? Ahh yes, the end-user.
WRONG ! Because they have the only OS with these problems. Because an “amateur” OS like Linux never need to be defragmented, so is well more user-friendly than Windows.
The end-user is too irresponsible to defrag the disk him self.
You are the irresponsible, because that’s a task the OS should do automatically. This is 20 years old technology !
You MS shills blame the users when your so loved OS or MS is at fault, it’s amazing. No wonder I quit such a bad environment.
Your PC is getting slower because you are getting lazier or simply just don’t care enough to take the responsibilty to ensure your system is running well.
This sentence is actually to assign to MS.
It looks to me like the problem goes well beyond windows.
All the way to MS, you are right.
I believe OS X 10.4 (Tiger) was the only major release that did not tremendously speed things up from the previous release, and actually slowed some things down. However, going from 10.1 to 10.2, and 10.2 to 10.3 shows _tremendous_ speed improvements. But with Tiger, they went with focusing more on features and not as much on performance as they did in the past. In fact, two such features have been said to degrade performance (Spotlight – where every new file saved or modified has to be indexed, and Dashboard – where each widget is like an extra open instance of Safari).
Disagree here. Check out the smoothness of the Finder and Safari scrolling in Tiger. Much more responsive.
that is where the slow down comes from!!!.
Linux and OS X do not slow down over time. They use flat text configuration files.
I agree with this. Certain apps like autocad add so much cruft to your registry that it can’t be a good thing. Sure, I can keep my windows xp boxen running ok, but I feel I need to constantly defragment, clean up temp files that accrue over time (and are often not easy to find), and also worry about the size of the registry.
It’s a lot of effort to keep afloat and I don’t much care for it.
What I find even more amazing is how my 2k to XP migration brought a slowdown to my 1.2GHz Athlon while OS X 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 has brought more responsiveness to my PowerMac 1.2GHz G4
And you can’t say 10.3 has less eye-candy:-)
Registry. That’s the real reason for slowdown, no matter how Microsoft would blame excuses for users not running defragment.
Here’s what I do to keep my Debian Thinkpad with Gnome 2.10 running as fast as it did on first install:
NOTHING
Here’s how much I pay for software upgrades:
NOTHING
Here’s how many times I reboot after upgrading software:
NONE
Here’s what I do to upgrade everything on my system, both the O/S and the applications:
open Synaptic; update list of upgrades; mark all; upgrade
Here’s what I do when I read about Windows:
SHRUG
That’s what i mean.
performance and how basically if you copy 4 gigs of files across the network, dont bother using the computer and be ready for slow access afterwards (like everything went to swap, which is retarded)
I’d like to reiterate this in case someone in redmond reads what people say: Fix the registry. You can’t seriously hope to have a fully centralized settings storage system for the whole OS and not expect it to get messed up. Here’s what you can do:
1.) Put a registry cleaning utility in the OS that all users, not just techies who dl it off MS.com, can use. It doesn’t have to be especially good, just get rid of the old old old old old junk.
2.) Design a better registry. This has to some extent been done. TMK the registry is broken up into several files and most applications do actually get their own registry file. Good. Don’t ever let an application edit another registry file. Then you can delete the registry file when the program uninstalls: That way they aren’t dependent on removing the entries themselves.
3.) Tell application developers that the registry is only for settings: It’s not for anything that changes frequently. Encourage developers to learn to code so they don’t have to use the registry like a crutch. Tell them that the registry is not a place to hide special keys to stop people from reusing shareware: That’s just obnoxious. Hey, maybe you should deprecate the registry now; in ten years you can be rid of the whole mess!
Ya know, back when Microsoft was pimping XP they used to say that it includes NTFS which doesn’t require defragmenting every month. And here they are, “defragment more often.” It’s like the dentist man: “Here’s a better toothe brush, now use it more often!” Not quite, but you can see the humor right?
Performance analysis: Yay! You mean that users aren’t to dumb to read a line graph of CPU and memory usage and know that more means their computer is more busy? You mean that users are capable of managing their own PC?! Are we finally out of the age of talking to users like they’re idiots in the hope that they’ll remain idiots?! Ok, maybe not.
I’ve actually noticed my 2.5 year old XP install slow a lot. And I only use it for games. Which means that I barely use it: And what’s more I rarely uninstall things. It has had a few odd virus’s though although I’m never quite sure where they come from.
The key problem with the registry is that it does too much.
(1) It displays device information and allows device configuration.
(2) It stores optional configuration information.
(3) It stores critical information.
On Linux, (1) is taken care of by the special purpose procfs. The behaviour of each procfs entry is handled by each device class, so there’s a great deal of flexibility without compromising the integrity of procfs or force-fitting a one-size-fits-all layout.
On GNOME, gconf handles (2). If your settings get messed up, then simply delete your gconf file (or reinitialize your gconf directory) and you’re good to go. Your app will resort to the default settings. Corrupting the GNOME “registry” is a minor headache. And because only settings information is stored, the GNOME “registry” is generally fairly small.
On Linux, (3) is managed by the app itself as it should be. If you mess with the installed files of any app, you can expect trouble.
It may make sense to combine (1) and (2), but until the Microsoft registry gets out of the business of handling (3), the registry will always be a trouble.
There never was a 20 MHz Pentium, so that is simply a newer CPU clocked at a speed which very few people would have every used. So that doesn’t prove anything about using XP on older hardware. There is no reason why it should not run, unless XP ran into timing issues. Maybe if they tried it on a 386 or 486 clocked around 20 MHz you would have proved something, because those were real machines.
You also failed to look at the benchmarks, which suggested that the 20 MHz Pentium CPU ran about as fast as a 33 to 50 MHz 486 CPU. Very few people would consider that level of performance as acceptable for every day use under any operating system. For example: a 33 MHz 68040 running a contemporary operating system and near-contemporary web browser (ie. it doesn’t try to handle CSS, JavaScript, etc.) would take over a minute to download and render a typical webpage on a high speed connection.
Lets get something straight. This article isn’t about how well your linux system performs. It would probably be interesting to see a show of hands of who HAS NOT used linux before. It would be even more interesting to see a show of hands of what windows users here that have used linux really care how well your linux system performs.
There’s too many wise men running around preaching the word. Been there, seen that, got the t-shirt. Some of us still use linux, some of us never liked linux, some of us never looked back once we had a taste of linux.
Point being, we do not need your “my linux is better than your windows” junk.
And for those of you who are thinking it, no, I do not have anything against linux. I’m a strong supporter of it in our work environment. I practicly got my foot in the IT door after school because of my experience with linux.
How about:
1. proper uninstall procedures that remove everything when the program is removed
2. install procedures that don’t bloat the OS – i.e. programs should be self contained
2a. every program and their friend like to load some startup programs even if you only run the program once a month those little start up programs are always running – again programs need to be more self contained
3. cleaner update procedures – again too much stuff gets left over from before the update bloating the system – this applies to programs, drivers and the OS
4. MS need to do a better job of only starting services when they are actually needed – OK they do it with some services but it should work with all – eg my printer is not even switched on but spoolsv is running – how about having one resident process that can start up all the other ones when they’re actually needed (OK it’s probably already in there but it should be better implemented)
This latest bunch of silliness from Microsoft was the last straw for me. Moments ago I made the “switch.” After reading this latest Microsoft drivel I went to a Mac store and I placed an order for a new PowerBook. Very soon I’ll most likely place an order for a new desktop Mac as well. After I get settled in with the Macs then I’ll wipe Windows off of all of my old machines and install Linux.
This wasn’t a decision that I reached easily. I have spent the past ten years using Windows and believe the MS Office is a fantastic application and that .NET is the best application development platform available. I even ordered a copy of MS Office for my new PowerBook.
However, despite believing all of that, I just can’t stand Windows. It sucks, and is sucking more with every release. There’s more than one indication that Vista will suck even worse.
Oddly, the last straw that finally made me switch wasn’t just Windows issues such as performance deterioration. What finally made me switch is that I got sick and tired of being insulted by Microsoft’s Windows team. That’s right. Insulted. That they actually expect us customers to believe that performance deterioration is just a normal problem of computing life and that Microsoft’s new-fangled defragmenting scheme will be a solution is an insult to our intelligence.
As others have mentioned on this topic, there are other operating systems that do not experience performance deterioration with usage. In fact, not only are there other operating systems that do not experience peformance deterioration with usage, some of the other operating systems actually tend to provide better efficiency and better performance with each release. OS X is a case in point. Qt/KDE 3.4 is another case in point (at least for the UI layer of an OS).
Windows is just plain crappy. Period. As a comparitive example, last weekend, in an effort to revive an old Windows-choked Dell C400 laptop (Pentium 3, 1.2 GHz), I booted SLAX on the machine from a livecd. All of sudden, the machine was fast. Much, much faster than it had been when running Windows. I was kind of stunned. In fact, because of that experiment, I overcame the concern that I had about purchasing a “slow” G4 PowerBook today as it became very obvious that yesterday’s processors can work just fine if driven by an efficient OS.
Bye Bye Microsoft. I’ve switched.
The registry is the real cause of this problem. Compare fresh system and user registry files to those that have been in use for two years or more. The registry is and has been the number one central point of “failure” in Windows since Windows NT. Uninstallers don’t remove everything that was added. Stuff that shouldn’t be there IS there (see the many entries for products you do not own or have never installed). Corruption of values. Etc. The architecture of the system is poor in relation to the installation and use of third party products and this is demonstrated by comparing a fresh system with no 3rd party product, to a production machine filled with graphics and/or audio apps and tools and hardware. Windows by itself run pretty well. Add all the tools a person needs for pro graphics and/or audio work, and Windows becomes less stable and less reliable (logon.exe has been crashing 80% of every system start on mine and there is no reason for it – I keep sending the reports and it keeps crashing).
Until the registry and the DLL litter are removed, Windows systems will always continue to grow less and less reliable and become slower until a fresh install is once again performed. Cleaner programs can only mitigate the problem to a small extent. Since there is no system in place to manage add-ons and DLLs, system cleaners are risky (can remove needed DLLs because they are not “registered” or rostered in the registry).
Either Microsoft’s Marketing is really screwy, or the reporters got it wrong. XP already automatically moves files around to defrag the hard drive. It is one of the idle-priority tasks that is performed by windows. Google for the ProcessIdleTasks API to see what I’m talking about.
Humm, show us the link.
I have been looking after windows systems for years.. and they do not auto-defrag.. never have and do not on XP.. just check out a windows pc after it has been used for a few weeks.. heck after a fresh install .. normally you are looking at 15% or worse defragmentation.. Man.. I have seen many windows systems with up to 50% fragmentation after a complete scripted build.. Defrag only runs under administrator privilidges and it dose not run automatically.. geesh.. just try to run defrag once as a user or power user.. read the notification… that’s it..
I took your advice and googled ProcessIdleTasks API. This gave me a link to Microsoft’s site on the subject. They have a paragraph on idle task scheduling. The first sentence begins with “file placement optimization”. File placement and file fragmentation are two different things as far as I can see.
True, Windows XP has task that automaticly tries to optimize locations of mostly used files, thats why more often used software work better.
Fragmentation is common problem with all OS’s and will be probaply for ever. I think this is quite normal behaviour from Microsoft. I mean Apple tries to solve it by using Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering and other stuff. So why wouldn’t Microsoft too.
is THAT what that is?? my god, as soon as the screensaver switches on, my hard disk be scratchin’ n’ scratchin’ like a mofo! stuffs be keepin me up when i be sleepin’, yo. peeps be holdin me down!
werd. you betta’ recognise.
…etc.
I have been “raised” to believe that the registry is the source of all corruption within the realm of Windows, so I tend to believe this, except for one thing. I downloaded and installed Registry Mechanic, and I noticed absolutely zero performance boost. I reckon I can chalk that one up to Registry Mechanic possibly being a load of crap, but it sure had the hard disk scratching away for quite some time.
I used to regularly run the disk cleanup wizard and defrag, but after a while of the computer STILL slowing down, I gave up on it. Honestly, again, no performance changes, I may as well just leave defrag and the like alone, nothing changes.
And don’t tell me to “stop installing ‘crap'” on my computer. I hardly think Photoshop and its cohorts are “crap.” Some of us have work to do.
osx86 to come!!!
windoze vista seems to be as ugly as hell. what a crap!
Or will this feature be dropped in a few months? Tsk.
Anyway, the problem is a combination of all the things mentioned already (fragmentation, dll liter, the registry…) and that makes it quite impossible for MS to fix it unless they’re willing to make some major changes, and so far they’ve been dropping all of them so…
So sick of these bunch of crappy annoying dumbasses coming in every forum and turning it into a war. Hey my shoes are better than yours argument.
Come back when you get 10% market share, till then shut up.
These zealots with all the hype make Linux sound like a dream system but when user tries to use it, its not so great and not as easy as windows. I know many users who switched back from Linux.
And by the way, performance of XP is better or equal to major Linux distributions with GNOME/KDE on same hardware. So anyone telling they perform better, is a liar. If you say i use a lightweight DE then you are advising me to use a substandard DE/WM which is another lame argument.
By the way on windows XP i could use cygwin bash as my shell. I run sshd and can easily remote on it. So the same tools that exist for Linux are there for Windows as well, it just that average users don’t want those tools and the ones who want can get it.
We are just pointing out that a OS with a billion dollor backing dont even come close to a free OS you can download in many aspects. As for KDE and gnome, well they are actually getting faster and less boated (look at the source code size)
The Linux shell can do far more that the command prompt, everything infact.
IF I ever install Vista that will be just another service that will be disabled.
I very much agree with the registry & I dont trust a program to clean it for me.
XP & 2k3 install in about 45mins on my machine but from what I have heard from my peers, it takes Vista beta 1 1.5+ hours which is ridiculous.
I see hardware moving along at a pretty good pace but pi$$’s me off that software co’s are taking their sweet a$$ time.
Hopefully Vista Server will run better than 2k3 & out outperform its non-server counterpart.
I wonder when Microsoft will come into the 20th century and make a filesystem that dont defragment?, reiserfs on Linux, heloooo!
And also a filesystem that dont corrupt?, oh Linux has this, it’s called reiser4. 🙂
Same on windows. Bash can do everything that Linux bash does. For device management, windows has their own system and i would say a much better system.
Linux has no proper device driver model for developing drivers. Linux kernel lacks windows XP kernel by at least 2-3 years in terms of its asynchronous IO support. Linux wasn’t fully preemptible till long.
There are deficiencies in each system but for average users and developers, windows is easier so they use it. People like you coming here and pulling the argument, Linux is better won’t change a thing.
And trust me, i have used Vista, it is going to kick ass but i know you won’t wanna believe that. So just take my words for now and believe when you see it. And don’t worry i will be here to talk to u with the same Id.
The reason for that is because kernel devels started to help the desktop users abit by reducing latency. preemption model in the lastest 2.6.13RC releases helps alot, it also make you system and apps even more reliable.
Vista is a year away but I guess Windows users need to feel superiour in some way, by the way, it willnot be free. The same technologies will be there in Linux including the onces it has over Windows anyway. You seem to forget Linux was started by one person while Windows was being developed for the desktop. It’s amazing your directly comparing something free with something that not, but ofcourse you people always forget that detail.
Before someone come correcting me, i meant Linux kernel was not fully pre-emptible for long (i don’t know if it is now or not) Where as Windows NT was fully pre-emptible from day one.
Is it me or do the fonts suck? I have yet to see fonts on any platform as good as Linux, today. Not even OS X. The irony is that it used to be that Linux fonts sucked big time a few years ago. Today, I dread using the computers in the lab that I have to carry a liveCD everywhere I go.
And now I’m seeing the Vista fonts and comparing to my GNOME fonts, and it’s a little depressing. What about the new fonts Vista was supposed to have? They looked shexy.
Yeah i think the linux x11 fonts blow all the other fonts away.
Does anyone have any good Registry cleaning programs? I used to use System Mechanic quite often 2 or 3 (serveral versions) ago… until it crashed my computer once. I was doing my monthly registry scan, cleaned some stuff out, rebooted, and got a blue screen of death.
Ever since then I’ve been too scared to try another program… and I haven’t really noticed much of a difference anyway since I don’t think System Mechanic ever really helped that much.
So I just set up a sliptream XP installation disk with all of my settings and programs automatically installed. This way I can just do a fresh re-install every 6 months or so and 90% of the work of setting up the computer again is already done.
On a side note…
I think your computer will run just fine if you can manage to just leave it alone (but that’s really an unreasonable expectation). My work computer has Windows 2000 with AutoCAD, Office 2000, Ad-Aware Pro, and Firefox. I don’t install and uninstall other programs on it very often and it’s worked great for about 3 years now.
My home computer runs XP but has about a hundred other programs installed and I’m constantly messing around with it. So of course I’d get all kinds of problems after a few months and it’s not Microsoft’s fault, it’s mine.
My solution was just to buy a dual Opteron computer with gobs of RAM and 15k RPM SCSI disks last year. The system is so fast I haven’t noticed that usual Windows slow down after about 10 months now.
Okay, if you want to use linux fine, if it is better than
XP, i never saw it. infact win98 runs much faster on old
hardware and i have a full window manager. both OS
can work well if you learn the systems. and work with them. And XP can be very stable.
Have you ever seen one of these semi-professional artists (musicians, video editors…) that work on XP? Those guys ALWAYS have a “clean” XP instalation on a separate partion (with just a single piece of a particular software installed) + a seperate “general use” partition with networking enabled. These guys could tell us something about performance degrading over time – since their work depends on performance.
I will say that XP is the best Windows Os to date. I have it runnning on a an old 533mhz e machine with 128 megs of ram & it is pretty snappy. I have not noticed the issue of slow down nearly as much in XP as like say, Win98. My Sony Vaio was purchased when XP was first released some 4 years ago, and it is still as fast as the day I bought it. No reinstalls, no reformats, nothing. I use it mostly for heavy graphics and video editing while once in a while surfing the internet. But I am not a fool, I do not let viruses and worms infect my rig. Part of the problem is Windows, but most of it I think comes down to the user.
This would just seem right.
You’re in the middle of Doom3, and suddenly your framerate goes from 70 fps to about 15…because a defrag just decided to start for you.
How nice.
I’m in the mood of gathering some “-1″s.
“So sick of these bunch of crappy annoying dumbasses coming in every forum and turning it into a war.”
Ok. Nice to see you are above that and preach peace among the people. Now go cuddle beside your fluffy teddy bear with a Windows logoed t-shirt.
“So anyone telling they perform better, is a liar”
Thank you. y head was so full of strange events and arguments piled up to form an antagonistic view, but they are all gone now. You see, it’s all very clear to me now. The whole thing. It’s wonderful.
“I run sshd and can easily remote on it. So the same tools that exist for Linux are there for Windows as well”
Ok, master guru, now please educate us on who poured working hours into cygwin. No, it wasn’t Microsoft.
“pulling the argument, Linux is better won’t change a thing”
Oh yes, it will. And I hope you’ll be there with the longest face on this planet.
“Bash can do everything that Linux bash does.”
Nice job copying obsolete technology and using it to get up on that high horse. Bash is not the best shell you know. And whatever will be in Vista (’cause they just announced dropping Monad) won’t be good for anything more than now.
“For device management, windows has their own system and i would say a much better system”
Ok, so let the quite a few years of experience of the crowd fall and disappear in the mud, here’s the man who knows the truth. Let thy words lighten our souls, master.
“So just take my words for now”
Yes master, may I take your head with it also ? Or is it too much inside someplace eeky.
linux zealots can flame as much as they want, but they cannot deny that windows xp is the most advanced os for pcs right now.
yes, i mean linux kernel is worse than xp kernel :]
“linux zealots can flame as much as they want, but they cannot deny that windows xp is the most advanced os for pcs right now.
yes, i mean linux kernel is worse than xp kernel :]”
I can deny that windows xp is the most advanced os for pcs right now.
See I just did.
I can deny that windows xp is the most advanced os for pcs right now.
See I just did.
and this means that you are clueless linux zealot
seriously anyone saying microsoft should drop registry does not think. nt kernel depends on registry and there is nothing to replace it. text config file? haha, what a joke! i can imagine 2 megabytes large text file which is being modified and searched milion times per minute/hour/whatever.
“and this means that you are clueless linux zealot
seriously anyone saying microsoft should drop registry does not think. nt kernel depends on registry and there is nothing to replace it. text config file? haha, what a joke! i can imagine 2 megabytes large text file which is being modified and searched milion times per minute/hour/whatever.”
Ahh i get it either
a) admit win xp is most advance OS for pcs
b) I am a clueless linux zealot
Yo dont even know what OS I support or use.
Look who is clueless and zealous now =D =D =D =D.
seriously thinking registries > text files. That also gave me a good laugh. text files can easily be rewritten and modified using GUI tools. and if you mess up, the application can simply generate another default text file…..instead of exploding like winXP.
Granted registries have their advantages i guess =/
I know im on windows turf and all that but I dont have to bend to your every will to disprove that I am zealous =D =D
seriously thinking registries > text files. That also gave me a good laugh. text files can easily be rewritten and modified using GUI tools. and if you mess up, the application can simply generate another default text file…..instead of exploding like winXP.
now i really see you’re clueless :]
i think you have heard what a database is, right? and maybe you even know what are diferences between databases and text files when you store data there. if you don’t i will remind you: speed. the more data is stored, the bigger is speed difference.
now guess what: windows registry is a database. now think about the size of registry: yes, it is big.
btw windows kernel use registry to store its configuration and state. and it changes quite often. so think again – what good would text file be for this purpose? yea, you’re right again – no good.
Ummm the world doesnt revolve around speed, and i never said that text file configurations were faster than registries.
Im talking about scalability, security, robustness, and ability to modify. Thats where config files shine. Messing with registries is not only dangerous, but very difficult to manage and clean. And over time registries get loaded with crap so your speed argument means nothing over time if its not manage properly.
registries are not as cracked up as your making them out to be, otherwise linux wouldve copied that style a while ago =)
Does it seem like many software developers do not actually use their own stuff? Microsoft, specifically in this case (though SAP is another good example).
Surely they know that the real problem is the registry and drive litter. Why do they continue to make it worse? Do they not know how to step out of a bad path?
Seriously, if they decided to depricate the registry, that’s a LOT of backwards compatibility they would break in ONE upgrade. They would have to eliminate the registry over four major revisions of the OS to get all the rest of the industry making software and hardware brought up to speed. There would have to be a backwards compatibility registry present for several versions at the very least.
Even if they KNEW the real cause and the real solution, it would be disruptive to the gravey train. They have no reason to change it if people continue to believe that computers are special cases and that things are okay as they are. Microsoft can continue to integrate little tools and features and change the core problems a tiny bit each version (who doesn’t agree that WinXP is the best Windows version so far if way bloated). Feature bullet points make for a greater upgrade attraction than a total system rewrite for efficiency and simplification purposes.
Those of us who know the system internals would upgrade to a total rewrite version in a heartbeat, unless that total rewrite meant we had to wait for all of our software to be rewritten too.
The real problem here, in the entire industry, is that computers are not purpose built devices. They are expected to do everything all the time for all people. You can’t ever get it right because it is not a sensible engineering goal. Constantly adding functionality to a core that was never designed to support it is only the fastest way towards profit. As long as profit is the only goal, and as long as people continue to accept the poor quality of product (en mass!), things will continue to get slower, more unreliable and complicated.
I understand that after fresh install, adding antivirus, few programs will slow down the machine but not by much.
What worries me most is Windows getting slower by itself(aren’t the services in the background not using cpu? and doesn’t the memory pages they use if, required get swapped to disk?).
I have nice exaple at work, a P3 2k pro box. No one installed any software on it since the initial set up and after few years of use it got really slow. All it has is Office, Symantec AntiVirus, accounts package and a specially developed booking system.
So the article does talk about programs in the system tray, ok it will increase the loading time and use little bit of ram, but by removing them will you actually increase system responsiveness?
And I’m sure SuperFetch will get cancelled few weeks down the road, as nearly every new feature got cancelled so far.
It’s amazing a Windows users find it acceptable to do all this work to keep windows running. If you read the threads from the Windows zeleots who claim their box’s are fast you get comments like:
Widnows is slow cause people don’t defrag. Guess what? A true file system doesn’t get fragmented no matter how much crap you throw at it.
Windows is slow cause of all the software that gets installed – making registry bloat. Have you seen how much software a Linux box comes with – holy shit Windows would be on it’s knees.
Windows is slow because of the spyware that gets installed on your computer… My linux box hasn’t a single spyware app on it. I imagine every Linux user would argue the same.
Guess what Windows users – your OS is crap!
Guess what only less than 5% people want Linux…
Linux users…your OS is USELESS
Hey dude, you carefully avoided his Kernel premption and asynchronous driver IO issues?
Why do people run to market share, knowing MS is a convicted monopoly and forced deals with market vendors, so that everytime you buy a new PC, it magically comes with windows.
I mean is ok to say linux sucks or whatever, but this argument is what I call grasping for straws. One good argument is mentioning that the GUI is not embeded in the kernel for linux, so there is a somewhat slower performance compared to windows, which has explorer embeded in the kernel.
They need to dump the fucking registry. THAT is your problem, Microsoft.
“XP really gets too much flak for this kind of stuff. You guys complain about general users being too dumb for Spyware etc, well its the same, anyone who is pretty competent on how Windows works and is intelligent of what they do on their box really don’t have too many problems like the old days did.”
You make it sound so easy, unfortunately what you speak about is the exception and not the norm, take any 10 XP users randomly and a majority of them will tell you that their computer gets slower over time due to normal usage.
So why is fedora core sooo slow to start with, even with
256 megs of ram? sssmuuuucchh slower than XP! for people
who just surf the web and do email. do we really need
9000megs of ram to do that? cmon.
I don’t know about FC4, but my Debian/Sid boots faster (from grub selection to X and computer _idle_) than W2K does on the very same computer.
Cause fedora is bloated beyond belief.
One of the problems with many linux distros is the approach they take, they load a bunch of software in with the kernel and GUI and other crap. And so many services are running by default.
Truth be told Id rather work to make my system from nothing to something, rather than work to delete stuff and shut off services that are running.
Then how did they become one? I mean your argument is flawed. Once upon a time there was battle of OSes. Everyone was trying to capture the market and Microsoft did. And thats why they are on 90%. The only monopoly case against on Microsoft which succeeded was in browser war and not at all on OS. So you are wrong.
Umm Microsoft went to specific hardware vendors, and illegally made them put windows on their pcs?
Why do you think MS was ordered to give IBM all that money over the BeOS incident.
I mean seriously you asked the questions why this and why that. Mabey you could do a bit of research and answer those questions yourself. Readup on OS history cause you are wrong.
Even before BeOS windows was number 1. Now you have freedom to ask vendors to ship Linux on PCs so how come even now Linux is crawling at < 5%?
Business is like a bunch of rats and a piece of cake. Who ever used a good strategy to get the cake, all others will call him/her a cheater. I am sure, If IBM got a chance to get the full share, they wouldn’t have said no, even they would have tried by all means. They had PC-DOS license, what did they do to improve it? Do you think Apple didn’t try its tactics? Apple even tried hardware lock-in. So please no use of blaming.
You have your chance now, vendors can ship Linux with no trouble from any other company, go make them ship it, make it a success.
Hah if you think that Windows and other OSes are battling on equal terms by any means, then there is no point talking to you. Windows got its advantage through illegal means, and got more than 90% of the market share. Thats what we call an “uphill battle” for any competitor. And a majority of hw vendors still ship PCs with windows and a consumer base who dont even know what Linux is, let alone know that the option is available. Thats what we call “more of an uphill battle”
Dont tell me your actually sitting there with statistics, in a state of glee because windows market share > linux market share. Personally, I dont see my linux box have an increase in performace, or greater chance of usability for every new user that tries linux.
No providing the hardware along side, the OS in Apple’s case IS NOT the same as going to hardware vendors which made up the very complementary PC market and making “special” deals/threats in an effort to push out competition. Neither the apple hardware nor software encompassed a large portion of the market share like all the various PC vendors did, so that is something you cant compare.
Like Windows has user base advantage, Linux has FREE advantage. So don’t tell me that Windows is successful only due to their market share.
They are able to compete with something called *FREE* and shame on you guys who blame Microsoft instead of doing introspection and finding your own faults for the almost failure of Linux to get on Desktop.
Look at how much they stole from Apple…Without any threats, Microsoft falls asleep. They never really innovate.
1. OpenGL desktop (+ ruining OpenGL, check out http://www.opengl.org)
2. Search technology
3. The look of the browser, implementing the search bar in top of windows
etc….they just photocopied Apple again. Makes me sick.
read it as: “i rarely reboot it”
Diskeeper does this already. It has a “set it and forget it” mode.
As for windows slowing down over time its usually associated with registry entries building up or extra trash in the CLSID section of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.
For the experienced user this can be handled and anyone who can only re-install windows to fix the problem is not as experienced with XP as they think.
General users and this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Background applications can slow a system down over time also. Check your startup tab in msconfig.
Diskeeper does this already. It has a “set it and forget it” mode.
Doesn’t MS use a sort of Diskeeper Light for Defragmenting Windows? Perhaps they have decided to pony-up a few more dollars to get a more advanced version of Diskeeper.
My win98/128mb runs circles around ubuntu 4.10. Now, since linux is getting more desktop features, folks are finally realizing that these heavyweight desktop environments do suck up a lot of resources even on linux. Also, why is searching for files so slow under linux? With the -u flag I get super fast searches but only on data that was already indexed. I have to redo the indexing to get speed and normal non-indexed searches under linux are much slower than on windows. It was always like this all the way back to red hat 6 that I installed back in ’98.
To Windows Zealots, get a fucking clue. The registry is the single most annoying thing about Windows since 3.1
I am one of these Audio pro’s and my main workstation fell over the other day why? Because I had been trying VST demos and then getting rid of them. After the system runing fine I come back the next day to get work done and Voila, I can’t even get a fucking boot. I run repair utilities to check the MBR and Boot files, still nothing. I had to use a Linux Live CD to copy my email to a USB device and then re-install bloody Windows XP and all my audio apps. There was no explanation for this fall over and there was nothing I could do to try and resurect the bloody OS.
Windows for me at the moment is an evil necessity but when I see a cost effective, supported audio environment I can move to I will dump Windows ASAP. I am so tired of the bloody hand holding this crap ware needs.
p.s. I am well awayre of all the tools you can try to use to keep Windows running but in the longrun, aside from not using your computer, they add to naught.
About the slowing down issues…
The main offenders are, as already stated:
1. Fragmentation of hard disks. I personally run Diskeeper nightly.
2. Registry. Programs are really bad about not removing the stuff they put in registry.
I keep up on cleaning up my registry, removing unused programs, and deleting unused files, and my system is still just as fast as it was on day one.
So MS is trying to address some of these issues,which is good. The registry thing they are sort of fucked up. Backwards compatiblity dictates that they can’t dump it.
“Backwards compatiblity dictates that they can’t dump it.”
Yet another reason to dump the current incarnation of Windows and start over.
Backwards compatability is like building a pyramid starting with the point on the ground and then building the base skyward. Eventually, it’s going to come crashing down at some point.
Maybe Microsoft can do it right the second go-round.
I am no linux or OSS zealout but…. lets be honest, there may be some freak windows systems that have exceptional administrators, or systems that never have software installed or removed, or are never connected to the net that have good uptimes, however….. there is a reason linux/bsd/unix systems are used for “most” servers and windows is not…… because windows (even windows server) has crap uptimes and has to be reinstalled all the time.
I know the linux desktop may in some people’s minds be subpar, but.. i like it and i use it daily.. and guess what…… i never have to reinstall, i get updates whenever i want them, and i have full control of my system
heck, if i want i can write scripts to execute regular updates of my liking.
…. i know windows has it’s place right now and it probably will in the future to… i just hope it’s not so dominant.
If microsoft is to dominate the marketplace….. i hope it is because it is superior.. not because it already holds the throne and people are to lazy to change.
It isn’t because of compatibility issues. Other platforms have long since solved the problem for legacy software — OS/2 has supported DOS and Windows 3.1 programs on its HPFS filesystem (which is, ironically, a fragmentation-resistant filesystem originally developed by Microsoft) since 1992, and you can even install a vanilla version of Windows 3.1 on an HPFS filesystem under OS/2.
Why do you think MS was ordered to give IBM all that money over the BeOS incident.
Try OS/2 incident. BeOS was developed by Be, Inc. 🙂
I believe OS X 10.4 (Tiger) was the only major release that did not tremendously speed things up from the previous release, and actually slowed some things down. However, going from 10.1 to 10.2, and 10.2 to 10.3 shows _tremendous_ speed improvements. But with Tiger, they went with focusing more on features and not as much on performance as they did in the past. In fact, two such features have been said to degrade performance (Spotlight – where every new file saved or modified has to be indexed, and Dashboard – where each widget is like an extra open instance of Safari).
Your about as dead wrong as possible. Tiger is tremndously faster than Panther. All sorts of Macs were tested and most received a slight CPU performance test increase and a very large user interface performance increase.
Spotlight doesn’t degrade performance except the first time you install Tiger until it’s finished. Dashboard doesn’t degrade performance until you activate it, then it just sits harmlessly taking a little bit of RAM.
Sure if you have a old G3 running at 200 Mhz or something sure it’s going to choke, but across the board in Mac’s that can run it, Tiger has better performance than Panther. It’s been graphed and tested.
If you ask HardMac, they have the graph and the data to prove it.
I’ve been programming Windows now for quite a while – and have built and maintained far too many systems.
Lately spyware takes the top spot for slowing systems down – often to the point where the user cannot do anything.
Often I see drivers and services taking up huge amounts of memory and/or cpu time – Cannon all-in-one scanner/printer/fax machines being among the worst.
During the development of Windows XP Microsoft created the crash reporting system and it REALLY helped them isolate problems and generally improve not just their own software, but the software of other vendors (video card driver crashes are far fewer now than they were under Windows 2000).
I know that installing and running lots of software will make a PC slower (obvious). What will help is some software that will help us IDENTIFY the really bad pieces of software out there and force them to update it (or just stop using it).
Typical systems from Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc, come with so much software already installed and running that it uses up a significant percentage of CPU time and memory. I do not blame MS for this speed loss – it is the vendor’s writing ineffecient code.
I think one of the big reasons Linux systems seem faster is that they do not load these “always on and active” programs that run from scanner/printer monitors to poor network and sound card drivers.
Anyway, anything that gives me more tools to diagnose problems is welcome by me.
David Stidolph
Austin, TX