“Unlike previous Microsoft operating systems, Windows Vista is pretty streamlined right out of the box. It makes terrific use of a system’s resources, but it’s built as much for pretty looks and increased stability and security as it is for horsepower. It’s time now for a course of action that will take the ball and chain off this baby and let it fly. The ink on Windows Vista’s EULA is barely dry, so it’s very likely that more speed tips, registry hacks, and deep settings will be revealed in the weeks, months, and years to come. For now, here’s our set of tweaks that can help you turn up the throttle on your new operating system.”
Many of these tricks aren’t unique to the Vista family of OSs, and can be used on other brands of Windows.
Most of these seem like common sense, but even I learned a thing or two. It’s good to add some of these into your monthly maintenance.
Just insert a Linux CD, reboot…
Deja vu: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17571
Maybe in future Windows maintenance threads we could see people post helpful tips rather than stirring?
Indeed, when I did it, I did it with style, class and tongue-in-cheek. That other one was a pale attempt at imitation.
Amateur.
“Just insert a Linux CD, reboot…”
*sigh* that line is so incredibly tired. Like 10 years ago tired.
So therefore do you not think there is a public perception that Vista needs to be replaced with something else ?
So therefore do you not think there is a public perception that Vista needs to be replaced with something else ?
No, there is no such “public perception”, unless by “public” you mean pale geeks who read OSNews; otherwise, the “general public” could care less.
Do the same as Win98/2k/XP, nothing really new.
so after all this is done dont you end up with an OS that closely resembles windows 2000 in apearance? the entire purpose of upgrading to a new OS is to get new fresh features and a new fresh look. so like 15 years and 3 OS’s later you have to use something that looks a lot like win2k to get good performance…
The GUI maybe simular, but whats under the ‘bonnet’ certinally won’t be
how many computer users do you know that actually CARE what goes on under the hood of their OS? how many peeple do you know would even notice a difference?
geeks, techys. sure, how many of yur friends read http://www.osnews.com?
The majorety care. Nobody wants a system that can’t support their game (because DirectX10 isn’t supported on XP) or doesn’t offer the latest drivers for their USB devices. People might well care about the (reportedly) improved securety (although I’m yet to but Vistas security through it’s paces).
An OS isn’t defined by its GUI.
the only thing vista has going for it is DX10 and that could have been backported but MS just wanted a reason to force peeple to upgrade. drivers for ‘new USB’ devices will be made for XP and essentially also 2000 for a long time yet.
to us an OS isnt defined by its GUI. to the majority of PC users the GUI is the OS.
security is as good as xp with all the patches an hotfixes.
the only thing vista has going for it is DX10 and that could have been backported
No it couldn’t. DX10 relies on Vista’s new WDDM driver model, which is fundamentally different than 2000/XP’s WDM. It makes no technical or economical sense to backport such a major new OS part to older version.
Edited 2007-04-03 18:57
There is DX10, theres also a modern ui, a modern (fully integrated) search, intelligent replacement for menus (taking into account fitts law), an extremely upgraded file explorer, a self optimizing/diagnosing/repairing system, the ability to play dvds out of the box, and a networking interface that is actually intuitive and intelligent (to name the things that make me significantly happier with it then any previous version of windows.)
[i]
to us an OS isnt defined by its GUI. to the majority of PC users the GUI is the OS. [/q]
Amen to that, and the bling factor is definitely there. However, the interface will be the most frustrating thing for longtime windows users to adjust to. Win95 copied the mac os like crazy without a real understand of what the principals were behind the design choices. Nowadays, usability isn’t exactly cutting edge and microsoft has professional designers, however they have been saddled with the win95 ui legacy. This is the version of windows (and office, office 2k7 is hands down the easiest to use so far) that breaks the old ways of doing things. As such the most complaints I hear from vista users (in RL, not tech forums) are ui related.
You are forgetting the integrated spyware and firewall that ships with it, and the much maligned UAC. On previous versions of windows if something were going to write to places it shouldn’t, there was no protection. Now windows is on par with mac and linux when it comes to user level security. UAC still needs tweaking (mac is the only one who gets this right, gksudo and uac pop up WAY too often on linux and windows for desktop machines), but I have used linux for years and that not only doesnt bother me, but I would much rather have it there then not have it there. As for the spyware and firewall, I have been using it for a few weeks now so its hard to give an honest critique, however, there is no spyware on my system so far (that i know of, i verify every now and then with third party apps), and registry changes whatnot are flagged for approval every time.
Overall, the security in vista is (if anything) too paranoid, and needs to be toned down in certain ways. The overall methodology is bang-on though, everything is locked down, and privileges are only escalated when its needed. Compared to previous versions, security is like night and day on vista, and brings it up to being an acceptable os to use on the web, which previous versions of windows definitely weren’t (from an objective point of view)
I think you’re underestimating PC Worlds sales abilities somewhat. 😉
Seriously though, these days most average users do care a little more about what’s under the bonnet. They may not understand the details (they take what MS / PC World say as gospel) but they still do care. In fact, over the years I’ve been working in IT (and baring in mind I don’t work in sales), I’ve had quite a number of people who are far from techies ask me about the latest OS (be it XP, 2000 or even Windows systems prior to that) and what the OS offered that the previous didn’t.
In short – i think that, while most consumers may not understand the jargon, they do care that there are fundamental differences beyond the user interface.
An OS isn’t defined by its GUI.
…..but it’s judged by it most heavily.
“An OS isn’t defined by its GUI.”
Given that the operating system is designed to be used, then its interface, given that it is graphical is very much how it is defined as far as the user of the operating system is concerned.
That the drivers are outside the kernel space now, or the sound architecture has been revamped means nothing to me as a user of the system.
That aside, if people want w2k looks from Vista for a bit more speed thats fair enough; that is their defining concern for the operating system experience.
After some initial GUI-shock given the differences between XP and Vista I really like what Microsoft have done. I’m not saying they are innovative because they’re not, but they are done well for the most part. The searches built in work really well and are slick (not just the one on the “Start” menu) the breadcrumb navigation is an excellent improvement on the old pathing.
similar
I guess it depends on how much you care about aesthetics. Most of the extra functionality provided by Vista will still be there, it’ll just look less pretty.
Personally I’d rather have the extra speed; the novelty value of eye-candy, like the pretty pointless transparency effects, wears off very quickly.
“Unlike previous Microsoft operating systems, Windows Vista is pretty streamlined right out of the box”
Now, take a look at Vista’s insane system requirements.
That speaks volumes to how bad MS is getting with bloatware. They can streamline it pretty well and still end up with an OS that requires more resources than alot of 3d games out there.
I mean, Come on!!!!!!!
Someone needs to stop the insanity.
Now, take a look at Vista’s insane system requirements.
Vista runs fine on my old 900Mhz Duron/512Mb box. System requirements satisfied by almost all 5-6 old PCs are hardly insane.
Edited 2007-04-03 18:34
Vista runs fine on my old 900Mhz Duron/512Mb box
No. It doesn’t. It really really doesn’t, and I don’t know what you’re used to, or what your definition of “fine” is, but Vista does not run fine on that hardware.
It may run “fine” on your hardware in the same sense that Windows XP runs “fine” on my parents $300 PC with 256MB RAM. That is, it boots, and then manages to start the browser and email client after some swapping. If that’s your definition of fine then so be it. For someone who just wants to browse the web and check email, that kind of performance is ok. Of course, people with those needs have been fine with the performance of computers for over 10 years.
But the rest of us actually do things with our computers. We are not content to wait for Vista to thrash the harddrive for 3 minutes after bootup (longer than my 2 year old install of XP), we are not content for it to fill the RAM with god knows what, and not content to have background processes consuming resources for no apparent benefit.
Windows XP SP2 is the better Windows (and quite good overall), and Apple/Linux is the better alternative.
Of course, none of this will matter and Vista will have great success. Aren’t monopolies great?
Edited 2007-04-03 19:37
blahblah blah… and more blah.
I haven’t booted into windows since last december on my PC, but damn people. XP *can* run “fine” in 256mb of RAM. but NO out of box
all my xp installs used about 50-60mb of ram on bootup.
but Vista… ‘eh, it *needs* 1gb. I’ve used PCs that have it with 512mb of ram. it sucks
*not out of box …
You’ve got to be joking. Vista barely ran on my 2Ghz Athlon Machine with 1 GB DDR2 Ram. Ever tried using explorer?
I think one of the deciding factors in Vista’s speed is the graphics card as Vista (unlike previous versions of Windows) actually uses the GPU to render the UI.
An example of this was on my modest 2GH Celery 512MB RAM PC. XP actually ran slower than Vista and I think that’s all down to the high spec’ed ATI card I have installed.
I don’t know what your GFX card is. I’ve got a 9600XT. That can handle most modern games, so a few windows shouldn’t tax it too much.
9800XT. Odd you should find it sluggish then as I genuinely found it to out perform XP SP2.
I’d love to see some benchmarking done between XP SP2 and Vista on a variety of hardware as there does seem to be conflicting reports of running speeds Vista achieved on various peoples computers.
I’ve seen benchmarks on various things. The trouble is that benchmarks don’t tend to measure the things that matter in day-to-day work. Things like: explorer navigation, zip performance, menu latency and other small things that really make things feel sluggish.
Vista performance must vary quite a bit. It ran very well on my Athlon 3800 X2 with 1 GB. That’s 2 GHz. Later I upgraded it to 2 GB RAM and it runs much better, but it did run fine before.
It could be that you upgraded. If you have a bunch of files already in place, then the disk indexing Vista does may take a while to complete. It also defrags the disk in the background. Both seem to slow down disk accesses a bit, but the system is better for it afterward.
I did a fresh install. And turned off the indexer after a while, based on my need to regularly search in non profile locations.
That seems strange to me. If you need to often search in other places, why not add them to the index rather than turn it off? The indexing seems to work rather well, at least as well as Beagle or Spotlight.
Hit the Windows key, type the search, arrow key to the results.
That seems strange to me. If you need to often search in other places,
Because I made the logical assumption that indexing every file of every drive on the computer (including system files <- which I think I found difficult to do) would reduce system performance.
It would essentially be a one-time cost, which should be negligible in any case as it would generally use idle time for indexing. After that, only new or changed files would need to be indexed.
You’re comparing a dual-core Athlon64 running at 2 GHz with 1 GB of DDR-SDRAM to a 900 MHz Duron with 512 MB PC133 SDRAM??? Yeah, I wonder why performance varies a lot!!
If people are going to start throwing performance numbers around and “it works great on my comp with X, Y, and Z”, then at least try to compare similar systems.
Saying things work great on your Uber-box and wondering why people are complaining is like saying the weather is nice in Hawaii and wondering why people are complaining about snow storms in Alaska.
Edited 2007-04-03 23:20
Well, my comment was comparing it with stestagg’s 2GHz, 1 GB machine.
My 2Ghz Athlon 2800+ with 1G DDR 400 runs it pretty good, at least as good as XP on the same hardware. Maybe you ahve a hardware issue of some kind.
Aero off right?
It runs well on my macbook without Aero with 512MB of RAM, although not exactly great (but that’s prolly Parallels fault).
Edited 2007-04-03 21:46 UTC
Getting to the desktop and starting Mail doesn’t totally count as “running fine”.
Even Windows 95 booted on my 486 DX2-50 with 8MB of RAM, but I hardly classified it as “usable”.
“Someone needs to stop the insanity.”
Someone needs to stop the trolling.
“””
Now, take a look at Vista’s insane system requirements.
“””
One thing that Microsoft has always gotten right is acknowledging that what is a lot of memory and a lot of processor today is not a lot of memory and processor tomorrow.
Vista took 5 years to get out the door. 5 years from now we will look at the 2GB that maxes out my motherboard today, and think “Oh, how quaint! Expressing memory capacity in Gigabytes! Will it run Emacs?”. 😉
Edited 2007-04-04 05:43
Now, take a look at Vista’s insane system requirements.
That speaks volumes to how bad MS is getting with bloatware. They can streamline it pretty well and still end up with an OS that requires more resources than alot of 3d games out there.
I mean, Come on!!!!!!!
Someone needs to stop the insanity.
It’s pretty much a corollary that, over time, software will continue to expand in functionality and thus eat up all available computing resources. You may not like that additional functionality, but plenty of people DO. Fortunately, computer hardware continues to increase in speed/capability while simultaneously decreasing in cost, so it’s really a wash. The fact of the matter is that the machine you bought 5 years ago is a shadow of the machines which are available today. Of course, that doesn’t excuse software developers from optimizing their use of memory, but it does suggest that people who are complaining about Vista not running on old hardware need to get over it. It’s like complaining about gravity.
Unlike previous Microsoft operating systems, Windows Vista is pretty streamlined right out of the box. It makes terrific use of a system’s resources
Good to see Timothy Leary doing journalism again!
Of course it uses more CPU for security but not security from outside attacks and viruses. Security from keeping you locked down by DRM, system bus scanning, driver/hardware security, etc. Shame that people will upgrade for DX10, only reason to upgrade.
Of course it uses more CPU for security but not security from outside attacks and viruses. Security from keeping you locked down by DRM, system bus scanning, driver/hardware security, etc. Shame that people will upgrade for DX10, only reason to upgrade.
Hmmmmm, that’s odd. Vista seems to have a firewall (Windows Firewall) and a malware scanner (Windows Defender). Maybe I’m just hallucinating… Are you claiming that those components aren’t part of Vista?
Scanners and firewalls are prevalent over all operating systems, are you trying to suggest they are a reason to upgrade to Vista ?
Now that would be a real WOW factor !
Scanners and firewalls are prevalent over all operating systems, are you trying to suggest they are a reason to upgrade to Vista ?
I made no such claim. I was responding specifically to the issue of whether Vista has a firewall and malware scanner. It does.
Its true some of the info is fairly generic and can be done with older versions of Windows but its good to see there are some tricks people have come up with speed up their system. Vista runs pretty smoothly on the systems I’ve tested it on, but I imagine as you use it more or for those who want to get it as zippy as possible, these tips will be pretty handy.
I believe Vista will be the last in this code base kind of like Windows ME.
No it wont.
Micorosft wouldn’t have spent five years improving NT just to throw it away.
Windows has become too big and complicated to replicate the same thing on top of a fresh codebase within any practical time frame.
NT development occured in parallel with 9x, so the jump was fairly straight forward.
We’re not talking a normal company. Microsoft has the resources to quickly pull off a codebase rewrite if they decide it would be in their best interests.
Of course, in providing support for all the old applications people are still using, they’d end up with so many compatibility layers running alongside the core services that they would only get a small improvement for the cost, so it’s not likely.
No.
Vista is a prime example at how difficult Windows has become to manage.
It took 10-20,000 MS employees 5 years to make enough improvements and changes ontop of XP/2003 (based on NT) to call it Vista.
Prior to Vista, the NT codebase was already mature after several years of existance.
The complexity really speaks for itself on this one.
Vista is a prime example at how difficult Windows has become to manage.
That is exactly the reason why they should have rewritten the whole codebase.
I’m pretty sure they could have done it in five years, if the developers didn’t have to worry about backwards compatibility.
That way they could have corrected all the old design mistakes that plaque Windows even with Vista.
It would not have been too difficult for them to write a good compatibility layer on top of that new OS either: Just think about the WINE project. They have been able to do just that *for Linux* even without Windows’s source code! And when the apps run in WINE they run almost with native speed, even games!
The great advantage of a compatibility layer would also be that it would protect the new base OS from badly written legacy apps. Furthermore, fixing this layer would be just a matter of re-installing it.
Now THAT would have been the brave *new* Windows of the 21st century!
Edited 2007-04-04 12:53
The wine project only attempts to create an open-source Win32 API, not really the NT codebase.
That said, it has taken the Wine project nearly 15 years to get to the point it’s at now: a mature beta.
The wine project only attempts to create an open-source Win32 API, not really the NT codebase.
Of course but how is this relevant to the point I was trying to make?
That said, it has taken the Wine project nearly 15 years to get to the point it’s at now: a mature beta.
I’d dare to say that it would take Microsoft only 15 *months* to do the same if not less. The reasons for this should be obvious for everybody so i won’t bother to go into detail here.
Doubtful
For one, ME wasn’t really an OS in the strictest sense of the term. MS had to replace the old 9x systems with NT if just because running Windows on top of DOS is a joke.
Plus the way Windows will probably move forward in the future maybe through incremental updates (like OSX version numbers) rather than large OS jumps. This would make much more sense in terms of development time and resources, plus they can gradually bring in big changes rather than shock users into a new interface.
Off topic slightly:
Why has my earlier comments about believing that a lot of consumers do care about the nuts and bolts of the OS *AS WELL AS* the GUI (in terms of compatability etc).
That was as polite and relevant as every other post in this thread. Plus I thought it was against OSNews T&C to marks posts down if you simply don’t agree with them. Have I misread the rules or are there some unfair voting going on? I just can’t see why one post would be voted down and the others voted up when they’re just two angles of exactly the same discussion.
Edited 2007-04-04 11:54
PC: amd 64×2 4400+ 2GB ram – 2k3 server – stripped
laptop: core dou 1.7 1GB ram – vista home prem – stripped
By stripped I mean all of the traditional methods plus a few of the newer ones to increase performance.
I ALWAYS use multiple windows, firefox with multiple tabs, play vidio & music in the bg.
Vista is NOT as bad as everyone is saying. of course there is no way the laptop can keep up with the pc, but it is VERY usable. only reports 350MB ram being used right now with media player & explorer running.
people that bitch about the performance have obviously got crap for video or THE WRONG DRIVERS or have not taken the steps to enhance the speed by CONFIGURING THE SYSTEM to meet your hardware.
Ha, what do you know, ram shows 309MB used now…
Edited 2007-04-03 21:16
only reports 350MB ram being used right now with media player & explorer running.
…
Ha, what do you know, ram shows 309MB used now…
Do you have any idea how sad that is? I can get Windows 2000 Pro to run perfectly well on 24 MB of memory after it gets “stripped” (perfectly well being it runs wordpad, internet explorer, plays music, etc. More than that you’d need 32-48, but you don’t need nearly the “minimum requirement” for it to work (work well), which was, what, 64MB?)… I mean, come on people… Even 2k3 stripped used 68MB or memory when running by itself, media player uses, if I recall, about 15MB, explorer uses something like 24MB… so that’s maybe, maybe, 100MB doing the same things in 2k3
You realize that most non-Vista laptops still being sold today only come with 256MB in them, right? “Ha … 309 use now…”
Maybe people who bitch about performance realize that you shouldn’t need a better computer to run windows than it takes to run Doom 3…
You know how much memory my computer is using right now running audacious, firefox, gaim, X-windows, XFCE, and three terminal sessions? 96MB… yes, that’s right, 96 MB… using 2k3 (stripped) I could get the exact same set of programs (minus X and XFCE) running in 140MB… what is this “309MB” crap?
Just because you have 2GB of memory does not excuse the operating system taking over 1/4 of it by itself.
After doing some of the things mentioned in this article I was able to get a significant performance increase in Vista.
I think the most dramatic change was turning transparency off in Aero which seemed to speed a lot of things up like switching from fullscreen games for example.
On this machine here, Vista runs fine.
By fine, I can browse on Firefox, Email on Thunderbird, play music in the background with that monkey, Xfire me mates….
The machine is a Sempron +2200 with 768mb of DDR-Ram, Nvidia fx5500 256DDR
If did have 512 and it was like treacle. The extra made it just slightly slower that XP was on the machine when it was running on 512mb.
I took the machine to 2gb, but there was no increase in speed.
So, I conlude that Vista should not be run on a 512mb machine. 768mb or upwards.
I agree. More RAM=more better. I think the graphics card does NOT actually affect RAM usage much. Windows double-buffers graphics in system memory anyway, so it may not really affect DWM memory usage to have a huge graphics card. Not absolutely sure on this one though.
You mean: ‘Just insert Windows 2000 CD, reboot…’