Vista sets 2007 land-speed record for copying and deleting

@Brett

I am the same as you on an addmittedly hi-spec PC, clean install and no probs. (Well other than SLi, but that's down to Nvidia!)

Random results with Vista over different hardware

During the UK release of Vista, i was working for a _very_ well known brand (X-Box competitor anyone?) as part of the internal support team, I was tasked with getting a dozen brand spanking new systems upgraded and ready for software engineers to transfer across to.

4 were top end quad-core systems boasting 4gig of ram each.

2 were AMD's top end dual core kits pushing 2gig of ram each

The rest were core2 Extreme's, with 2gig of ram each.

All ram was PC6400 and all disk drives were Raptors in raid 0.

The quad core machines were the bane of my life for long enough. They randomly fell over, were horridly slow at loading visual studio 2005 and the 'Long-goodbye' bug was such a pain, they were going to be left as a remote build farm before i was told to push XP on them. 2 hours later I was blessed with a beautifully running - and stable - development platform (naturally, they were passed on to people who earn far more money than I).

The two AMD's were great. Everything went on like a dream and although they did appear to take quite a performance hit when forced to compile a 4Gb binary executable, that’s what the distributed build software was for =)

The rest of the core2's were to fill out the rest of the engineers in one particular team, and even though everything went on fine, after a week of working with the, the engineers regretted asking for the upgrade, as general work flow was seriously disrupted but the stupidly slow network-copy bug. Strangely, this only happened one-way. From network to PC was fine. From PC to network storage ground to a halt almost every time, with the exception of one (just 1) PC which didn’t suffer from any of those problems but did blue-screen from time to time (usually during a big build!)

It seemed like different hardware would produce different problems, yet even identical hardware would cause random results in day-to-day running.

To date, all those systems have been given new hard drives with XP on, and all developers are running Vista in a virtual machine - Honestly the best way even though its somewhat slow.

Superfetch

Maybe in M$ turned off the bauked superfetch, Vista maybe slightly more preformant. Superfetch has a loverly habit of kepping your hard drive constantly active, and thus the head in the wrong position to read / write data. Why do we trust a company with such little knowlegde of basic hardware.

I found it was quicker to install Linux on my new laptop than to boot Vista.

@ RE That Screenshot

Even if the screenshot is a mock-up (and i dont think it is), the problem it describes is true, i have experienced it myself up until i applied the hotfix. Yes i was one of the lucky ones where the fix worked.

I also had the unzip problem, but only using the MS extract to.. winzip and winrar etc were fine

it took in eccess of 3 hours to unzip an archive that winrar/winzip could decompress in 20seconds

Vista has many other issues. eg when online gamig using wireless every 60 seconds vista polls for new networks causing 1-2 seconds of lag, you cant disable this and makes gaming unbearable

Network bandwidth suffers when you play MP's - and as most games have MP3 as background music, you find your lagging all the time with even bigger lagg at the 60 second marker!!! see above

Now i wish (i really do) that i could install and run my favourite games in Linux, you wouldnt see my arse for dust.

I had gone back to XP after all the issues with Vista, but when RC-SP1 came out i thought i would try again.

It's useless, and as usual you fanboy's cant see or at least cant admit it; grow some cahones tbh!

Will

RE: slow-ish but less crapware prone than xp

Spot-on, someone else is enjoying the same experience as me.

I've shifted a lot of friends and family onto Vista, just because it's so much easier to support. UAC has reduced my call outs to my lot by half.

I had one copy of vista bork a bit but format and fresh clean install sorted it out no probs.

Business customers though I have not done this with, still not overly sure it's ready and can be fully supported in that type of enviroment (yet).

RAND (COPYTIME)

Yep, it's the random number generator at it again - think of a number between 0 and infinity then display as TIME_REMAINING.

Vista lasted 2 hours on my desktop before I reformatted the disk & installed Ubuntu.

it's fixed

The problem concerning slow copying/deleting files in vista is now fixed in SP1. Check microsoft's website for Vista SP1 notes. The SP1 beta is available to download. It also contains lots of other improvements.

A way off the sinking ship - Explore new(?) Vistas

For those not interested in one of the Penguin flavours, if you are interested in "Downgrading" to XP from Vista (OEM), check out this:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9040318

@AC - "it still amazes me"

"that in this day and age people still choose to run a windows-based operating system, when there are COMPLETELY FREE solutions out there like ubuntu."

I use my Windows machine for gaming.

If you know how to get all my lovely first person shooters to run on Ubuntu, please feel free to regale me with the details and I'll happily dump Windows in the same bin as IE and Outlook.

re: re: Get a Mac

"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/06/leopard_dataloss_bug_uncovered/"

Sure, you may lose a few files, but at least you'll lost them faster than Vista would...

A whole day to install Vista?

Think some of you guys should learn how to use your tech rather than just moan about it... Took me 2 hours to install Vista and get it working, the only problem I've had it that the wireless doesn't work after the machine has been in hibernation. Annoying but disabling and reinabling the wireless card sorts it in about 30 secs.

Vista can be installed and easily optimized, just like XP can. OK so it needs a little more processing power, but all mayor OS updates do, they're built for faster machines. Ever tried running 3.1 on a quadcore machine? It's fucking rapid and that’s an understatement...

Mac OS X is also lovely, if used properly. If you're not used to it and don't know the basics of *nix on the cli then it's going to be a confusing experience!

Its horses for courses at the end of the day and different OS's have their uses. I wouldn't use a unix machine as a games machine. But then again I wouldn't use an M$ box for apache.

So the moral of this story? If you don't like it, don't use it. But don't blame your technical inadequacies on software. Unless ofcourse it's OS/2...

@ the mac tribe

for the record i use Linux where possible and there's the hitch.

as an example i work in the legal sector and good luck to you finding a Linux version of any of the software used in a modern law firm. i can assure there isn't any.

The predictable argument is write your own and until we become a multi-national that's just not a practical solution.

anyone who actually works in IT (rather than would like to be in IT, doing computeach course, think they should be in IT, still at school or sat in there basement looking at the internet all day) can easily sit there and join the chorus of the Linux fan boy, how ever for us in the real world its just not a solution. believe me i would like it to be but the cold hard truth is that Linux hasn't got the support for all the applications that businesses have to use to function these days. And when you show me a finished product that is open source and compatible to active directory then this conversation will be worth having.

As for mac's lets face it they are the realm of designers and other such professions that need to do colouring in or the pc has be be sufficiently "fisher priced" so that the user can break it (and they look nice if there on show).

Merry Christmas all, that was fun :-)

(i chose the IT pic because if the fan boys stopped telling everyone how good Linux or OSX is and coded for it then it might be up to what they claim, but i guess anyone who can code is doing so rather than shouting about there favourite OS)

Re: A whole day to install Vista?

Spot on post, unlike most of the silly Vista bashers on this page, this person takes their time to write something that actually makes sense.

The BESTEST Vista Commercial

http://blimptv.blogspot.com/2007/11/vista-sucks.html

Not Vista's fault - it's only Explorer??

It's only explorer and not Vista? Hmmm.. do I not remember MS using the defence in court that explorer and IE were core components and could not be seperated from the OS?

Perhaps that argument can only be applied when it is convenient.....

XP can take ages as well

especially from USB memory sticks.

The problem is trying to read or write from the USB while trying to access the memory for other reasons, like downloading thumbnails. Trying to copy two files separately causes a loooong wait.

No problems copying in serial, but trying to access more than one file at the same time freaks it out. I guess this might be what happens with Vista.

Before you flame me, I haven't read every single comment before this.

But where is the Paris Hilton angle?

To the MAC fanboys

Games!

<Wafts the word "Games" aound like a lump of kryptonite>

Ha!

Don't get me wrong, I would love to switch to a linux/unix flavour OS but so far as i'm concerned to do so would be to lose massive functionality. The MS gaming strangle hold with DX is what is keeping their OS mainstream (outside the work environment).

WinMe2

Vista seems to be living up to its donkey of a cousin's legacy ... I seem to recall copy estimates were often wildly inaccurate (I.E. high) when Me1 was (briefly) installed on a laptop I had way back at the start of the millennium. It's great to see that they're apparently still using the same code base ;)

I would certainly give OSX a try...

... if it weren't for the fact you've got to pay 3 times the amount than I'd pay to build my own comparably specced PC. Plus the OS being locked to propriatary hardware combinations - VM'ing OSX to try it out is not an easy thing to do - and even if you decide you like it and you spend over the odds for the hardware your locked into hardware vendors you may prefer not to use.

Since I need windows at work for my software development (.NET 2/3.5) and all I use my PC at home for thesedays is media and gaming I don't see myself switching from Vista any time soon, I just dont care enough... an OS doesn't have such a drastic effect on my life... ! It would be nice to use something else, but if it was really that big of a deal I would have switched, as I imagine, might a lot of people, but it's not something I'd spend a fortune on doing.

I remember having conversations with mac fanboi's back in the day Apple were still using the PPC chips talking about how superior their hardware was, and that was why apples would dominate the computing landscape in the near future.

It's a few years down the line, apples are now basically PC's with a different operating system. Reality distortion field at work again - or just fanboys trying to find a reason why their choice in OS and hardware makes them somehow better.

People that try and push things on others (looking at both apple and windows fanboy children here) need to take a step back and realise that people will use what they want to use, and that the OS you decide to use does not define you as a person, it is simply unimportant in most cases.

DONT use windows...

You dont need to spend a fortune to get a Mac. Get a Hackintosh! Windows is cancer!!!!!

"good luck to you finding a xxxxx version"

"good luck to you finding a Linux version of any of the software used in a modern law firm."

Now say Vista instead of Linux and try again. Just how much of the software and hardware (and skills) used in a modern (whatever) firm are already available, supported, and working reliably under Vista? I guess any mid range PC less than six months old should be OK, Office is available even if Explorer's broken, but it's all different and needs relearning... hmmm, I see what you mean.

So the application vendors, end users, support people, resellers, etc are forced by Vista to throw away more hardware, software and skills than they have ever previously had to throw away because of MS upgrade cycles. To some of these folks, maybe that doesn't matter, because it creates more opportunities for $$$ than it creates problems.

But to folks where retaining kit, skills and $$$ does matter, if they've got to almost start again, wouldn't they be better starting from somewhere more sensible this time, somewhere which doesn't have a ~3 year life cycle for hardware, software, and skills?

It is entirely possible to develop software which isn't locked in to Windows. Even if Windows-only was a sensible option at one time, it looks less and less sensible as time goes by. If you are a significant customer, you should be asking your suppliers what their plans are for vendor independence and *true* open standards, because you've been jerked around enough by now by being locked in to your current suppliers.

Few manufacturers, resellers, consultants, IT PC jockeys etc are going to favour *not* throwing stuff away every two or three years (eg because of Vista) as it is financial and/or career suicide.

In contrast, any sensible home or business user ought to think very carefully about who is offering them advice on where to spend their hard-earned money, and what their motivation might be. Once developers realise this, they may decide that WIndows is not always going to be the only approach.

Meanwhile for a little light entertainment which illustrates just how long this silly game has been going on: http://www.joketribe.com/Christmas/97/December/12DaysOfPCHell.php (entirely suitable for work, just too big to post here)

important factors to remember for long copy jobs

At a little under 132 years to complete the example copy job, there are many important factors to consider:

1. During the span of the copy, you will have to reboot approximately 1,715 times to install patches.

2. During the span of the copy, you will probably upgrade to a new version of Windows 33 times.

3. During the span of the copy, the computer that you are using will become obsolete at least 20 times.

4. You will die before the copy finishes, so why not just cancel and go enjoy the outdoors instead.

best-faith guesses???

What the hell is a "best-faith guess"?

Do you mean good-faith best-guess, maybe?

Vista forcing us to migrate to Linux

My company writes software that needs to run on a stable and predictable platform and XP provided this (with some tweaks). At the moment I cannot trust anything critical to run on Vista and it has forced my company to start taking Linux a lot more seriously.

I expect us to move all of our software to Linux in the next 12-18 months

@Leo Davidson

"The underlying Win32 API and NTFS in Vista are as good as they were in XP. It's just the Shell file copy APIs which are b0rked."

So all the age old Winblows problems are still there.

I know that NT and 2000 did NOT multitask properly - is this the same problem appearing in Vista?

(A simple test was: Does "format a:" in a DOS window stop working when you click in any other (non-DOS) window?)

Wouldn't it be nice if Windows was a multitasking environment? At the moment Windows advocates say it multitasks but it quite plainly has holes like a swiss cheese. My ST and Amigas were better at multitasking - what the feck is going on in Redmond? They've only had 20-odd years to catch up...

Not just the upgrades

For a few months, I had Vista on my new, rather high-spec, work computer. I had the file-copying thing, and the random slowness, and the trouble with using more than one monitor (if there was more than one monitor, I'd have to enter my password blind when the machine was locked). It's not just upgraded machines. Back on XP now, thankfully.

I was with Microsoft for a while...

Recently, I started evaluating Linux distros. I liked what I saw. You can be part of a Microsoft domain, have Office products that look like and function like MS Office and get a much better performance. OpenSuse is my favorite and it is free. Since I do not play computer games I really do not need Vista and I do not support the arrogant manner Microsoft is pushing their weight around (Steve Balmer). In the beginning there was no big Microsoft but a lot of consultants that made Microsoft what it is today. But gratitude is not a Microsoft feature anymore, rather than a monopoly of the arrogance that bakes political strategies into the product (DRM) instead of focusing a relational file system. They still think they can get away with it. Until they come to their senses, I use Linux.

OFF TOPIC: Mac VS MS hardware

Several of my friends that are involved in desktop hardware purchase decisions have started recommending Mac desktops and laptops for their next round of purchases. Why? Because they can get the best of both worlds for one price: OS X for the "creative" departments that actually use Mac software, and the same hardware runs Windows for everyone else. In volume purchase the Mac hardware is quite competitive with Dell or HP - especially in smaller shops - and support only has one line of machines to support.

An interesting corollary: Pixar (remember Steve Jobs little movie company that "owns" Disney?) uses Macs on the "executive" desks, high-end PCs (running Windows or Linux) for the artists, and the render farm is Dell/HP servers running Linux. There are Mac servers for some of the Mac-only stuff, but it's truly a hetrogenous environment that is working extremely well. (Note to El Regulars: this might be another nice "field trip" to go visit Pixar and see what they've done - a sweet success story in today's messed-up IT world...)