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back to article How to speed up Windows Vista: official and unofficial tips

Microsoft has published an article on speeding up Vista, aimed at general users. It's not too bad. Here's the summary: Delete programs you never use Limit how many programs load at startup Defragment your hard drive Clean up your hard disk Run fewer programs at the same time Turn off visual effects Restart regularly …

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  1. Lee Jackson
    Flame

    Ubuntu + Compiz = As bad as Vista

    I know its taboo to knock Ubuntu but **** it. While it may be fashionable to say "Switch to Linux" its a little disingenuous to claim it will be a silver bullet to performance issues.

    I've been running Ubuntu 7.10 side by side with Vista for a while (6 months) now and much as I hate to admit it, I've ended up back with Vista. Why?

    Firstly, note I'm a laptop user and that I run with Compiz enabled.

    - Firefox is slower under Compiz than Vista due to crappy text AA implementation.

    - Power management on Ubuntu sucks donkey gonads. 3 hibernates and I have to reboot.

    - Wireless Networking is so damned unreliable, and Ive seen this with a range of wireless cards.

    - Office software. Between numerous crashes and bugs in both Open Office and KOffice I was almost at the point of digging out a 1990s version of Wordperfect Office and running it under Wine.

    - Having to recompile video drivers every time X was updated (yeah yeah, I know theres a binary version but it takes a while before its the latest version).

    - So many little niggles such as Compiz/Emerald segfaulting every few sessions; it running hotter than Vista; sudo/root password requirements *sometimes* being as bad as UAC;buggy keyring etc etc.

    So while Ubuntu might perform better in some senses, I actually found my *productivity* far higher with Vista. SAD but true

    All the above said though Ive been VERY happy with 7.04 for my HTPC and am running 7.10 server on a few machines without complaint but for the desktop....theres still no replacement for XP.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why didn't I think of that?

    So Microsoft's advice boils down to:

    1. Do less with your computer.

    2. Get a more powerful computer.

    Brilliant.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Vista moaners

    Being a software developer and running a tech support company I installed Vista as an upgrade to XP Pro to "see what all the fuss was about" and to find out what issues I'd be facing.

    What did I discover?

    No slow downs, no network copy issues, much faster booting and significantly better performance all-around. One or two of my older apps have the odd "quirk" (mainly re-drawing issues) but the latest versions are all fixed.

    So I did a clean install and blow me, it's even faster....go figure! Shock horror, and clean install of an OS is faster than an upgrade! Someone should write a paper about this!!1lols!

    The response in this thread is the same in any other Windows thread.

    Mac fanbois don't need any genuine reason to scream "buy a Mac" at every opportunity, Linux people are mainly techno-communists that think corporations are evil (and they might be right) but Windows is only hacked so much (by Linux fans too I might add) because they have the market share and therefore more chance of it getting noticed.

    Hacking Linux (and OSX to a lesser extent) would be like painting graffitti on the inside wall of a condemned house no-one would ever look at... a bit pointless.

    If it ever did get seriously hacked they'd be screwed as 2,000 versions of various fixes are all simultaneously published bringing 1,200 new bugs and security holes with them.

    Linux is great if you're a code monkey or tech-savvy user.

    Mac is great if you're a vapid fashionista with a superiority complex.

    Windows is great if you're everyone else.

    So there.

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  4. Kevin Bailey

    Almost unbelievable admission

    So they admit that their 5 billion dollar OS will slow up over time!

    Hello - Microsoft - it's an OS - my DVD player does not slow up - my fridge does not stop cooling, my mobile phone still works at the same speed as when I bought it.

    And here's something for you - my wife's 8 year old Mac works at exactly the same speed as when we bought it.

    It's normally difficult to explain to Windows sufferers that the OS is fundementally borked and their £1000 PC will be almost unusable in a few months. Now at least we have a link to point them to!

    This truly is the result of a soviet style monopoly - a crap product - and the manufacturer does not give a seem to realise or care. It's like the East German's being proud of the 2-stroke joke tin shed of a car called the Trabant - not realising that over the wall they have BMW's, Mercedes, Porsches, Audi's etc etc etc

    The truly scary thing is that even MS seem unaware of just how bad their OS's are compared to others.

    (Almost) unbelievable!

    If you still don't get it - just try out ubuntu - I dare you - just try it - what are you afraid of?

    You better get used to it MS - you now have competition - and it makes your vista look like a joke.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows Vista promotes the use of sleep as the default off state?

    Windows Vista promotes the use of sleep as the default user state, too.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Err kevin

    'Hello - Microsoft - it's an OS - my DVD player does not slow up - my fridge does not stop cooling, my mobile phone still works at the same speed as when I bought it.

    And here's something for you - my wife's 8 year old Mac works at exactly the same speed as when we bought it.'

    No, DVD players start to stutter as the laser dies but you may find access times are slower over time if the chips start to degrade before the laser, your fridge has to work harder to provide the same amount of cooling (you may even find that you have to turn the dial up), mobile phones do run slower the older they get as memory only has a limited number of rewrites and it gets slower as it degrades.

    And my old G4 which was awesome when I first bought it now runs like a dog. Where exactly are your benchmarks from 8 years ago as proof?

    NO electronic device works as good as new forever. If you are going to criticise something at least do it properly instead of sounding like an idiot

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  7. N

    No they dont but...

    I quote "NO electronic device works as good as new forever"

    I have a watch that I wore every day for around 10 years as an engineer in the propulsion department of a nuclear submarine, not the friendliest of environments & its now 20 years old & still keeps very good time.

    I also have a mac cube thats several years old and still runs like new & does useful work with Tiger, where as I dont have any PCs of similar age that are even remotely capable of doing anything useful.

    Nothing lasts forever, but some are created more equal than others.

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  8. Nick Woodson

    Seriously?

    If those are the only solutions for poor performance that are offered then I really fail to see what the point is in using Vista. Any superfluous programs are good candidates for removal/disabling, controlling the number of running processes is a good idea even for XP and running fewer programs simultaneously is common sense for RAM management. I thought that the eye-candy was one of the big selling points and if maxing out memory is a must then what's the point? All of those things are either routine maintenance or operations issues.

    I use several different linux distros (Ubuntu, Fedora and PCLinux) and don't have the defrag issues (except over protracted periods of time), the GUI eye candy isn't that resource intesive with Compiz-Beryl and the indexing functions aren't either. What makes Vista so slow is plain poor memory and process management. There's no real excuse to require 3-4 GB of memory just to get a machine to perform unless you're doing something like video editing or high-performance gaming. Even audio editing with Audacity isn't that difficult. Hopefully, Windows 7 will mark a return to rational, manageable computing.

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  9. jeff jordan

    I love Vista

    I love vista. I have never had a single problem with it. Of course, I've never used it. having ditched all Microsoft products from my house in 1998 and have moved on to a much more robust, flexible, stable, powerful and secure operating system, namely Linux.

    Vista is so bad from what I hear, that it makes my life easy when I show people having problems with vista, just how easy and powerful Linux really is. Uptime in Linux is measured in years, not minutes, like windows. Vista is helping to improve the economy here in the USA because of all the computer tech companies that have sprung up in order to support it because of how bad it is.

    Vista is converting more people to Linux than any other thing that Microsoft has ever done.

    Anyone that I know that has tried Vista has had MAJOR problems with it, which makes me look like a hero when I put a LiveCD of Linux in their computer and show them how great it is or how I save their data from their windoze computer.

    Because of the silly hardware requirements of running Vista, I've managed to acquire many computer that are in very good shape and work extremely well when I wipe the disk and put Linux on it. My 8yo daughter has thanked me many times for finally giving her a computer with Linux on it that she can really do things on and not have to be constantly worrying about losing data, constantly having to 'save' anything she works on, and not having to worry about viruses. My 12yo son got a new computer for Christmas. He spent 3 days installing drivers and other applications, but couldn't connect to our home network. I spent 3 entire days 'trying' to get it connected to our home network, which I never was able to do since I think the stack was corrupt or had some other internal bug. I put in a Linux LiveCD and it automatically connected to not only our network, but automatically identified all other computers and printers on the network and configured his computer automatically.

    Once he saw that, he converted to Linux.

    So, I'm a hero to not only my family, but to everyone that has ever tried Vista.

    Like I said, I love Vista.

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  10. Peter Ford
    Linux

    re: Windows and Uptime

    I found that by redefining uptime for windows to "time between

    reinstalls", it's usually in the same ballpark as any *nix.

    Funny - if you replace "reinstalls" with "major OS upgrades" or even "total repurposing of the hardware", then that's how I define uptime on my Linux systems: my mail server's been up for 384 days, and the web server for 385 days.

    Unfortunately I just upgraded my desktop machine so it's only been up for a couple of days - before that it was several months...

    To balance things out, there's a Windows NT4 server here that's been up since the last power outage big enough to run the UPS down (3 years? 4? dunno!), and a couple of Windows 2000 servers that have been running happily since the last time they moved around the building (again, maybe a year?)

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  11. mark jacobs
    Coat

    Novell 3

    I had a Novell server running with about 100 users connected to it and thrashing the living daylights out of it every working day. I checked its stats before we went up to Novell 5, and it had been up for 3 years 5 months and 17 days! Now, that's what I call an OS!

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