Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

Somewhere on teh intarwebs "thingy" typed:
> Some initial thoughts,
>
> It has good points, but so far it seems to be change for the sake of
> change....
>
> This is a ready built machine so it should work perfectly?
>
> uh huh....
>
> I Like the parental control...eldest is spewing though....
>
> ;]
>
> Why change the management look and feel so much? it does not achieve a
> thing...trying to find things is annoying me....
>
> For some reason the disk is being constantly accessed...its running
> like a dog because of this...got 4Gb of ram so cant be swapping...not
> unless mouse clicking now needs 4GB+ with vista...
>
> ;]

<dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a laptop
supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get XP
on it quick enough.

> hmm can I add the XP disk out of my "being retired" machine into it
> and get a dual boot easily?

It's not always easy (at least compared with how easy it was with 98SE) to
'migrate' an XP install. As Puddle says, there are sites around which tell
you how to do it. You usually have to remove all the machine-specific device
drivers, inculding in some cases chipset, PCI bridge, yada yada yada. Even
after all that, there isa chance that it won't work. That said, if the mobos
/ chipsets are similar enough, sometimes you can just install the drive and
have it 'repair' itself.

Then, to top it off, unless you have a BIOS option like my Asus (hit F8
after the beep to [temporarilly, this restart only,] choose which 'drive'
[includes USB etc.] to boot from) you'll have no bootloader and have to
constantly 'permanently' change the settings in BIOS when you want to boot
the other OS.

Thirdly you could strike problems with re-activating the install if it's an
OEM version of XP that came with the other machine....

Luck,
--
Shaun.

DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 10:38:18 +1300, "~misfit~"
<misfit61nz@hooya.com.au> wrote:

>Somewhere on teh intarwebs "thingy" typed:
>> Some initial thoughts,
>>
>> It has good points, but so far it seems to be change for the sake of
>> change....
>>
>> This is a ready built machine so it should work perfectly?
>>
>> uh huh....
>>
>> I Like the parental control...eldest is spewing though....
>>
>> ;]
>>
>> Why change the management look and feel so much? it does not achieve a
>> thing...trying to find things is annoying me....
>>
>> For some reason the disk is being constantly accessed...its running
>> like a dog because of this...got 4Gb of ram so cant be swapping...not
>> unless mouse clicking now needs 4GB+ with vista...
>>
>> ;]
>
><dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a laptop
>supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
>unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get XP
>on it quick enough.

No, it is *not* swapping. I have two Vista PCs with 2 Gibytes of RAM
each. Both of them typically only have about 1.0-1.3 Gibytes of RAM
in use, despite all the software I have loaded. The rest of the RAM
is used for disk cache, and Vista is *much* better at using its cache
than XP is. I should qualify that statement - I am using Vista SP1,
and I think there were some fixes in SP1 to do with caching. I
frequently see disk operations running at speeds so impossible that
they must be running mostly out of the cache.

When Vista is first installed, it indexes all the files. This takes
quite a while - just leave the box on for a couple of days if
necessary and it should finally stop. Also, Vista has a builtin
background defrag program that runs automatically once a week. I
believe it senses other PC use and stops until the PC is idle again,
but if it was also running at the same time as the indexing, they
would make the disk rather busy, probably thrashing. Search the Help
for "defragment" to find it and the scheduler that runs it.

So I think that many people are getting the wrong impression about
Vista because it is slow for the first day or two due to the indexing,
and also due to the file copying speed problems that were fixed in
SP1. It is not at all slow, unless you try to run it with 1 Gibyte of
RAM or less.

Another really great thing is the way its TCP connections adapt their
window size to the conditions they find. With XP, due to NZ's
distance from the rest of the Internet and the resulting high ping
times, ACK packets are too slow to get back to allow the next packet
to be sent in time, which makes any one TCP connection run slower than
a high speed Internet connection can handle. This can be fixed by
changing registry settings in XP to increase the window size, but that
can cause other problems. Most people just use multiple http
connections to get the download speed their Internet connection is
capable of. Vista does not need that - it adapts the window size
dynamically to the traffic and the ping times. This helps a lot with
download sites like rapidshare that only allow one connection.

In my opinion, on modern hardware with at least 2 Gibytes of RAM,
Vista is considerably superior to XP.

Of course, I have long since turned off UAC.

>> hmm can I add the XP disk out of my "being retired" machine into it
>> and get a dual boot easily?
>
>It's not always easy (at least compared with how easy it was with 98SE) to
>'migrate' an XP install. As Puddle says, there are sites around which tell
>you how to do it. You usually have to remove all the machine-specific device
>drivers, inculding in some cases chipset, PCI bridge, yada yada yada. Even
>after all that, there isa chance that it won't work. That said, if the mobos
>/ chipsets are similar enough, sometimes you can just install the drive and
>have it 'repair' itself.
>
>Then, to top it off, unless you have a BIOS option like my Asus (hit F8
>after the beep to [temporarilly, this restart only,] choose which 'drive'
>[includes USB etc.] to boot from) you'll have no bootloader and have to
>constantly 'permanently' change the settings in BIOS when you want to boot
>the other OS.
>
>Thirdly you could strike problems with re-activating the install if it's an
>OEM version of XP that came with the other machine....
>
>Luck,

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

>><dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a laptop
>>supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
>>unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get XP
>>on it quick enough.
>
> No, it is *not* swapping. I have two Vista PCs with 2 Gibytes of RAM
> each. Both of them typically only have about 1.0-1.3 Gibytes of RAM
> in use, despite all the software I have loaded. The rest of the RAM
> is used for disk cache, and Vista is *much* better at using its cache
> than XP is. I should qualify that statement - I am using Vista SP1,
> and I think there were some fixes in SP1 to do with caching. I
> frequently see disk operations running at speeds so impossible that
> they must be running mostly out of the cache.
>
> When Vista is first installed, it indexes all the files. This takes
> quite a while - just leave the box on for a couple of days if
> necessary and it should finally stop. Also, Vista has a builtin
> background defrag program that runs automatically once a week. I
> believe it senses other PC use and stops until the PC is idle again,
> but if it was also running at the same time as the indexing, they
> would make the disk rather busy, probably thrashing. Search the Help
> for "defragment" to find it and the scheduler that runs it.

I have NEVER seen a Vista computer with it's hdd led out or more than a
couple of seconds, they are ALWAYS lit. This even includes up to 8 core 64
bit machines with 16Gb ram and raid.Vista has so much overhead I don't
believe simple caching could come close to negating the performance
penalties Vista introduced. Today a Vista user at work finished copying
100Gb to a USB2 HDD, it took 20 hours!

> So I think that many people are getting the wrong impression about
> Vista because it is slow for the first day or two due to the indexing,
> and also due to the file copying speed problems that were fixed in
> SP1. It is not at all slow, unless you try to run it with 1 Gibyte of
> RAM or less.

No, it's slower and will be forever, by 40% (
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ista,1531.html ), and before you
mention it I know the review was pre SP1. SP1 did next to nothing to fix
performance and reliability issues. And in fact SP1 trashed many a Vista
installation (see SP1 boot looping).

> Another really great thing is the way its TCP connections adapt their
> window size to the conditions they find. With XP, due to NZ's
> distance from the rest of the Internet and the resulting high ping
> times, ACK packets are too slow to get back to allow the next packet
> to be sent in time, which makes any one TCP connection run slower than
> a high speed Internet connection can handle. This can be fixed by
> changing registry settings in XP to increase the window size, but that
> can cause other problems. Most people just use multiple http
> connections to get the download speed their Internet connection is
> capable of. Vista does not need that - it adapts the window size
> dynamically to the traffic and the ping times. This helps a lot with
> download sites like rapidshare that only allow one connection.

The improvements are not sufficient to replace WAN optimisation
technologies, and in many cases performance is deteriorated by Vistas
technologies...
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.c...250148,00.html

>
> In my opinion, on modern hardware with at least 2 Gibytes of RAM,
> Vista is considerably superior to XP.
>
> Of course, I have long since turned off UAC.

Turning off UAC can lead to silent failures of software operations from
installers and the like. Vista is pretty but it is absoultely terrible to
use. At work just about everyone who got Vista and insisted they be allowed
to try it (our policy is to replace it with XP) has asked to have it
removed. There are two installs left, one on a Dell Quad Core, which takes
20 minutes to boot, and another on a "server" box (8 cores) which nobody
uses.

J&H.

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

"Jekyll and Hyde" <jekyll&hyde@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:48e47fc0$1@news01.wxnz.net...
>>><dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a
>>>laptop
>>>supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
>>>unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get
>>>XP
>>>on it quick enough.
>>
>> No, it is *not* swapping. I have two Vista PCs with 2 Gibytes of RAM
>> each. Both of them typically only have about 1.0-1.3 Gibytes of RAM
>> in use, despite all the software I have loaded. The rest of the RAM
>> is used for disk cache, and Vista is *much* better at using its cache
>> than XP is. I should qualify that statement - I am using Vista SP1,
>> and I think there were some fixes in SP1 to do with caching. I
>> frequently see disk operations running at speeds so impossible that
>> they must be running mostly out of the cache.
>>
>> When Vista is first installed, it indexes all the files. This takes
>> quite a while - just leave the box on for a couple of days if
>> necessary and it should finally stop. Also, Vista has a builtin
>> background defrag program that runs automatically once a week. I
>> believe it senses other PC use and stops until the PC is idle again,
>> but if it was also running at the same time as the indexing, they
>> would make the disk rather busy, probably thrashing. Search the Help
>> for "defragment" to find it and the scheduler that runs it.
>
> I have NEVER seen a Vista computer with it's hdd led out or more than a
> couple of seconds, they are ALWAYS lit. This even includes up to 8 core 64
> bit machines with 16Gb ram and raid.Vista has so much overhead I don't
> believe simple caching could come close to negating the performance
> penalties Vista introduced. Today a Vista user at work finished copying
> 100Gb to a USB2 HDD, it took 20 hours!
>

Anecdotes are wonderful, aren't they? You can create any impression you want
and never be held accountable for the facts of the matter. Oh, btw....Did
your company pay this "user" overtikme for that 20 hours?

>> So I think that many people are getting the wrong impression about
>> Vista because it is slow for the first day or two due to the indexing,
>> and also due to the file copying speed problems that were fixed in
>> SP1. It is not at all slow, unless you try to run it with 1 Gibyte of
>> RAM or less.
>
> No, it's slower and will be forever, by 40% (
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ista,1531.html ), and before
> you mention it I know the review was pre SP1. SP1 did next to nothing to
> fix performance and reliability issues. And in fact SP1 trashed many a
> Vista installation (see SP1 boot looping).
>

Forever slower?!? And you have the evidence to supoporet your claim that SP1
had no effect where exactly? Just one reputable link will do.


>> Another really great thing is the way its TCP connections adapt their
>> window size to the conditions they find. With XP, due to NZ's
>> distance from the rest of the Internet and the resulting high ping
>> times, ACK packets are too slow to get back to allow the next packet
>> to be sent in time, which makes any one TCP connection run slower than
>> a high speed Internet connection can handle. This can be fixed by
>> changing registry settings in XP to increase the window size, but that
>> can cause other problems. Most people just use multiple http
>> connections to get the download speed their Internet connection is
>> capable of. Vista does not need that - it adapts the window size
>> dynamically to the traffic and the ping times. This helps a lot with
>> download sites like rapidshare that only allow one connection.
>
> The improvements are not sufficient to replace WAN optimisation
> technologies, and in many cases performance is deteriorated by Vistas
> technologies...
> http://searchnetworking.techtarget.c...250148,00.html
>

Says one consultant paid tyo trash Vista. Excellent choice of references.

>>
>> In my opinion, on modern hardware with at least 2 Gibytes of RAM,
>> Vista is considerably superior to XP.
>>
>> Of course, I have long since turned off UAC.
>
> Turning off UAC can lead to silent failures of software operations from
> installers and the like. Vista is pretty but it is absoultely terrible to
> use. At work just about everyone who got Vista and insisted they be
> allowed to try it (our policy is to replace it with XP) has asked to have
> it removed. There are two installs left, one on a Dell Quad Core, which
> takes 20 minutes to boot, and another on a "server" box (8 cores) which
> nobody uses.
>

Lies just slide off your keyboard like butter, don't they? Here's the trick
to getting a grip. Any time you feel the need to rubbish something, find 2
reputable sources to back up your claim. If you can do that, than feel free
to type away-- otherwise, hold your wongue lest you get a reputation for
being a total loser.

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 20:59:44 +1200, "Jekyll and Hyde"
<jekyll&hyde@gmail.com> wrote:

>>><dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a laptop
>>>supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
>>>unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get XP
>>>on it quick enough.
>>
>> No, it is *not* swapping. I have two Vista PCs with 2 Gibytes of RAM
>> each. Both of them typically only have about 1.0-1.3 Gibytes of RAM
>> in use, despite all the software I have loaded. The rest of the RAM
>> is used for disk cache, and Vista is *much* better at using its cache
>> than XP is. I should qualify that statement - I am using Vista SP1,
>> and I think there were some fixes in SP1 to do with caching. I
>> frequently see disk operations running at speeds so impossible that
>> they must be running mostly out of the cache.
>>
>> When Vista is first installed, it indexes all the files. This takes
>> quite a while - just leave the box on for a couple of days if
>> necessary and it should finally stop. Also, Vista has a builtin
>> background defrag program that runs automatically once a week. I
>> believe it senses other PC use and stops until the PC is idle again,
>> but if it was also running at the same time as the indexing, they
>> would make the disk rather busy, probably thrashing. Search the Help
>> for "defragment" to find it and the scheduler that runs it.
>
>I have NEVER seen a Vista computer with it's hdd led out or more than a
>couple of seconds, they are ALWAYS lit. This even includes up to 8 core 64
>bit machines with 16Gb ram and raid.Vista has so much overhead I don't
>believe simple caching could come close to negating the performance
>penalties Vista introduced. Today a Vista user at work finished copying
>100Gb to a USB2 HDD, it took 20 hours!

I have not tried much with a USB2 hard disk, but they are simply slow.
I know this because I have a 1 Tbyte external drive that has both USB2
and eSATA interfaces. Its performance on a USB2 port is so bad I have
only ever used it that way once. Its eSATA performance is the same as
internal drives. So I would not blame Vista for poor USB2 disk
performance.

I have modern Seagate 500 Gbyte and 1 Tbyte SATA drives in my PCs, and
performance is anything but slow. As an example, I just copied a
732,712,960 byte file from my 500 Gbyte drive to my 1 Tbyte drive in
18.53 seconds. I made sure that the file was one I had not accessed
for ages so it would not be cached already. That is 39,541,984 bytes
per second, or 2.2 Gibytes per minute. At that rate, your 100 Gbyte
copy would have taken less than 45 minutes.

>> So I think that many people are getting the wrong impression about
>> Vista because it is slow for the first day or two due to the indexing,
>> and also due to the file copying speed problems that were fixed in
>> SP1. It is not at all slow, unless you try to run it with 1 Gibyte of
>> RAM or less.
>
>No, it's slower and will be forever, by 40% (
>http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ista,1531.html ), and before you
>mention it I know the review was pre SP1. SP1 did next to nothing to fix
>performance and reliability issues. And in fact SP1 trashed many a Vista
>installation (see SP1 boot looping).

I did not see a 40% overall figure anywhere in that article. That is
just bullshit. You could say truthfully say "up to 40%" if you like
bullshit statistics. Yes, quite a number of benchmarks show slightly
lower performance, and a few much lower. I am a big skeptic when it
comes to benchmarks though. They rarely reflect real life
performance.

>> Another really great thing is the way its TCP connections adapt their
>> window size to the conditions they find. With XP, due to NZ's
>> distance from the rest of the Internet and the resulting high ping
>> times, ACK packets are too slow to get back to allow the next packet
>> to be sent in time, which makes any one TCP connection run slower than
>> a high speed Internet connection can handle. This can be fixed by
>> changing registry settings in XP to increase the window size, but that
>> can cause other problems. Most people just use multiple http
>> connections to get the download speed their Internet connection is
>> capable of. Vista does not need that - it adapts the window size
>> dynamically to the traffic and the ping times. This helps a lot with
>> download sites like rapidshare that only allow one connection.
>
>The improvements are not sufficient to replace WAN optimisation
>technologies, and in many cases performance is deteriorated by Vistas
>technologies...
>http://searchnetworking.techtarget.c...250148,00.html

Not my experience. All my Internet and LAN speeds are superior or
dramatically superior on my Vista boxes. Some of that may simply be
faster hardware, with the LAN speeds. But Internet speeds are much
better, and the hardware can not affect that.

>
>>
>> In my opinion, on modern hardware with at least 2 Gibytes of RAM,
>> Vista is considerably superior to XP.
>>
>> Of course, I have long since turned off UAC.
>
>Turning off UAC can lead to silent failures of software operations from
>installers and the like. Vista is pretty but it is absoultely terrible to
>use. At work just about everyone who got Vista and insisted they be allowed
>to try it (our policy is to replace it with XP) has asked to have it
>removed. There are two installs left, one on a Dell Quad Core, which takes
>20 minutes to boot, and another on a "server" box (8 cores) which nobody
>uses.
>
>J&H.
>

Actually, my experience is just the opposite. Having UAC on leads to
silent failures of installers, usually ones that do not understand
Vista. I have not had any such failures since I turned UAC off.

I have used XP a lot prior to getting Vista, and I now prefer Vista. I
have never used XP on a modern PC though - maybe it does run a little
faster than Vista on the same hardware. But the dramatic performance
boost I got from changing hardware to the latest far outweighs that.
And the disk caching performance of Vista is so dramatically better,
and that matters in real life where benchmarks often do not. I do not
have to wait around all the time for Vista to reload things it should
never have flushed from its cache. With XP, I was always waiting for
things I should not have had to, just because I had copied a file from
A to B.

At your work, were you putting Vista on old PCs with too little RAM?
Or an ancient video card? That would be the most likely reason for it
to be slow. And did you leave it running for a day or two to get all
the indexing done, or turn off the indexing service? What Windows
Experience Index values were the PCs reporting? Mine is currently
4.8, with the limiting factor being Aero performance.

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

Hi there,

Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 20:59:44 +1200, "Jekyll and Hyde"
> <jekyll&hyde@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>> <dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a laptop
>>>> supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
>>>> unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get XP
>>>> on it quick enough.
>>> No, it is *not* swapping. I have two Vista PCs with 2 Gibytes of RAM
>>> each. Both of them typically only have about 1.0-1.3 Gibytes of RAM
>>> in use, despite all the software I have loaded. The rest of the RAM
>>> is used for disk cache, and Vista is *much* better at using its cache
>>> than XP is. I should qualify that statement - I am using Vista SP1,
>>> and I think there were some fixes in SP1 to do with caching. I
>>> frequently see disk operations running at speeds so impossible that
>>> they must be running mostly out of the cache.
>>>
>>> When Vista is first installed, it indexes all the files. This takes
>>> quite a while - just leave the box on for a couple of days if
>>> necessary and it should finally stop. Also, Vista has a builtin
>>> background defrag program that runs automatically once a week. I
>>> believe it senses other PC use and stops until the PC is idle again,
>>> but if it was also running at the same time as the indexing, they
>>> would make the disk rather busy, probably thrashing. Search the Help
>>> for "defragment" to find it and the scheduler that runs it.
>> I have NEVER seen a Vista computer with it's hdd led out or more than a
>> couple of seconds, they are ALWAYS lit. This even includes up to 8 core 64
>> bit machines with 16Gb ram and raid.Vista has so much overhead I don't
>> believe simple caching could come close to negating the performance
>> penalties Vista introduced. Today a Vista user at work finished copying
>> 100Gb to a USB2 HDD, it took 20 hours!
>
> I have not tried much with a USB2 hard disk, but they are simply slow.
> I know this because I have a 1 Tbyte external drive that has both USB2
> and eSATA interfaces. Its performance on a USB2 port is so bad I have
> only ever used it that way once. Its eSATA performance is the same as
> internal drives. So I would not blame Vista for poor USB2 disk
> performance.

Copying any sizeable chunk of data to/from my 40GB Sony camcorder will
average around 15-20MB/sec over USB2 in openSUSE Linux, so a 10GB copy
will take around 11-12 minutes at worst. That sounds much better than
100GB in 20 hours. It also helps to zip up what you're copying if the
copy job consists of lots of small files.

Based on my experiences I point the finger squarely at Vista for such
slow USB2 performance.

Kind regards,

Chris Wilkinson, Edinburgh.

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

In message <ckr9e454cv9tldtrcep94dgf3ef5rqi3af@4ax.com>, Stephen Worthington
wrote:

> I am a big skeptic when it comes to benchmarks though. They rarely
> reflect real life performance.

The problem is one of reproducibility. Your "real life performance" figures
would be meaningless to someone else in a different situation, and simply
impossible for them to confirm. Whereas benchmarks, as artificial as they
are, are easier to reproduce, precisely because they are artificial.

> I have never used XP on a modern PC though ...

Have you seen these low-cost "netbooks" like the Asus Eee, MSI Wind, Acer
Aspire One and friends? Three-figure price tag, easy to carry around--and
Vista is kind of useless in that market.

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

"impossible" <impossible@nospam.net> wrote in message
news:7g2Fk.369130$yE1.123269@attbi_s21...
> "Jekyll and Hyde" <jekyll&hyde@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:48e47fc0$1@news01.wxnz.net...
>>>><dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a
>>>>laptop
>>>>supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
>>>>unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get
>>>>XP
>>>>on it quick enough.
>>>
>>> No, it is *not* swapping. I have two Vista PCs with 2 Gibytes of RAM
>>> each. Both of them typically only have about 1.0-1.3 Gibytes of RAM
>>> in use, despite all the software I have loaded. The rest of the RAM
>>> is used for disk cache, and Vista is *much* better at using its cache
>>> than XP is. I should qualify that statement - I am using Vista SP1,
>>> and I think there were some fixes in SP1 to do with caching. I
>>> frequently see disk operations running at speeds so impossible that
>>> they must be running mostly out of the cache.
>>>
>>> When Vista is first installed, it indexes all the files. This takes
>>> quite a while - just leave the box on for a couple of days if
>>> necessary and it should finally stop. Also, Vista has a builtin
>>> background defrag program that runs automatically once a week. I
>>> believe it senses other PC use and stops until the PC is idle again,
>>> but if it was also running at the same time as the indexing, they
>>> would make the disk rather busy, probably thrashing. Search the Help
>>> for "defragment" to find it and the scheduler that runs it.
>>
>> I have NEVER seen a Vista computer with it's hdd led out or more than a
>> couple of seconds, they are ALWAYS lit. This even includes up to 8 core
>> 64 bit machines with 16Gb ram and raid.Vista has so much overhead I don't
>> believe simple caching could come close to negating the performance
>> penalties Vista introduced. Today a Vista user at work finished copying
>> 100Gb to a USB2 HDD, it took 20 hours!
>>
>
> Anecdotes are wonderful, aren't they? You can create any impression you
> want and never be held accountable for the facts of the matter. Oh,
> btw....Did your company pay this "user" overtikme for that 20 hours?

No, he was at home, and we are on salaries, there is no overtime (excepting
weekend callouts).
Don't like that anecdotal example? Well here's another - 7 hours to
uninstall several languages on a Dell Quad Core running Vista.
Don't belive me. just google "vista incredibly slow file copy time", or read
this...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03...a_copying_bug/

>>> So I think that many people are getting the wrong impression about
>>> Vista because it is slow for the first day or two due to the indexing,
>>> and also due to the file copying speed problems that were fixed in
>>> SP1. It is not at all slow, unless you try to run it with 1 Gibyte of
>>> RAM or less.
>>
>> No, it's slower and will be forever, by 40% (
>> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ista,1531.html ), and before
>> you mention it I know the review was pre SP1. SP1 did next to nothing to
>> fix performance and reliability issues. And in fact SP1 trashed many a
>> Vista installation (see SP1 boot looping).
>>
>
> Forever slower?!? And you have the evidence to supoporet your claim that
> SP1 had no effect where exactly? Just one reputable link will do.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/0...service-pack-1
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/11/23/1710245.shtml
http://keznews.com/4056_Performance_...Service_Pack_1

Another thing "next to nothing" is not equal to "no effect", a lame attempt
to twist the meaning of what I said.

>>> Another really great thing is the way its TCP connections adapt their
>>> window size to the conditions they find. With XP, due to NZ's
>>> distance from the rest of the Internet and the resulting high ping
>>> times, ACK packets are too slow to get back to allow the next packet
>>> to be sent in time, which makes any one TCP connection run slower than
>>> a high speed Internet connection can handle. This can be fixed by
>>> changing registry settings in XP to increase the window size, but that
>>> can cause other problems. Most people just use multiple http
>>> connections to get the download speed their Internet connection is
>>> capable of. Vista does not need that - it adapts the window size
>>> dynamically to the traffic and the ping times. This helps a lot with
>>> download sites like rapidshare that only allow one connection.
>>
>> The improvements are not sufficient to replace WAN optimisation
>> technologies, and in many cases performance is deteriorated by Vistas
>> technologies...
>> http://searchnetworking.techtarget.c...250148,00.html
>>
>
> Says one consultant paid tyo trash Vista. Excellent choice of references.

Vista IPv6 incompatible...
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...ompatible.html
Vista inbuilt "tuning" causing network slowness...
http://thesystemadministrator.com/Th...twork_(Vista)/
Vista incompatible with managed networks scaling technologies...
http://lwn.net/Articles/92727/

The list goes on.
>>>
>>> In my opinion, on modern hardware with at least 2 Gibytes of RAM,
>>> Vista is considerably superior to XP.
>>>
>>> Of course, I have long since turned off UAC.
>>
>> Turning off UAC can lead to silent failures of software operations from
>> installers and the like. Vista is pretty but it is absoultely terrible to
>> use. At work just about everyone who got Vista and insisted they be
>> allowed to try it (our policy is to replace it with XP) has asked to have
>> it removed. There are two installs left, one on a Dell Quad Core, which
>> takes 20 minutes to boot, and another on a "server" box (8 cores) which
>> nobody uses.
>>
>
> Lies just slide off your keyboard like butter, don't they? Here's the
> trick to getting a grip. Any time you feel the need to rubbish something,
> find 2 reputable sources to back up your claim. If you can do that, than
> feel free to type away-- otherwise, hold your wongue lest you get a
> reputation for being a total loser.

YOU are the one offering NOTHING to support your opinions. At least I have
expert links backing up what I say. YOU have NOTHING and try to minimise my
opinions as "anecdotal", pot - kettle - black. And you call me a liar, well
you're a tosser.

Having used XP for about 7 years now I would love to change. But Vista has
no confidence from me, even though I can get a free licence I'm not going
near it.

J&H.

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

"Stephen Worthington" <stephen@jsw12.gen34.nz56.remove_numbers> wrote in
message news:ckr9e454cv9tldtrcep94dgf3ef5rqi3af@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 20:59:44 +1200, "Jekyll and Hyde"
> <jekyll&hyde@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>><dons flame-proof suit> I think it might. I know a guy who bought a
>>>>laptop
>>>>supplied with Vista who compared the performance (read: responsiveness)
>>>>unfavourably to an old PII 366 / 64MB RAM running 98SE. He couldn't get
>>>>XP
>>>>on it quick enough.
>>>
>>> No, it is *not* swapping. I have two Vista PCs with 2 Gibytes of RAM
>>> each. Both of them typically only have about 1.0-1.3 Gibytes of RAM
>>> in use, despite all the software I have loaded. The rest of the RAM
>>> is used for disk cache, and Vista is *much* better at using its cache
>>> than XP is. I should qualify that statement - I am using Vista SP1,
>>> and I think there were some fixes in SP1 to do with caching. I
>>> frequently see disk operations running at speeds so impossible that
>>> they must be running mostly out of the cache.
>>>
>>> When Vista is first installed, it indexes all the files. This takes
>>> quite a while - just leave the box on for a couple of days if
>>> necessary and it should finally stop. Also, Vista has a builtin
>>> background defrag program that runs automatically once a week. I
>>> believe it senses other PC use and stops until the PC is idle again,
>>> but if it was also running at the same time as the indexing, they
>>> would make the disk rather busy, probably thrashing. Search the Help
>>> for "defragment" to find it and the scheduler that runs it.
>>
>>I have NEVER seen a Vista computer with it's hdd led out or more than a
>>couple of seconds, they are ALWAYS lit. This even includes up to 8 core 64
>>bit machines with 16Gb ram and raid.Vista has so much overhead I don't
>>believe simple caching could come close to negating the performance
>>penalties Vista introduced. Today a Vista user at work finished copying
>>100Gb to a USB2 HDD, it took 20 hours!
>
> I have not tried much with a USB2 hard disk, but they are simply slow.
> I know this because I have a 1 Tbyte external drive that has both USB2
> and eSATA interfaces. Its performance on a USB2 port is so bad I have
> only ever used it that way once. Its eSATA performance is the same as
> internal drives. So I would not blame Vista for poor USB2 disk
> performance.
>
> I have modern Seagate 500 Gbyte and 1 Tbyte SATA drives in my PCs, and
> performance is anything but slow. As an example, I just copied a
> 732,712,960 byte file from my 500 Gbyte drive to my 1 Tbyte drive in
> 18.53 seconds. I made sure that the file was one I had not accessed
> for ages so it would not be cached already. That is 39,541,984 bytes
> per second, or 2.2 Gibytes per minute. At that rate, your 100 Gbyte
> copy would have taken less than 45 minutes.

It wasn't mine, and it took 20 hours. The problem has been around long
enough, this is not news. USB2 is usually sufficient for everyday use, even
when using USMT tools to migrate a user.

>>> So I think that many people are getting the wrong impression about
>>> Vista because it is slow for the first day or two due to the indexing,
>>> and also due to the file copying speed problems that were fixed in
>>> SP1. It is not at all slow, unless you try to run it with 1 Gibyte of
>>> RAM or less.
>>
>>No, it's slower and will be forever, by 40% (
>>http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ista,1531.html ), and before
>>you
>>mention it I know the review was pre SP1. SP1 did next to nothing to fix
>>performance and reliability issues. And in fact SP1 trashed many a Vista
>>installation (see SP1 boot looping).
>
> I did not see a 40% overall figure anywhere in that article. That is
> just bullshit. You could say truthfully say "up to 40%" if you like
> bullshit statistics. Yes, quite a number of benchmarks show slightly
> lower performance, and a few much lower. I am a big skeptic when it
> comes to benchmarks though. They rarely reflect real life
> performance.

Beg your pardon, but I don't bullshit. I linked the wrong article sorry
about that, but the 40% was about right from memory. Here's the correct
link... http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1...9291081,00.htm
Like yourself I too am sceptical of benchmarks, and those at Toms in the
link I find to be particularly kind to Vista, and certainly are a lot better
for Vista than I would ever have guessed.
But the ZDNet benchmarks certainly match my subjective experiences more
closely.
Also interesting, a rebuttal of Microsofts rebuttal of the bad news...
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...mmed-attacking
Unlike MSofts claim, Devil Mountains benchmarking methods actually more
closely represent an actual user than Toms one specific test at a time
methods. This would explain to me why Toms figures surprised me, but Devil
Mountains seems spot on to me.

>>> Another really great thing is the way its TCP connections adapt their
>>> window size to the conditions they find. With XP, due to NZ's
>>> distance from the rest of the Internet and the resulting high ping
>>> times, ACK packets are too slow to get back to allow the next packet
>>> to be sent in time, which makes any one TCP connection run slower than
>>> a high speed Internet connection can handle. This can be fixed by
>>> changing registry settings in XP to increase the window size, but that
>>> can cause other problems. Most people just use multiple http
>>> connections to get the download speed their Internet connection is
>>> capable of. Vista does not need that - it adapts the window size
>>> dynamically to the traffic and the ping times. This helps a lot with
>>> download sites like rapidshare that only allow one connection.
>>
>>The improvements are not sufficient to replace WAN optimisation
>>technologies, and in many cases performance is deteriorated by Vistas
>>technologies...
>>http://searchnetworking.techtarget.c...250148,00.html
>
> Not my experience. All my Internet and LAN speeds are superior or
> dramatically superior on my Vista boxes. Some of that may simply be
> faster hardware, with the LAN speeds. But Internet speeds are much
> better, and the hardware can not affect that.

Transfer rates are just one thing. Reliability etc is another. Try
installing Office 2007 from a mapped network drive, what happens? Error
"Invalid Drive X:" is what happens, but not on XP, nooo. Try installing
something else from the network share, and you guessed it, same error, at
which point I remorsefully resign myself to the fact I now have to copy a
3Gb Adobe installer onto the desktop to install it, which with Vista means
coming back in an hour or so. Copying installers across our network takes
about twice as long with Vista than it does with XP. Maybe our network is
quite different to yours? Internet seems slower with Vista, but that's
subjective only.

>>> In my opinion, on modern hardware with at least 2 Gibytes of RAM,
>>> Vista is considerably superior to XP.
>>>
>>> Of course, I have long since turned off UAC.
>>
>>Turning off UAC can lead to silent failures of software operations from
>>installers and the like. Vista is pretty but it is absoultely terrible to
>>use. At work just about everyone who got Vista and insisted they be
>>allowed
>>to try it (our policy is to replace it with XP) has asked to have it
>>removed. There are two installs left, one on a Dell Quad Core, which takes
>>20 minutes to boot, and another on a "server" box (8 cores) which nobody
>>uses.
>>
>>J&H.
>>
>
> Actually, my experience is just the opposite. Having UAC on leads to
> silent failures of installers, usually ones that do not understand
> Vista. I have not had any such failures since I turned UAC off.

You may be right there, I don't have a lot of experience with UAC (except
for playing along with it's constant nagging), mostly second hand info.

> I have used XP a lot prior to getting Vista, and I now prefer Vista. I
> have never used XP on a modern PC though - maybe it does run a little
> faster than Vista on the same hardware. But the dramatic performance
> boost I got from changing hardware to the latest far outweighs that.
> And the disk caching performance of Vista is so dramatically better,
> and that matters in real life where benchmarks often do not. I do not
> have to wait around all the time for Vista to reload things it should
> never have flushed from its cache. With XP, I was always waiting for
> things I should not have had to, just because I had copied a file from
> A to B.
>
> At your work, were you putting Vista on old PCs with too little RAM?
> Or an ancient video card? That would be the most likely reason for it
> to be slow. And did you leave it running for a day or two to get all
> the indexing done, or turn off the indexing service? What Windows
> Experience Index values were the PCs reporting? Mine is currently
> 4.8, with the limiting factor being Aero performance.

I've never put Vista on anything at work. No they weren't old, they arrive
new with Vista. Turning off indexing didn't help, either did disabling a
number of other background processes. They are Quad core Dell Precision
workstations with 4Gb ram, upgraded 3D cards. Can't remember what the EI
values were but these are the very best of what's available.

I'm a Windows user, and I'd love it if Vista was as fast as XP, I'd change
tonight. I would love to be using Vista instead, I love the aero look, and
the widgets, and the general coolness of it all. But I refuse to install an
OS that will handicap my performance and reliabilty so much.

J&H.

Re: OK so vista is annoying....
 

In message <48e5c290@news01.wxnz.net>, Jekyll and Hyde wrote:

> ... Devil Mountains benchmarking methods actually more closely represent
> an actual user ...

Weren't they the ones reporting some massive performance speedups with
Dimdows XP SP3, which turned out not to be the case?