Even with out the third party stuff Vista could be better… A stock install of Vista SP1 chews up 533 megs of memory when first started. XP SP3 takes 82 megs. That’s 6.5x the memory. Connecting to CIFS/SMB shares on a Windows 2003 or XP workstation is painfully slow and many times error out. From a usability stand point. I despise and hate the new start menu and Explorer. When I cursor through folders it doesn’t automatically show the content of the folder! Breadcrumb browsing is very annoy. I much, much prefer the XP style explorer. I’ll even settle for something like Mac’s Finder. The only good thing about the new Explorer in Vista is the ability to create folder shortcuts in the left-pane.
I had 2 gigs RAM in my laptop and Vista would constantly run out of memory. And this was with the Aero interface and Super-fetch turned off. The only open was Outlook 2007.
Here is an excerpt from an unpublished article I wrote about Vista. The irony is rest of the article discusses why I didn’t choose Linux or Mac but 4 months later I ended up buying a MacBook Pro w/ Fusion and Windows XP. I only use XP for XenCenter and Outlook (as there in no Mac version, Entourage is not quite the same)
The Ultimate Vista Upgrade
Looking to increase performance, usability, stability and application compatibility on your Windows Vista system? Well, Microsoft released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 last week. No, I'm not recommending SP1. I've got a solution that is much better. What if I told you that there is an Operating System out there that performs so much fast than Vista. One that is easy to use, rock solid stable and works with 100% of your applications? What if I said you could even use your existing hardware?
Is it a Mac? Nope.
Is it Linux? Nope.
I've been running this Vista Upgrade on my laptop for 3 months now and I have to say is it is amazing! My laptop is so much faster, stable and easier to use than ever before!
So what is this new and exciting Operating System? Microsoft released a relatively unknown OS many years back called Microsoft Windows XP SP2.
Here is my story.
Back in January 2007, I upgraded my laptop (Dell Inspiron E1705, T7400 Core2Duo, 2GB of Ram, 7200 RPM drive) running Windows XP Pro to Microsoft Vista Ultimate. Since then, I have had nothing but problems with the thing.
Issues encountered:
The system was really slow, pause and frequent display “Not Responding” in the title bar of applications
The system would do what it pleased and constantly kicking off some type of system scan or defrag. The poor hard-drive was constantly chattering
The system locked up occasionally
Wireless would not always reconnect when coming out of standby mode
Moving from one Wireless AP to a different Wireless AP was not always seamless
Copying files takes 4 to 5 times longer to complete
Consistent issues connecting to CIFS shares
Consistent issues copying files to a CIFS share
Consistent issues opening files on a CIFS share (sometimes, just basic .txt files would not open properly)
System would frequently run out of memory with only 1 application open (the system has 2 GB of ram)
The UAC is very, very annoying. Immediately turn that off
Explorer folder views do not save properly
The new Start Menu is hard to navigate
System settings are new and hidden places. I've wasted countly hours searching for settings.
The Explorer windows size opens up way too small. I always have to resize it
A lot of the application I use no longer worked
Windows Backup would not connect to a WinXP share
Windows Backup would not let me pick and choose what files to backup
From what I've been hearing about Vista SP1, things are not much better.
What am I losing by upgrading to XP? Not much, but here is a list:
Security? What good is it if it's really annoying, slows down the system, and decreased the reliability of the system? I'd rather have speed and stability. For browsing the internet, I prefer Firefox anyways. A simple Google search reveals there are quite a few articles that suggest that Vista is not as secure as Microsoft lets on.
The new Aero interface. Whoop dee doo! So the title bars are not translucent or the windows fad in and out. Microsoft touts the 3d tab flip as a big feature but I never found myself using it. After a while, I ended up turning off the Aero interface and changed the Start Menu to classic mode in an attempt to stabilize the system and reduce memory consumption. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
Superfetch. Not sure where to begin here. I turned this off while trying to troubleshoot issues with memory consumption and I did not notice a performance decrease.
Folder shortcuts in Explorer. If anything, this might be one feature I miss the most.
What did I gain?
Speed! The system is noticeably faster and more responsive. And Service Pack 3 promises to be even faster.
Stability! I haven't had the system crash/lockup yet
My Hard Drive stopped chattering
My wireless connections work so much better
My old applications work again
I'm only using 565 megs (out of 2 GB) with the following application opened: Outlook, Word, iTunes, Firefox and Notepad
Coping files to/from a CIFS share is so much faster and trouble free
I can open simple text base files without incident
My system setting are where I expect them to be (No more 2 hour ventures to find where a new settings is hiding)
I can use NTBACKUP again!
Joe
From: thin-bounce@freelists.org [mailto:thin-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kenzig http://thin.ms
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 10:38 AM
To: thin@freelists.org
Subject: [THIN] Re: Microsoft Ad
Seinfied only got 10 million. Remember my earlier post. It isn't Microsoft's fault, Vista works great. It is 3rd party vendors who can't seem to writer their software properly to work on it. Microsoft needs to spend that money to engage these vendors and teach them how to write their software to work on Vista. And the world would be a better place.
Jim Kenzig
Blog: http://www.techblink.com
On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 1:10 PM, Joe Shonk <joe.shonk@gmail.com> wrote:
So this is what Microsoft came up with for their $300 million campaign starring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. I kind of wished they would have spend the money optimizing and fixing Vista.
http://gizmodo.com/5045703/the-first-bill-gates-%252B-jerry-seinfeld-microsoft-ad-makes-no-sense
Joe
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