I know … your complete personality is just like someone I went to school with. 
Then perhaps you two are old acquaintances…
Then again…maybe not…
Heh…school sys admins. Take with a grain of salt.
You have to understand…Vista manages memory much differently from previous versions of Windows.
Yes, it uses a lot of memory, but most of it is being used differently than you’d expect.
Most of that memory is being used for caching such as Superfetch. Yes, it’s in use, but it’s being used to preload the applications that you’re most likely to use. It is also surrendered if an application needs it.
So yes, your memory is being used, and it makes your overall experience faster, but at the same time, it’s like it’s not being used, since it’s given to other apps as it’s needed.
Think of it this way. You paid for that RAM. Don’t you want it to be used?
I…don’t see how it proves that ^^;;;
The article shows that Vista was able to be infected (maybe? I keep hearing reports about Vista and malware, but it’s always about how it was able to penetrate Vista’s defense, I never actually hear about it being infected) by malware when using third party apps, but not when using built in apps. Microsoft was on the defensive because of reports of malware infecting Vista, and merely stated that it was done with third party apps, and could not be repeated with the built in apps.
I’m also going to point out that Microsoft helped the Firefox team with compatability issues on Vista (although the Firefox team is still having issues for some reason).
Which would slow down the computer because it has to load all of that from the hard drive. It also gives me less control and can be a waste, pre-loading applications I might not use. I should be the one who chooses what applications to pre-load. It’s the whole point of the Startup folder of your Start menu, or the Run key in your registry.
At the cost of having a longer boot time. So it’s not really faster.
Yes, but for things I choose to use it for. It’s my RAM, not Windows’. My SeaMonkey already makes plenty of use of that free RAM without leaking on my 160 MB of RAM.
Granted, but if Vista is really more secure, then why doesn’t it protect those third-party applications as well? It’s not like people are going to be using M$’ built-in applications that much (except for IE).
Eh, not really. Yeah, it spends a few minutes loading stuff from the drive (for me anyways, it wouldn’t take that long with a faster drive), but it doesn’t seem to slow down app loading.
EDIT: Ah…forgot to comment on something before.
It doesn’t give you less control. You can’t have your level of control reduced on a brand new feature. But that’s beside the point.
You have perfect control over it, becaue it is adaptive. It looks at the apps you load on bootup, and at other times of the day, and caches them. So in other words, if you work like you normally do, you’re customizing it. You have complete control, but it’s not through a menu. It’s through your actions.
Boot performance is as good as XP on this machine, if not a tad faster.
And like I said above…yes, it spends a few minutes loading apps into RAM. However, two problems with your statement.
1)As stated above, it doesn’t slow the machine down any more than having to load the app off the HDD, which you’re used to with XP.
2)It really is faster, because which is a longer period of time, three minutes, or six hours? Yeah, SuperFetch doesn’t help you in the first few minutes, but it does for the remainder of the time that you use your PC.
That doesn’t make sense, since Windows is managing it, not you.
Yes, you own it, but it’s up to the OS to determine how to use it.
Well, it does. In addition, third party applications can use Protected Mode. But, Microsoft isn’t going to do their work for them. Aside from the protection built into the OS (UAC included (which I’d imagine popped up during the testing that was referred to in the article)), it’s up to the third party developers to write secure apps. And when you really think about it…apps coded for XP probably wouldn’t take advantage of Vista’s new features.
People won’t be using Vista’s built in apps? Why not? I know plenty of people who use XP’s built in apps.
[ 12-23-2006, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: Mal ]
Which doesn’t mean I really have control over it. It’s trying to think for me.
Not if you open one or two applications when starting up, and don’t do anything else. Like a browser and an IM client. I imagine it’s pretty common in a household that has their computer only for the Internet.
Manage, yes. Use, no. I should decide what applications get loaded into the RAM.
I guess it all comes down to that in the end.
Oh, please, that feature is so unhelpful. M$ made really bad decisions on its implementation. It warns you for trivial stuff “Your start page gets changed!”, not important stuff like “Warning! An application is trying to hook into the kernel!”.
It’s “thinking” for you by analying what you do. So yes, like I said, it’s not like tick boxes or whatever. It doesn’t give you per app control. But saying you have no control over it at all is kinda silly, since it loads into memory the apps you use most.
That’d be a minority of households that open two apps on bootup and don’t open or close anything for their entire session (assuming their session isn’t a few minutes, just to check one thing).
Considering we’re debating over the computers right to use RAM, I think you’re arguing because you can.
The computer is putting programs you use into RAM. It makes your overall experience faster. Yet…this offends you. I’m confused.
Hm? Sure it does. It prompts you (doesn’t warn you, since it’s an interactive dialog…you have to give or deny permission) when you’re installing software, installing plugins (you also get IE prompts for plugins), or changing system settings. So…it’d also prompt you if an app hooks into the kernel. Actually, it’d prompt you during installation. If it’s an app you don’t recognize, and you let it install, it’s your own fault if it starts doing stuff. And that’s not Windows’ fault, it’s your fault, because you authorized it.
That said, in the x64 version of Vista, there is Patch Guard, which protects the kernel.
[ 12-24-2006, 01:01 AM: Message edited by: Mal ]
Pure doublespeak. Quit playing games with word meanings. It’s entirely possible for new features to reduce your level of control – DRM is a feature, and that’s its entire purpose. You might have some degree of control over the new feature, in isolation, but that’s a meaningless metric. Control over the system as a whole is far more important.
Edit: After conducting some research I find SuperFetch can in fact be disabled. A lot of the stuff I typed about possible problems arising from it hinged on that question being answered “no, you can’t” so I removed those parts. After all, what good is a flamefest if it’s not actually talking about real-world information? 
[ 12-24-2006, 01:28 AM: Message edited by: Nandemonai ]
And since when were computers smart (especially those managed by M$)? Nevertheless, Nandemonai said this feature can be disabled, so it matters less.
Oh, come on. It’s widely known that most households got a computer somewhere in the late 90s purely for the Internet, and basically use it as an Internet terminal.
Right, right. I hate it when people think they know what I’m thinking. It only comes off as offensive, especially because in most of the cases they’re wrong.
No, it’s NOT putting programs I use into RAM. It’s putting what it -thinks- I’m going to use into RAM. Big difference.
Okay, but I maintain that most of its warnings are about things you shouldn’t need administrator priviledges for to allow.
[ 12-24-2006, 09:29 AM: Message edited by: Benoit ]
It’s not double speak, and I’m not playing games with word meanings…
It’s true. SuperFetch was not in XP. You can only begin reducing or expanding the amount of user control in the second and third and fourth (Etc) revisions. What you start out with on something brand new is not a reduced amount of control, or more control, it is what you have.
DRM is a feature, yes. I don’t like DRM, but I also don’t flip out over it because I don’t have any content with DRM protection. Because of this fact, I’ve never noticed the DRM within XP, or the DRM within Vista. It’s completely transparent to the end user until you have content with DRM.
Yeah, it can be. It’s a service called SuperFetch. It’s one of the services of svchost.exe.
You can also disable the ReadyBoost service if you don’t think you’d be using it.
It shouldn’t impair functionality if you disable SuperFetch, but you’ll see your overall performance go down slightly since applications won’t already be in memory.
“Thinking” is not the word I would have chosen to use, but you did. That’s why I put it in quotes.
But as I told him, it shouldn’t cause any problems to disable it. You’ll just see your performance go down when launcing new applications.
Nobody is debating that fact. However, the number of households who launch a web browser the instant they reach a desktop, and never close it and launch another one (or a completely different app) is a minority.
It looks at your usage over a span of time. It then takes the applications that you use most often at bootup (whatever they may be…Firefox, Photoshop, and Yahoo Messenger let’s say), and caches them. It doesn’t “think” you’re going to use them. It loads them in RAM because you do use them. It doesn’t try to be smart. It loads those apps into RAM because it’s what you use.
So as much as you argue that it’s only putting apps that it “thinks” you’re going to use in RAM, it’s not entirely true. They’re in RAM because you use them.
Some of the things, yes, like defragmenting and access to the Reliability and Performance Monitor. But most of the things make sense, and it is much, much better than it was in Beta 2. It prompted for everything back then.
OS X and Linux are similar to this, though. In Linux when you need to do something administrative, you need to use sudo. In OS X, you need to enter your password.
Here is another link.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
It is by an DRM critic about vista but it shows us that M$ wants to have total control about what we do on our computers.
I own a lot of CD’s and i buy a few each month. But i mostly rips them and listen to them on my computer or MP3 player. I am afraid that M$ and vista will make that impossible.
Well, this is your lucky day, Johan. You can rip your CD’s as per usual in Vista.
To test this, I took my copy of The Best of the Big Apple Circus Vol. 1, a standard audio CD, and inserted it into the optical drive of my Vista laptop. I fired up WMP, went into the options, chose MP3 (instead of the default WMA), increased the bitrate to 192Kbps, and ripped away. Content protection wasn’t even available for MP3 (and it was disabled by default for WMA). Played fine and sounded great on the laptop. I transferred the music (and the music only, I confirmed that the only files were MP3’s) to a USB flash drive, and put them on a computer that I’m setting up (fresh install of XP Pro SP1 (I’m setting it up to run Seti on)). Fired up WMP, and the files played fine, and sounded as good as they will through the desktops built in mono speaker (which sounds surprisingly good, all things considered (especially considering it’s a Compaq, whoda thunk it?)).
Basically, it’s the same as WMP 10 under XP. DRM disabled by default, MP3 provided as a compression option, compression goes up to 192Kbps.
Does that make you feel any better?
As for the article…yeah, some people make lots of noise about Vista DRM. Here’s the thing, though.
None of that matters. It’s not there, if you’re not playing protected content. Don’t want to play BluRay movies on your PC? No downgraded video quality. Don’t want to play HD-DVD movies on your PC? No downgraded video quality. DVD’s play fine. Look fine. Other video plays fine and looks fine.
Heh, the website makes it sound like doing all of your high def video decompression on the GPU is a bad thing.
And the website also makes it sound like 3D performance will suffer because of this. Instead, it’s expected (and observed some already) that 3D performance on existing DX9 video cards will increase…I guess it’s not increasing enough to please the author…
Basically, I would flag that article as FUD. Here’s why. It’s trying to make you fear Vista. Yes, the things said in the article are mostly true, however, the reality isn’t nearly as bad as the article makes it out to be. The article does not make clear that only special content is affected by Vista’s DRM. If you rip music, or if you compress video, or create video, or whatever, it’s not going to be affected by DRM. If you’re watching a DVD, it won’t be affected by DRM. If you’re watching a movie off your HDD that has no DRM layer, Vista won’t touch it, it’ll play it just like XP, or 2000, or OS X, or Linux would.
People make lots of noise about Vista’s DRM, as I said before, but it’s mostly because they don’t know much about it.
We’ll see if this all holds up when we get an actual consumer release of Vista. Like how Windows 2000 was mostly good, and the masses got the horror that is XP.
XP was good at launch. I got a free upgrade through Dell when XP was released to the masses (I didn’t participate in the Whistler Beta…didn’t learn about it until far far too late), and it wasn’t bad at all.
But Vista’s RTM is already available to over several thousand people. People with an MSDN license (more than you’d think), Beta testers (several thousand right there), and some other people.
But it’ll start showing up on OEM PC’s in a few weeks. That’ll be interesting for the tech support forums. Mainly since, all things considered, most people don’t know too much about Vista, so the people that do will be overwhelmed.
EDIT: That said, I will say this. Vista, in its current state (it’ll get better before its consumer release, what with patches and more (and better) drivers on Windows Update), has a few problems. I need to find out how to submit formal bug reports for the RTM, but I’ve already submitted 48 error reports. One of which was solved by an updated driver (which works better than the driver for 2000 XD).
I do like 2000, though =D
I used it on my laptop before switching to Vista. Not sure how I’ll map out my partition table when I redo my primary HDD. Thinking XP and Vista (Vista mainly to show to people and educate the masses…well…not masses, but several people), but maybe 2000 and Vista.
[ 12-24-2006, 11:17 PM: Message edited by: Mal ]
head explodes
Care to explain how it was bad, then? =D
I had no driver problems. I don’t even recall crashes, so there must have been very few. It was pretty quick (considering the computer had 256MB RAM at the time). I honestly don’t see how it was bad.
I have a sugestion for the 64 bit crash, that seems to work, it does the same as turning off the afinity of one of your processors but MUCH MUCH easier, all you have to do is make sure you have AppLocale installed and have a shortcut for the game through APPLocale.
on that shortcut, right click on it, click on properties, go to the compatibility tab, click on “run this program in compatibilty mode for”, and choose windows 98/me.
The game seems to run fine, and the only noticable change is taking off the second cpu automatically in the affinity.
anyone willing on giving this a try on the Yin yang or xc3 games, tell me if this works good for you, (I choose those games since they seem to be the latest problem makers).
hope this works for everyone instead of the long way.
add/
I forgot to say, the compatibility tab is available only in XP, I don’t think 2000 has the compatibility tab. Sorry.
[ 02-05-2007, 05:59 AM: Message edited by: ms308680 ]
Why not turn off Hyperthreading in the BIOS? That should help.