I’ve read a bunch of complaints from people about how slow Windows Vista is. Frankly, I’m mystified by those complaints, because my experience is the exact opposite. Apparently I’m not alone. Carl Campos has documented his 10 weeks with Windows Vista:
After 10 years of supporting Windows systems, I have a good feel for how fast a system works, sort of like a mechanic who can listen to a car idle and identify its problems. Vista is quick, responsive and it seems to multitask better than XP. Vista, unlike XP, is still usable when applications hog the 100% of the CPU or constantly page the hard drive. Vista uses a tremendous amount of memory while not doing much, but it doesn’t appear to affect the feel of the system at all.
Overall, it’s an excellent piece of writing, with a well-rounded, balanced look at the pros and cons of Vista. Well worth reading.
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
I agree. I’ve seen a lot of bad press regarding Vista regarding slowness, and I have to say that my first experience of the OS led me to agree that my nan’s electric shopping wagon was faster…
Since then I’ve seen it on a number of different systems and it is speedy. I guess all the fanboys/haters will have to get comfortable and cosy with the OS before they make sweeping judgements….
Like all software released these days Vista is problematic. If you have no intention of plugging in any other hardware or running any other non MS software (without deep thought and stressing Google out) then I would say “go for it”…. a laptop with no external hardware an example.
To replace your desktop OS…. Not so sure…. Even if your desktop box works right out of the box it doesn’t guarantee your printer will.
Before you shoot me down, I realise that XP had the same teething problems, and I’m sure that Vista will do us all proud in the long run….. I am also sure that Vista won’t be the new WinME !
I’ll be waiting for the first service pack and confirmation of ATI/NVidia/HP driver support first… I do beta test software, but I don’t want to beta test my main OS on my primary desktop and primary laptop thanks all the same.
Rob (Vista ETA 2008)
I agree. My OS runs like a bat out of hell. And stable as a rock to boot.
Granted, I am running Vista on a new computer that was Vista home premium ready. I’m not trying to run Vista on an older system that can barely handle XP. I suspect that makes a huge difference.
I’ve said this since the start. Same hardware, all other things being equal, Vista runs faster — and without even using ReadyBoost. I still have to try that out, though, but it already runs well enough that I hardly need it.
Here’s a question: Are the people who complain about slowness running a system that was upgraded in-place from XP? All my Vista installs were clean, not upgrades.
Excellent Carl Campos article, indeed!
Serdar, my Vista install on my older Pentium 3.4GHz, 4G RAM machine was not only clean, but noticeably slow during disk-writes. Vista Explorer was intolerable. Fast-forward to new Core 2 Duo machine with same memory and Vista runs swell. However, having installed three different versions on five machines now, I can vouch that Vista wants new hardware, period. Which is why I recommend getting Vista when you’re ready to jump to 64-bit hardware. The few x64 apps I’m running are a dream, and the first vendor to come out with a 64-bit text editor will make a LOT of money.
I’m of mixed opinions on this one. For the most part Vista is as fast or faster than XP was on the same system yet at times I’ve found Vista just chugging on simple tasks, usually around files. It doesn’t happen all the time or very often but it just sorta… locks. Of course part of that could be the apps themselves but some of them are Microsoft apps that you’d hope would behave a bit better.
Then again I’ve noticed that there are certain actions in Vista that seem slower only because either I’m not used to the new layout or, and call me crazy, some of the click targets are smaller. Certain UI elements really require me to focus on the screen instead of just being able to do something automatically. A big one is the path bar that allows you to click on each folder as a dropdown. In theory I love it, it’s much more useful than clicking a back button but in reality I can hit back back easily and everytime because it’s always in the exact same spot, while the path segments obviously change in length and position. Because of that certain actions just feel like they take longer when they actually don’t.
Shawn, you’re on to something there when you say you have to “focus on the screen instead of just being able to do something automatically”.
Just like with a computer, we humans burn up needless energy when we have to visually and mentally sort thru a busy GUI. This is why I always prefer the “classic” look when using a computer. Less work for my brain and for my eyes.
I’ve also gotten to using the keyboard more for commands and I slow the double mouse double click down to it’s lowest level to keep from stressing the hand and wrist. Rapid double clicks are fatiguing.
I’ve found Vista to be “less deterministic”. That is, it seems mostly pretty fast but, as other have noticed, sometimes locks up or slows down on simple tasks and often around file operations. Interestingly such slowdowns can affect all open applications and not just the one that is having an issue.
I’m hoping MS has serious 24/7 perfmon on all of its own Vista systems and that we’ll see a significant improvement with SP1.
One of my machines is 64-bit, but is running the 32-bit edition due to drivers. The other is a 32-bit laptop. Both are clean installs and both are right speedy. I wonder if, again, this comes down to a case of drivers…
I’m running Vista on a computer that will be 5 years old next month and it runs acceptably (3.5 performance index and the determining factor is the 3D graphics performance). I spent extra when I bought this computer to ‘future proof’ it and I think it worked. I have a 2.53Ghz processor and a 533Mhz FSB. I upgraded the video card about 2 years ago (BTW, Aero Glass works fine) and upgraded from 512MB of RAM to 1GB after first trying the Vista beta.
I’m running a dual boot setup with XP SP1 and it seems to me that Vista runs at least as well as XP for most things.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’m looking forward to getting a new PC in a few months with a dual or maybe quad core and I expect that Vista will do really well with a new PC.
Vista runs okay… Incredibly slow boot times (2 day old Vaio wait Core 2 Duo @ 2.3GHz, 2GB RAM, 7500rpm drive, “real” nVidia card (256MB))… I mean about a minute to get to the login screen slow.
My old Vaio (same line, but 1.33GHz Core Duo, 1GB RAM) would boot to XP in about 15 seconds.
Still, in operation I haven’t notced any serious slowdon in Vista.
That said, I know that I function slower (having to confirm 3 times to delete a shortcut?!!!). Haven’t done any hackery or optimization, but I can see where the Apple ads (“Are you sure you want to confirm?”) could resonate well with first time users.
Which is sad. I should be excited to turn on my brand new machine with all the latest cool MS software. But instead I dread it 😦
Jeremy, there is something wrong with your system. You should never (well, almost never) have to respond to a prompt to delete a shortcut. Where are these files located? it sounds like a permissions problem.
As for the boot time, I’d suspect you have something trying to load and failing. Boot times should be similar for those two machines.
Ed, I wasn’t actually meaning to complain. I would have gone looking for solutions when I ad time, don’t worry. But, since you asked… 😉
I’m deleting “junk” that came with the machine. Y’know, AOL icons and the like. I’m guessing these were created by some super user (or other user) or something, or they’re in the equivalent in Vista to the All Users area, which may be causing perms stuff.
I’ve tested this on stuff I’ve created and it’s fine, but anyways, here’s what happens:
Delete the “Games” directory (which has nothing in it) in the start menu:
Are you sure you want to delete (whch is fine), click yes.
Desitnation Folder Access Denied, You Need to confirm this operation. Click Continue.
You have attempted to delete a file, please confirm. Click continue.
This is almost as silly as Norton asking me if I’m okay with Norton running a scan on Norton (which happened on my first full system scan) 😉
Anyways, definitely a perms issue, but considering as how I’m an Admin right now, you’d think instances of that would be few and far between.
As I said, I’ll figure it out. Day 2 of Vista, so I’m not too worried. But the constant confirmation dialogues (Vista asked me if I was sure I wanted to open Word!) are a little … odd…
Btw, the Games folder? Still not gone, it’s been deleting that 0 bytes for 7 minutes now… I’m going to let it run just to see how long it takes to delete 0 bytes 😉
Jeremy, the Games folder is a system folder, so you can’t just delete it, any more than you can delete the Program Files folder or the Accessories folder. That’s why you’re running into that problem from Explorer. You would probably have better luck using an elevated command prompt and then taking ownership of the whole Start menu.
You can delete any file or folder that you create without any prompting, including shortcuts for programs you install. If you want to get rid of the contents of the Games folder, go to Control Panel, Programs, Turn Windows Features On or Off.
Ed, thanks for the info, I’ll definitely look into that 🙂
Only Zaine seems to have made this point so far, and it bears repeating (it’s a point I would have thought you would have made, Ed, considering your insightful article on how the latest MS OS is always accused of ‘bloat’ whilst pervious versions are commended as svelte): — most new Microsoft OSes perform faster than their predecessors on relatively recent, current, and future hardware; but slower on significantly older hardware (i.e. hardware that was current for that predecessor).
This should not be news, and the reason is fairly trivial: new features require more resources, and hence slow performance on fairly old hardware; but at the same time newer OSes can take advantage of advances in hardware (dual-cores, increases in RAM, SSE{x} etc. as well as innovations like ReadyBoost) so would be better performing than older OSes on newer hardware that has features of which the older OS cannot take advantage.
I’ve been running Vista on a new Lenovo Dual Core desktop with 2Gb RAM for about a month and I think it’s fine. That said, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a nice skin on top of XP with some annoying security pop-ups (which I turned off after 24 hours) and the addition of some previously free apps (desktop search and a sidebar). It certainly is a LONG way from what Longhorn was promised to be. Remember this quote from BillG?
“Longhorn, the next version of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows desktop operating system, will be so different from its predecessors that users may not like it right away.”
regards,
Cameron Reilly
CEO, The Podcast Network (www.thepodcastnetwork.com) &
Host of Australia’s #1 podcast G’Day World (www.gdayworld.com)
Vista on my machine is slowwwwww! Vista is just a plain crappy experience. The machine is three weeks old. Running System Restore takes over 5 minutes until the dialog appears. Shutdown also takes too long. General applications run fine. This is reminiscent of my experiences a couple of years ago with some Linux distros. I dropped them.
Ed, your experience may be good, but please don’t minimize the other people’s experiences. Vista is still a beta even though Microsoft is selling it to the public. I will not recommend that any non IT professionals sign up for this type of experience. XP is better for the time being.
I’m not minimizing other people’s experiences, Richard. I’m trying to understand them. In my experience, which involves communicating with hundreds of beta testers and people using the RTM product, I have found that experiences like yours are the distinct minority, but they are real. I suspect there’s a simple explanation for your experience, and I wish I knew what it was.
Ed:
I suspect that my issue has to do with system calls, since the major problems seem to be with things like Shutdown and System Restore. I suspect that I will eventually identify and correct the problem. I have tried several “fixes” without success.
The thing about Vista vs. XP is that XP is relatively rock solid and snappy for everyone while Vista has many problems, not mine in particular, but the lack of hardware drivers and application incompatibility, even Microsoft’s applications, that it is just not ready for prime time IMO.
Furthermore, I find the Vista security model foolish for home users. One of my favorite examples is when I change a setting in MSConfig, reboot and then Windows Defender blocks the MSConfig dialog box from appearing. So I have to tell Defender it is okay to run the program. I have tried running “MSConfig /auto” and checking the dialog box’s checkbox before rebooting to no avail. This works fine in XP. This is a small annoyance but a stupid one for Microsoft, and not isolated by any means.
This is what I expect from beta software not commercially released code.
That sounds like a driver refusing to unload.
As for changing a setting in MSConfig and rebooting, I just did that on a default install here. Windows Defender does not appear. I’ve run Windows Vista on dozens of machines and never seen that behavior. In fact, it makes no sense. Update: Whoops, I take that back. I see what you’re describing now, after a different set of changes.
The funny (not humorous) thing about the problem you’re describi ng is that it probably has one cause. Fix that cause and all the problems magically go away. If I were you, I would try a complete, clean reinstall.
Richard, do you have any other security software running besides the built-in stuff?
Ed, I’m playing “normal user” with an Acer notebook. After a nearly four-week hiatus due to hardware failure and Acer incompetence, I have the notebook back and am testing again.
Per your question on #22, I think that third-party software can be blamed for many performance issues. I get lots of strange messages from the Symantec stuff that was installed on this system by Acer.
However, there are a few out-of-box things that Vista does that may be giving users a bad experience. The indexing service took quite a while to do its thing on this system, and during that time the drive light was on constantly. I know it uses low-priority I/O but it still made things slow at times when I went to use the system.
I never had XP installed on this system so I can’t do an A-B comparison, but Vista seems to be about the speed I’d expect if I did have XP installed.
@Ed
You asked if I was running any security software. I am using Grisoft’s free AVG anti-virus software and nothing else except Microsoft Vista security.
Richard
Ed,
Thanks very much for the link. My traffic went from next to nothing to a REALLY BIG SPIKE overnight, so I appreciate the attention. Thanks to everyone who visited and commented.
I’ve seen the same issue as Jeremy Wright, where UAC prompts appear just to delete a shortcut. My experience has been that this is due to apps that aren’t really compatible with Vista and must be installed under the local Admin account. If you’re running as a normal user and you install the app as an Admin, it’s the Admin’s shortcut. Your normal user doesn’t have permission to do anything with the shortcut, so you get a UAC prompt to delete it. I also want to say I’ve actually seen more than one UAC prompt to delete a single shortcut, but I don’t remember for sure.
To Jeremy Wright: Turn off UAC, or user account control if you are administrator to tell vista to STOP MAKING YOU CONFIRM 3 TIMES TO DELETE SOMETHING! I hated it too till i turned off UAC cuz i saw “User account control help protect attackers from your computer” or whatever so i searched the computer for “user account control” and turned it right off! Annoyance solved for a friends computer. I won’t switch to vista for a LOOOOONG Time. ill wait til the next MS OS is about to come out to get vista. I got XP just 2 years ago. I had to put up with WinME for 4 years. I’d like to move to Ubuntu all the way.
I removed Vista from my home machine after several months of continuous problems. I got tired of the wacky DRM behavior. Some DVDs would play, others wouldn’t. Driver support was sketchy at best. But the main reason I upgraded from Vista back to XP was speed. I have a AMD X2 4400 chip with Nvidia 6600GT GPU and 2 GB RAM and Vista ran like a dog. The same goes for my Dell laptop. On both machines XP feels significantly faster. I like a lot of features of Vista included SEARCH that works really well. But it doesn’t feel ready for prime time. Until the get the driver situation worked out as well as performance issues, I’ll have to stick with XP Pro.
I have an Acer Laptop that came pre installed with Vista Business. It was fine to start with, but has recently developed a login/startup issue. After I have logged in, the desktop displays, populated and then the machine “thinks” for about 45 seconds, I can do nothing during this time.
After it has finished whatever its doing, then the machine is back to it’s usual speeding self?! I tried to get task manger going so I could see what processes where running, but nothing responds during the time.
I also had an issue using file sync (offline files) and changing the name of files on network shares. Turns out it’s an OEM install issue and you have to edit the registry. I wonder how many other features are broken or glitches are caused by the OEM install?
I don’t get the luxury of a clean install as the vendor doesn’t supply any disks. So it’s their install or nothing.
My son just got brand new PC with vista home and amd dual core.
The OS loads fast but GAMES suck at loading, incredably long time to load any new game!!!
A lot of hos friends have reverted back tp XP for gamming.
I just got a brand new Dell laptop (Core Duo, 2Gb RAM) and I find that Vista is painful on several fronts.
Firstly, it takes about 3 minutes to load up. By load up, I mean the time it takes from pressing the ‘on’ button to the time when I can get the Google search page to appear in a browser.
Ubuntu on my 4 year old desktop takes 45 seconds for same test.
I find it really annoying that the login screen comes up quickly that the machine is still unavailable for several minutes after logging in.
Secondly, the confirmation dialogs drive me nuts. I’m a power user. When I try to do something I want the PC to do it, not ask me if I really want to do it.
I’m seriously considering sending this machine back to Dell and requesting that they install Win2K on it. I’d settle for XP, but Win2K is the pinnacle of Microsoft’s OS family.
I have found Vista overall to be slower to Ubuntu which is my primary os, and its slower or faster in different areas to XP. Games in Vista are very bad (could be a driver issue) I have Command and conquer 3 on low settings in vistsa……. and full settings in XP, Cs Source wont run in vista without freezing randomly every few seconds. DVD playback has been a nightmare and the computer slows down a lot when I put a dvd movie in(DRM?). Sometimes a program will take a long time to load others its faster than XP.
I was impressed that it found my wireless and it was working as soon as install had finished. The interface is very nice looking (nicer in some areas than my beryl themes on Linux).
Over all I would not recomend Vista yet, some people say its better some say its slower and for me its a bit of both. In my opinion its still a Beta, but an expensive one.
I’m VERY frustrated with Vista. I saved up for a long time to buy a new laptop, and now I’m completely disappointed with my purchase that runs Vista instead of XP. My laptop is an HP, Core 2 Duo with 1 gig RAM, but it runs MUCH slower than my 4 year old desktop that runs XP. Boot up under XP took about 20 seconds, but my new laptop takes over one minute to boot, and the shut down is very slow too.
My laptop is only used for basic things such as email and MS Word, but even these simple tasks take a lot longer than my old computer. Even opening a text file can take several seconds in my Vista (my old XP system would open the same file instantly.)
I had thought that my new laptop would be very fast since I’m using one of the latest processors, but I’m really disappointed. I’ve tried to eliminate most of the junk that HP had loading on boot, but removing these things hasn’t helped the slowness problem.
I read that some people have had a very good experience with Vista. I’m not looking for a super-fast system, I’d just like my laptop to run about as fast as my old 2.6 GHz machine running XP.
What should I look for to improve my system’s speed?
Does anyone know if any OEM windows install cd will work or does it have to be specific? I have the cd key printed on my laptop but the (official) windows XP install cd is corroupt. Can I just grab any ISO and have the cd key work? Has anyone had much luck getting HP to just send a replacement?
Looks like im stuck in vista for now for any games .
For anyone here looking for a fast OS (For anything but games really) id try Linux, I use Ubuntu which is lightning fast on my laptop.
For Vista there is allways Vlite http://www.vlite.net/ You can use it to remove/add stuff from the vista install (not sure if its a good idea TBH) Maybe you can trim it down for speed? I did it with XP on another computer and got a lot better performance, but I dont know enough about vista to try it.
with each windows os come more features and better desgined software features to make things more powerful like ms word. but that doesn’t mean faster. my advice for bert is if you are doing basic stuff stick to the basic stuff that you had before on newer hardware it will run fast with no problems. Im assuming that when vista and microsoft software was developed that they considered the hardaware and acceptable idle time or wait for completeing tasks….. maybe your wait time for a program vs the capabilty of it is different since you only want to do the basic. there are plenty of people computer science proffesors and reasearchers that still use windows 98 or windows 2000 because the basics are all they need
Sadly my own experience has been nightmarish with Vista. Starting up takes several minutes. ctrl alt deleting to shut down a frequently locked up program such as firefox or the like can take up to a minute before the task manager is accessible.
It’s bad enough that I’m seriously considering a Mac – and I work for MS.
Hey homeboy:
Thanks for thinking about my problem(s) and giving me your advice:
“my advice for bert is if you are doing basic stuff stick to the basic stuff that you had before on newer hardware it will run fast with no problems.”
Unfortunately, I’ve spent over $1000 on my new laptop, and now I’m stuck with Vista. If there was a way to make HP load XP onto my laptop I would do it, but HP says since the laptop came with Vista, I’m stuck with it.
I don’t know that much about laptop computers, but can I simply purchase a retail version of XP and install it on my new laptop? HP told me they customize the OS to work with a given computer, so how do I get a retail version to work properly?
Bert, if you’re unhappy with the performance of your nerw computer, take it back and get a refund or get a different model from a different manufacturer. You paid for it, you have a right to be happy with it.
I really, really wanted to like Windows Vista. I put Vista Ultimate on my HP DV9000T laptop, and have been regretting it ever since. I have 1.5GB RAM, 1.73Ghz Core Duo, and NVidia GeForce Go 7600 + 512MB. That’s pretty good, IMO. WEI says I get a 4.5 overall.
But does it run fast? No. My disk constantly grinds, especially when coming out of sleep. Sometimes it doesn’t come out of sleep. And, my fan runs nonstop. My laptop sounds like a Harrier jet. My wrist rests are uncomfortably hot, and my battery life actually did take a 25% hit despite assurances from many people that this would not be the case.
I traced a lot of the problems to Aero and desktop composition. After turning off desktop composition, my fan has become a lot more reasonable, but still runs more than it did under XP. Overall, things are snappier and more usable without desktop composition. I don’t miss it, actually – Flip3D was a useless toy, and thumbnails really don’t affect my productivity significantly.
Overall, thumbs down, way down, for Vista performance. I own MSFT stock, BTW, so I’m not very predisposed to hating this OS. But I do.
Kevin, that is not normal behavior. I have several notebooks here with similar specs that do not exhibit this behavior. Have you looked in Reliability and Performance Monitor to see what is causing the CPU and disk activity? Dwm.exe should not be the offender. All it is doing is following orders from an out-of-control program.
Ed, you’re right – I would hope this isn’t normal. I have not used the Reliability and Performance Monitor, yet, but at your suggestion, I’ll give it a try. I have looked in Task Manager repeatedly to see if anything is chewing CPU, and it looked like nothing was out of control. The only thing I know is that my out-of-box experience has been very bad.
Anyways, always enjoy your articles, thanks for the response!
PS. Can someone explain why Chess Titans eats up 100MB of RAM, and Solitaire chews up 50MB?
Yes My vista does run very slowly. Why?
I just bought a new laptop and it was in it so to my knowledge it was not upgraded? any help would be greatly appreciated. PLEASE. thanks.
Gina, what kind of notebook did you buy (make, model, etc)? What security software is on it? Did you install any additional software right away?
I bought a cheap one because I only needed it temporarily and it was cheaper to buy then rent here in Maine. It is a Toshiba Model: Satellite A135, Norton 360, Processor: Genuine Intel (R) CPU TT2080 @ 1.73GHz 1.73 GHz
Memory (RAM) 446 MB
System type 32-bit operating system
LAN connection Maine road runner
Anything else you need or does that explain it all?
I am afraid to know what I need to do.
I just need it for my residency in May-June.
Thanks for any help.
Ah, the 446MB of RAM and Norton 360 are a pretty dangerous combination. The recommended minimum RAM for Vista is 512MB, so you’re already falling short. And Norton’s software is notorious for its impact on performance. I would recommend you turn off everything except the antivirus component and see if that helps.
Press Ctrl+Shift+Escape to open Task Manager, Now look in the lower right corner of that dialog box. What percentage appears after the words “Physical Memory”?
well that is all that is in there except a trial program for Office 2007, and in the task manager it only says, yahoo messenger and system.. but it was slow before the yahoo was in it.
what are your suggestions about getting more of something to help it limp along?
No, no, look again. When you open Task Manager you’ll see three values in the very bottom of the window: Processes, CPU Usage, and Physical Memory. I’m interested in the number in the lower right corner. Physical Memory: XX%
What is that percentage?
oh 68%
I just got a new Dell laptop with Core 2 duo T7200 2GHz, 1 GB ram @ 667mhz, ATI X1400, and Vista home basic. It was running slow, so I set out to improve performance. I uninstalled ALL the bloatware, disabled windows defender, UAC, sidebar, security center, indexing, and all other services/software that were non-essential. I disabled all visual themes and selected “adjust for best performance.” It ran a little bit faster, but nowhere near my 4 year old XP machine with p4 2.4ghz, 512 ram, and Geforce2 32MB. I run apache, ftp, and mysql on my XP machine, and I can have 20 high demand applications running as well as high demand on my server without noticing any slowdown.
The programs I use most on the Vista laptop are Visual Studio 2005, IE7, windows mail, and media player. This is all MS software, so there shouldn’t be compatability issues. It still runs slow, with the biggest lags in windows explorer, switching between programs, launching programs (especially IE), and doing file IO. Even saving small files results in a slight hang. The hard drive is plenty fast as evidenced through file transfers and vista’s own rating.
The fact is, all other parameters having been eliminated, Vista is SLOW, so I will be loading XP so I can realize the full speed of my computer. Also, as a developer, all the execution permissions are really annoying. When I’m developing and debugging apps I don’t want to have to think about “run as admin,” or “run in ** compatibility mode.”
I don’t know much about Vista, but I am searching the Internet to find out why visitors to my site who have just purchased computers with Vista are having trouble downloading simple pdf files. It take several minutes to download what use to take several seconds.
Makes me wonder what will happed to my online business which provides printable downloads. Slow won’t cut it.
Any suggestions for my visitors other than buying a Mac?
Just received my new Dell Inspiron 1505 Intel 5200 processor and 1 gig of ram and ATI X1400 video, and Vista Premium factory installed. Much slower than I expected. Previous laptop was a Thinkpad 770ED with a 233 mhz PII with windows 2000 pro. Dell seems to drag and uses over 500 meg just to run.
Ok I have figured it out. going to the store now, I whined after I talked to someone from Toshiba. they should have explained to me that 512 is just enough to run the sticking thing and I need more to even make it worth a penny! stupid sales people! I guess that new saying about the customers getting smart was for me. I should have figured it out before but I guess I am too trusting.
STupid me.
Stephen,
Using over 500MB to run is fine. In fact, you want the system to use that RAM, not just let it sit there.
When you say it’s much slower than you expected, what do you mean, specifically?
I ran Vista for 2 weeks and I can say that it is the wors opperating system I have ever tested on my PC.I have an Intel Core2Duo 2600MHz , 1 GB RAM , 256 Video ….,and running Windows Vista on my computer is like running Windows 98 on a 486 !!!
It suck,I hate it !
Well, Miha, I have a system here with an almost identical configuration to yours, and it runs great. So I don’t know what your issue is, but it isn’t (only) Vista.
PS: Most people use Windows 98 on a 486 as an example of fast performance these days. The less it does, the faster it runs.
Well my Vista takes like 7 minutes to boot, its on a dual boot partition of 160 GB Western Digital SATA Hardrive. Partition is 80 GB. Processor is 2.66 P4, 1.1 GB, 256 MB Nvidia Card. Quite Frankly its a piece of crap. If anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong I will like to know I have been working on computers most of my life, and this OS is just unacceptable.
Well, On my part, I personally like vista, but my biggest problem is moving, copying, and deleting files, which tend to take forever. On average when I move one file on one partition to another, I get an average speed of less than 500kb/s.
It is annoying considering how much I move and change and whatnot, but not enough for me to stop using vista (business ed). Occasionally, moving files will go fast, but rarely. And XP did files flawlessly and fast.
but meh, it is a problem that is all over google, and Microsoft should address. just for my stats, its a 2.53Ghz P4 w/ 2gb DDR2100 and my drives are all 7200rpm and whatnot on a gigabyte mobo. I wouldn’t be surprised if all these problems are a driver problem with the Intel chipset.