Originally posted by Cypher
when you say vista is slower, do you mean in bringing programs up? like when starting word or AH2 longer load times?
One of the things that plagues Vista is the new pre-fetch services. Those create a false sense of performance increase by preloading applocations into memory. Yes, while Vista is idle it will simply load up memory with what it thinks you are going to run.
If you happen to hit one of those applications, it seems like it starts lighitng quick. And it should. It is being run out of RAM. The major downside to this is the fact that when you run a game, they all have a tendency to be very dynamic which causes Vista a lot of thrashing as it tries to make room for the ever expanding application by dumping off what it had already loaded.
Actual application performance is down by up to 35% in part to these new prefetch services. In another part due to the sheer number of background processes Vista runs by default. The Windows Task Manager has always provided a panacea to users by using a granularity so fat it would take a background process a week to show it is consuming CPU time, when in fact they all consume a measure of CPU time simply due to the Windows loop which all EXE's have to run all the time.
The more background processes, the more CPU time lost to them. It does not matter if it is Windows 98 or Vista. In this regard they are all identical.
I could not get any game to run well on my Vista box until I shut down those prefetch services. Those things caused all manner of warping and stuttering. I just got through installing Windows XP Pro back on the same box and it is like night and day in the performance difference. XP just blows Vista out of the water. Games play nice and smooth with higher frame rates.
I'll ne able to do my job better. I'll just reload Vista on another box and use it for test purposes. And of course, I need to rewrite a lot of our documentation as the default configuration of Vista has no "Run" option from the "Start" menu, among other things that we refer to.
It really brings nothing to the user that could not have been brought to XP. In many ways it is far worse. Configuring Vista is a nightmare unless you are use to using the NT 3.51 Task Manager and its language. Vista is a giant step backwards in ease of use. And lets not forget about UAC (User Access Control). Now OEM's own your computer as you are no longer the Admin for it, sort of. Yes, UAC is a kludge. A big, fat, nasty kludge.
How many people actually enjoy that annoying box popping up everytime you try to install or remove anything? And for its intrusiveness, the computer is still no safer than it was before UAC came into existence. Then there is the placement of files for applications when you are not the Admin (OEM computer owners).
Another area I have to change all our documentation as I can no longer say, "look in C:\Program Files\HTC\Aces High II" for your screenshots. Why? Because they are not there if you are not the Admin of the computer (OEM owners)! Nice stuff like that really gets me thinking about retiring early and getting away from this mess.
Everyday I kringe when some user calls with a Vista box complaining about warping and stutters, on perfectly good hardware. Then the hours I have to spend with them trying to find the compromise in the Vista configuration which will allow the game to run well. I feel for the user as they get frustrated. And why shouldn't they be frustrated? They just spent a good chunk of change for a state of the art computer system which will not run a game well at all.
The number of these calls are escalating. They really do tax my time, the users patience, and there is no real need for that type of frustration to exist. This is what Vista has brought to my party. Substantially higher supports costs.
