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Inside the Windows Vista Kernel, Part 2
BuR4N writes "Mark Russinovich takes a look at the Windows Kernel and the changes made in Vista. In this second part he describes the workings of the features SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, ReadyBoot, and ReadyDrive and how they improve system performance."
Why did they choose the 'Ready' prefix for everything? It seems that using 'Hyper' would have actually been a little more descriptive AND cooler sounding. I mean, HyperBoost, HyperBoot, and HyperDrive? Those sound so much better. And I thought these guys were supposedly big into marketing...
This guy's the limit!
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/0
Q: Isn't user data on a removable device a security risk?
A: This was one of our first concerns and to mitigate this risk, we use AES-128 to encrypt everything that we write to the device.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
With all these performance-improving things, shouldn't performance actually, you know, be improved?
Many have fallen into the trap of building "intelligent" cache systems that perform worse than the "dumb" cache systems. Remember, every MB of RAM caching an app that you might use is not caching part of the photo that you are editing; caching is subtle work.
So, as I have not used Vista and have no plans to (I'm with Linux), a question: Can anybody tell me that they put Vista on their computer and things are now noticably faster? I've heard from people with the opposite experience, now I'm soliciting evidence that all these Ready* things actually help people.
Some friends were visiting last night and they had recently purchased a new HP laptop (1.6 GHz CPU and 1 GB RAM with 80 GB HDD). I was struck by how abysmally slow Vista was. The thing had Vista Home Premium on it. Putting a blank CD entailed a wait of anywhere from 15 to 25 seconds before the stupid dialog came up asking if I wanted to burn something to the blank disc. Connecting to a wireless network was a complete disaster. My wireless network is setup to not broadcast its SSID, so I had to enter the setting manually along with the WPA password. As soon as I was done, the thing would take the dialog away and then not connect. It took me 30 minutes of hunting to find the listing that had the wireless networks I had manually entered in (as opposed to the networks which were broadcasting). To top if off, the system kept prompting to allow things that it really seemed I should not need to be asked. I am seriously not trying to troll here, this is just
my first impression of vista.
This benchmark article shows that SuperFetch and ReadyBoost can help improve app launch times a bit, but mostly only if you have woefully tiny amounts of RAM in your computer.
However, this slew of benchmarks shows Vista to be slower across the board then XP.
Anyone remember smartdrv of yesteryear? How about fastopen? :-)
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You are lost in a twisty maze of APIs, all alike. It is dark. You are likely to be hit on the head by a chair thrown by a Grue.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Because they swiped it from Commodore. Light Out, MS.
Poke 53280,0
Poke 53281,0
Ready.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I always notice the greatest improvement in speed is when I reinstall XP, then about 9months later it slows down again. (no it's not spyware, filesystem frag etc..). This slowdown phenom. is well documented in windows cirlces.
Does Vista suffer from this same problem?
... no one can hear you scream.
Software patents delenda est.
#include
int main() {
uac_alert("You are attempting to initialize variables. Cancel or allow?");
int i;
uac_alert("You are attempting to enter a loop. Cancel or allow?");
for (i = 0; i 100; i++) {
uac_alert("You are attempting to iterate a loop. Cancel or allow?");
i++;
}
uac_alert("You are attempting to exit program. Cancel or allow?");
return 0;
}
You are attempting to read sigs. Cancel or Allow?
If they pick the best names the first time around, they won't have any room to innovate new fancy names for these technologies in the next Windows.
Really the title of this article should be "Microsoft Implements Fresh New Names for Existing and Obvious Technology in Vista Kernel."
If you have between 512 and 700 MB of memory, Vista tears a rift in the space-time continuum. IMPORTANT: whatever you do, DO NOT install Vista on a computer with between 512 and 700 MB of RAM.