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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."
Because, damnit! The guy holding the chair kept yelling at them and wanting to know when it will be ready? They changed the name and he put the chair back on the floor!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
Well, they Microsoft was gonna go with 'Hyper', but after frequent crashes, one employee, a Star Wars fan, put on a clip from Empire Strikes Back.
"Prepare to make the jump to lightspeed. If Lando's people fixed the HyperDrive."
"Punch it!"
*cough*sputter*cack*hack*pzzzsst*
"That can't be. They told me they fixed it! It's not my fault!"
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
No seek time. That's the main benefit over a hard drive. If you need lots of data, it's not that great. But if you just need a few bytes, it'll be faster than asking the hard drive. Ask the USB stick for the first few bits of a page, and the hard drive for the rest, and you get the best of both worlds.
;)
At least, that's how I'd design it if I were much of an engineer
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
... 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?
Hard disks are faster than Flash RAM for raw transfer speed, but the idea here is to use the Flash to cache small frequently-read files where the hard disk's latency and seek time would be the limiting factor.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
Now if they only had NeverCrash, QuickBoot, HackSafe, SkinnyRAM, and DontNeedAFuckingDirectX9VideoCardToRun ;)
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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."