Review of Stardock's TweakVista

mikemuch writes "The new TweakVista utility from Stardock surfaces some of Vista's more obscure settings, giving access to diagnostics and making suggestions for services that you should be running. ExtremeTech's review of TweakVista generally likes the software, and though it's called version 0.9, it is for sale — $19.95 — and feels feature-complete. More suggestions on system optimization, however, would be helpful. From the review: 'According to TweakVista, on July 1st, the "Windows Shell Services DLL service took 651ms longer to shut down than usual." That's nice. Other than this stark presentation, there's no digestible information as to why the shell services DLL took over half a second longer to shut down. And there's no hint as to what to do about it.'"

Comments

taskmanager?

[pedramnavid]

Ctrl-Shift-Esc is an even better shortcut for taskmanager. Does that still work with Vista?

Re:taskmanager?

[fr4nk]

Yes it does.

Performance Center.

[Henry V .009]

The "took longer to shut down" messages are from Windows itself. They're exactly what you get from the Performance Center. It's actually very useful when you're trying to find out which applications are making your startup or shutdown times go slow. It's something that Vista has done right, actually.

Re:I hate that usage of "surface"

[Anonymous Coward]

You should because it's incorrect. You cannot "surface" something in the sense of bringing to light. There's only one definition for "to surface" with a direct object:

To provide with a surface or apply a surface to: surface a table with walnut; surface a road with asphalt.

The definition of the intransitive form, which doesn't take a direct object, is what the submitter is really trying to say:

1. To rise to the surface.
2. To emerge after concealment.
3. To work or dig a mine at or near the surface of the ground.

Re:Skins

[Anonymous Coward]

The tearing and flickering 2D graphics are often a driver issue.

On all my XP installs, I had that issue prior to installing the nVidia drivers, but not ater. I do get a little flicker with Intel graphics, but I get the same thing on *nix systems as well...

CMD shell here is about same as the XP power toy

[Blahbooboo3]

Especially this one: Shift-RightClick on a folder and you can open a CMD shell at that location!! Fucking A! no more reg hacking.

You do realize this is just about the same thing as the Windows XP Open Command Window Here power toy?
Here is the link to get it for XP

Re:Too lazy to login... but Vista doesn't suck bal

[DXMikey]

I'm running a Dual-Core AMD x64 4200+ with the onboard x1250 ATI card (all my good cards are AGP - I just haven't broke down yet and bought a decent Nvidia).

I've had good luck with Vista overall, the x1250 isn't great and only gives the machine an overall 2.8 rating. Otherwise - I'm not noticing the speed issues I did on my older machines running better graphics cards. Aero runs just fine. I'm not seeing any "2D tearing issues" and xVid, DivX, x264 encodes and DVDs run very smoothly. I use Haali Media Splitter and FFDShow to decode the x264 stuff I create with the Windows port of Handbrake.

IE7 SUCKS, end of story. I use Firefox with the IEtab if I absolutely must run an IE window - useful for getting into our company's webmail. IE7 is nothing more than a miserable hack trying to emulate Firefox and MS should be embarrassed for ever releasing this piece of crap.

Oh yeah...I ditched the Zune when I realized that high humidity was creating a cloud inside the polycarbonate screen cover that would take a week or more to escape. I never had the problem with my iPods...so I'm back to a 4Gig Nano for now. I liked the Zune except for this and one other issue: You can't see the f**kin' screen in daylight, bright or overcast. The iPod is very readable even in bright sunlight.

So, with my dandy new iPod I was finally able to check out the latest MGTEK dosisp WMP 11 plugin. It works as advertised so I was able to ditch iTunes. I was able to format and sync the Nano through WMP 11 with no issues. I haven't fired up Winamp yet in Vista so I can't speak for its iPod support.

Yes - you all can all ding me for my previous Zune comments - but what it did, it did really well. But I'm lovin' the Nano - but would have been happier with the 8G model.

Oh yeah - the MGTEK dosisp plugin is payware. I'm sure there'll be free solutions before too long. WMP 11 does such a nice job that I can't figure out why MS had to re-hack WMP10 into the "Zune Player". It really was crap.

Nothing new

[dalmiroy2k]

You can do manually whatever this GUI does and for free:

http://www.speedyvista.com/

Re:Too lazy to login... but Vista doesn't suck bal

[sid0]

IE7 SUCKS, end of story. I use Firefox with the IEtab if I absolutely must run an IE window - useful for getting into our company's webmail. IE7 is nothing more than a miserable hack trying to emulate Firefox and MS should be embarrassed for ever releasing this piece of crap.

Try Maxthon if you want to use IE. It's a lot faster than Firefox can ever be, that's for sure. I'm using an optimised build of Firefox and while it is a lot faster than the Mozilla release, it doesn't match up to Maxthon.

Vista is slower than XP because of the new features: indexing, diagnostics and such. If you disable indexing and other such stuff, you'll find that it runs pretty comparably to XP. Superfetch et al don't hurt, of course.)

Oh, and the AC is right, Vista doesn't suck. Sure there are a couple of bugs (like the slow file copy issue, solved for a lot by disabling Remote Differential Compression in Windows Features, and seems to be solved completely in SP1), but there's also an amazing amount of FUD and pure lies over Vista, especially over DRM. (File copy slow? OMG, DRM CHECKS! etc) Here's a nugget to chew on: if you don't play DRM'd media you will never ever see DRM.

Free version

[Island Dog]

I would like to make an addition that wasn't included in the review. There will be a free version available, and the $20 is for the premium version with additional features. It will also be included for people with subscriptions to Object Desktop by Stardock.

Re:CMD shell here is about same as the XP power to

[fbjon]

The folder icon for the current folder is up in the left corner, you can right-click there. It always was there, AFAIK.