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Windows Vista SP1 Hands-On Details
babyshiori writes "Users of Microsoft Windows Vista can rejoice in the fact that Microsoft just released a preview of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate! The build is the lead-up to the actual service pack, which will be made available to even more testers at a later date. 'In our early tests with the beta, we saw some small improvements in boot time on an HP Compaq 8710p Core 2 Duo notebook. Before SP1, the laptop took 1 minute, 51 seconds to boot. After the update, that figure dropped by almost 20 seconds. Microsoft is also touting improvements in "the speed of copying and extracting files," so we tested a few of those scenarios. We noted a slight increase in the time required to copy 562 JPEG images totaling 1.9GB from an SD Card to the hard drive of the aforementioned HP Compaq notebook.'"
http://www.forumpix.co.uk/uploads/1195414376.jpg taken from http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/yes_virginia_there_is_a_vista_sp1.html
Disable Indexing.. It drove me nuts when I installed it on a "test system" at the office. Between the indexer, and the defragger trying to access the disk when it thinks you don't need it, it seemed to drop the overall speed significantly
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
now would you beleive it!
...
6 years ago...
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-01-05-001-04-NW-LF-KN
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 16:01:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Linus Torvalds torvalds@transmeta.com
To: Kernel Mailing List linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: And oh, btw..
In a move unanimously hailed by the trade press and industry analysts as
being a sure sign of incipient braindamage, Linus Torvalds (also known as
the "father of Linux" or, more commonly, as "mush-for-brains") decided
that enough is enough, and that things don't get better from having the
same people test it over and over again. In short, 2.4.0 is out there.
today
http://kernel.org/
The latest 2.4 version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.35.4 2007-11-17 17:44 UTC F V C Changelog
Invaders must die
I have to say one of the most broken features (from a design POV) is the blocking of start-up programs. Great, so users are secured against programs that might start up without their permission or knowledge. Great, so I can right-click on the tray, scroll to the blocked program, and left-click to start it up.
However - where the Hell is the checkbox to remember my choice?.
Having to do this on every boot is crazy. It was funny that this issue was on the "Windows 7 Wishlist" - it should've been one of the first updates out the door after RTM, and at the latest, SP1.
In case anyone still has nightmares about this, there is a work-around apparently - http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=0&p=6509411
DRM had nothing to do with it. In order to make sure that non-multimedia I/O and processing didn't overwhelm the I/O and processing needed for content (audio and video), processes and I/O are prioritized. Multimedia runs at the highest priority. From what I remember, Microsoft said that it could only affect gigabit network connections that are running at full speed (basically never on a desktop PC). I think they said they're going to tweak the behavior so it can decide better whether non-multimedia related processes and I/O should be limited. Additionally, there was a bug in the method used to decide how much bandwidth should be allocated to a network connection. The total bandwidth allocated for network connections was equally split across all network adapters even if you had say a gigabit adapter connected and an wireless adapter that wasn't. This caused the issue to show up more often than intended because oftentimes the gigabit connection was getting cut in half without a real reason.
All that said, I think the idea of prioritizing multimedia is fine but there should be a method to turn it off (perhaps a registry setting).
Sorry, I'm a huge Debian fan (I run Sid on all my systems) but I feel forced to point out that even they do not support releases for 6 years. 6 years ago the current release was Potato, released in August 2000. Neither that, nor Woody released in July 2002, are still supported by Debian. Sarge, released in June 2005, will likely only be supported for another 6 months until April 2008 if the Debian Security FAQ on release lifespan[0] is accurate.
Yes, there are upgrade paths to new versions of Debian, but they also exist from old to new versions of Windows.
[0] http://www.debian.org/security/faq#lifespan
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
No its one of those "poems" where you just write some prose and toss in line breaks .
The message has nothing directly to do with the "prose". Read just the first word of each line. If you still don't get it, google the "definition of insanity".
My experience is that it Just Works. Everything is set up with a minimum of hassle and prompting, the defaults are sensible, and most of the eye candy has at least some redeeming value. (Like alt-tab shows you a small version of the windows, which is updated in realtime.) UAC is basically SEWindows, and it gets the same treatment as SELinux does (immediately disabled). But it's hard for me to fault Vista for that, since it is pretty much what every security expert was screaming for Microsoft to add.
Plus, Vista actually feels much more like it has a unified UI. I'm sure a MacOS user can tell you that the UI is more than just a window frame and menu bar: it's the "feel" of the whole thing that matters. Well, everything that comes with Vista (with a few aggravating exceptions, which fortunately I've never had to use more than once so far) has that "feel." If you've ever used IE7 on XP, you've probably noticed how utterly weird and confusing it is. Well, in Vista, it makes complete sense. (I still don't use it, of course, but I was tempted.)
I'm not a huge Vista booster or anything. The above makes me sound like I am, but you asked for reasons to use Vista, not reasons not to. But when I have to use the OS -- this computer is mainly a gaming rig -- I like it better than XP. And so long as I don't have to do any serious work, I much prefer it to KDE and GNOME. (For serious work, I need Unix. If I had to make do with screen and Alt+Fn, I would.)