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Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the if-it-works dept.

Preedit writes "A free download that can cut Windows Vista's gargantuan footprint by half or more is developing a big following on the Internet. vLite is a configuration tool that lets users automatically delete a lot of unnecessary Vista components — such as Windows Media Player and MSN installer — to pare the OS down to a reasonable size. The software is catching on. An InformationWeek story notes that a forum that asks users to suggest new features has drawn nearly 50,000 page views. Meanwhile, Microsoft officials have themselves conceded that Vista is "bloated" and are developing the next version of Windows on a core called MinWin, which is smaller than Vista by an order of magnitude."

4 of 472 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Vista XP is here! by s_p_oneil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As someone who has tried Vista on 3 different systems (64-bit desktop, 32-bit desktop, and 32-bit laptop), I can honestly say the complaints about it are not FUD. It was completely unusable on the laptop and noticeably slower than XP on both desktops.

    I may try it again when SP1 comes out. As for the DX10 features, they can be given to XP and Linux users via OpenGL, which always gets new graphics card features before DirectX. Back when hardware T&L was introduced, it was available on OpenGL as soon as the video cards shipped, but it required a new major version of DirectX. The same is true with features like geometry/streaming shaders. It will be years before any game developer using DX can drop support for DX9. As a game developer myself, this problem will ensure that I continue using OpenGL for a long time.

  2. Re:Vista XP is here! by tzanger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    2) The 64-bit version of Vista removes backwards compatability for 16-bit applications. I dunno about you, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the games I grew up with... and some of those games are good enough that horrible dated graphics don't matter.

    I understand the other points, but honestly... If you want to play the old 16-bit applications, run an emulator. There is absolutely no reason to keep the old cruft in the OS just to support the odd nostalgia trip. (I get them too, but I have no problem firing up qemu or xen or vmware)

  3. Re:Vista XP is here! by cHiphead · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Try using an off the shelf name brand computer with Vista, without any customization and cleanup, and you'll see the 5-10 secs to delete a file. Out of the box speed is a must for a consumer OS, in that realm, Vista is epic fail. Core2Duo 2.4ghz, 4GB ram (of which only 3 is being used, apparently. !!!WTF!!!) I'm glad its so terrible, though, its great job security. (What, you thought that pos was anywhere near my own machines?)

    Cheers.

    --

    This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  4. Re:Vista XP is here! by PitaBred · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So... you're saying that Vista runs great if you throw top-of-the-line hardware at it? Hell, I have a laptop that was near top of the line a little over a year ago, and it doesn't even have 4GB of RAM, or any SD cards for ReadyBoost. Try that machine with XP... it'll FLY. Or Linux even. Just because Vista is fast on new hardware does NOT mean that it's an efficiently designed OS. When you're running as many cycles through there as you are, you don't notice the tons that are wasted.

    If you're gonna recommend Vista, at least throw in the caution that you have to have a machine that you paid over $1500US for in the last year.

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    My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.