Vista

[Darren]

OK, we have all heard about Vista Bloatware, well us that have bought a new comp with it pre-installed have at least.

I have lived with it on my new laptop for over six months now.
I have to be honest, at first it looked great. But once you got past the flash it didn't take long to realise just how slow an opperating system it is.

I mean it's really slow, at first you don't notice it too much but it's true from the off. Add a few programs and things really start to show up in a bad light.

Finally I got fed up with it, waiting for a high speck dual core machine was not what I paid good money for.
This is a dual core proccessor at 1800mhz with 2gb of memory, so should be lighteningly fast with simple things like browsing. Not so. My old 2nd laptop is really old with a 700mhz proccesor and just 128mb of ram and side by side it has always loaded pages faster running on XP.

So, dump Vista and load XP onto the new laptop then, sounds like a good idea  

Except my manufacturer never wrote any harware drivers for this machine to run on XP.....unbeliveable.......



So, I have spent some time scouring the net for XP hardware drivers to no avail....ummm...more  


Then I discovered something called Vlite, a utility to strip out all the garbage from a Vista install. (they have one for XP too, called Nlite)
You can select exactly what you do and don't want to have installed.

I cheated and downloaded a pre-built copy with the bare minumim of instalation. Loaded it and it worked, 3.8GB of Vista instead of the huge 8GB original. Less than half the size.

I've been playing with it this evening and all you need still seems to be there..

Only...it's sooooo fast, really much faster, web browsing is instant, as you would expect....so far I really like it, makes my old machine now look slow.

This is how it should be !!!

Though I still wish I could load XP.....

I might give it a go and see what doesn't work...it might not be much at all ??

[Darren]

Oh and the install needed no input from me, otherwise known as an unattended install, and it didn't take long either, about 15min...

Nice.....

[Darren]

Interestingly it's now only hogging 32% of the memory instead of the usual 70-80% which left little for any other running programs.

And my fan is no longer running continuously. Before it never ever stopped, now I have not noticed it much....I'll have to put the power meter on it and see how much juice it's burning with both set-ups?

Still pleased with it, but only time will really tell....

[rleete]

Vista, and the later versions of Windows are configured for the everyman.  Since they don't know what your going to be doing with your rig, they set it up to do everything.  And, as we all know, if you try to do it all, you're not going to do any one thing very well.

I've learned over the years what parts to install and what to leave out.  This program just does it all at once.

[Darren]

Agreed....

But it can be very daunting to start stripping out parts of the OS, I wouldn't really be comfortable to attempt such thing. Also I have do doubt I would remove crittical bits and leave behind the rubbish.....

I like this CD, insert, select partition to load to, press go....15min later it's done and ready to go. But you do need all your hardware drivers as they have been stripped out. Lets face that's a good thing. Take printers for example, how many types are out there and how many drivers for each one. Then add all the other hardware....

I believe most new computors come with a full driver CD? Mine did and installing them was a simple matter. Almost automatic.

I ended up with vista lite on a separate partition, so at boot up I can choose the new or old.
That gives me time to set everything up the way I like it and add all programs needed. Then I make an image file for future re-installs for a simple life.

[SPiN Racing]

I have been using PCs sine the first of them, as I may have mentioned in other posts.

I truly "loved" the days of DOS... the control etc etc..
I really HATED the days of 95 when I was such a hardcore DOS man.. damn gui taking resources!!
I really liked the later version of 98 simply for the functionality of Plug and Pray.. when it worked well... it was refreshing to not have to load damn drivers for Everything.
I COMPLTELY skipped ME. I installed it once for a week, then formatted the drive and went back to 98.
XP I have exclusively used since.. on all the computers in the house, garage, and for all the laptops and spare PCs.
I had Redhat, and Unbuntu, etc etc.. but always removed them eventually... because I HATED searching for goddamn drivers for a variety of things like a CD-Rom.. or sound card. Nothing fancy.. stock stuff.

Vista.... ahhh Vista..  I own a copy of Home, and Pro. I also have a beta copy. None of these are installed on anything. I did some testing on it at work, as well as some beta stuff.. and decided HECK no. I cant justify having to build a new PC.. when I am still using a very very very functional quad core box with 4GB of ram, and like 2 steps down from the highest level of video card. And have it be SLOWER!!!!

I have a lot of IT friends who have it on thier machines... DUAL BOOT. And the question I pose to them.... WHY? Why dual boot Vista and XP? And they cant answer.. cause they do everything in XP...


HoEWVER...... Windows 7... I gather is Vista... but a WORLD faster. THis per my friend who is very picky about things. He removed Vista from his PCs, and is running 7 RC exclusively. Im downloading it now as a matter of fact... so will put it on something OTHER THAN my main PC.. and test it out.. and see how it plays. But if you have a PC to spare... might be worth a spin. Its free till mid 2010 when it expires.