After having used it for the past week or so, I'm now convinced that Vista is most definitely the sh*t, and everyone should consider upgrading. For some odd reason, they seem to be downplaying the performance and reliability aspects of it, and focusing on the flashy new UI - but under the hood is where all the important aspects are.
Vista does take up more memory than XP, but that memory is put to MUCH better use.
Superfetch - This is where the biggest gains are realized. I was skeptical at first myself. It claims to do keep track of what programs you use, when you use them, and always keep them in memory. It works. I used to leave certain programs open just to keep them resident in memory...no need for such a thing anymore. The programs I use the most are ALWAYS loading from main memory it seems, no matter when I close them.
Another big benefit - it won't flush your cache when you're idle and running system utilities. On XP, I set it up to run various things while I slept - backup, defrag, virus scans, torrents etc...every morning I'd wake up to a sluggish PC because the scanners and such completely took over the system cache. XP was simple - it just kept the last files read in cache, with no care as to where they're coming from.
Right now, I could walk away from my PC, set up a scan that would destroy the cache on XP, and since I'm idle, superfetch will know not to bother caching it, and I can come back at any time during it to a perfectly responsive system, where apps still seem to load straight from memory. This is good for those of us with plenty of ram, and even better for those with little. Even with 1gb of memory, it never felt like I hit the page file for no reason. Windows has NEVER been this responsive before.
Readyboost - Another feature I was skeptical of - but it works. Very well. There seems to be some confusion as to what it is. Some say its a disk cache. Some say its virtual memory. In reality, its both and then a little bit more. I got a 2gb OCZ drive in there.
In normal app usage, the amount of disk thrashing has gone down to pretty much zero. I rarely if ever heard the drive really kick in unless I'm loading something huge, or something that I rarely access. Flash is cheap, random access is ten times faster than a hard disk, and for the 20 bucks a 1-2gb drive would cost, there is absolutely no reason not to use it.
So if superfetch doesnt happen to have what you need, the readyboost cache likely does - and it'll almost always be faster than hitting the disk. Boots and wakeups are at least twice as fast with the cache, even though I rarely do either. For laptops with low memory, it will be a godsend.
But I wanted to really push both these features, so I loaded up oblivion. The game itself takes up massive amounts of ram. Running around the world forces loads of pretty much entirely random parts of the game.
Without the readyboost cache in, with 1gb of ram, it performed similarly to XP. Always had to hit the disk to load things, even if you just were there. Quitting the game and going back to the desktop resulted in a good 30-60 seconds of thrashing just to get things loaded back into memory. The game just demands so much memory that windows HAS to forsake everything else for it.
I formatted the USB stick, and made a new, clean cache. Popped the stick in.
1st load - I expected it to load at the same rate, but I was wrong - even with an empty cache, it was faster. I suppose it was a lot easier for it to write off to the flash drive to clear needed memory, than it was to hit the disk while simultaneously trying to load the game off the disk.
Walking around, it was a lot snappier than usual. Walking into new areas was sped up a bit, walking back to old areas was sped up a LOT. 1GB is barely enough for this game, but it felt like a lot more was in there with the cache. Not quite the same as having more RAM, but much better than hitting the page file.
Quit the game, and it reloaded the desktop also a hell of a lot faster. I then went out of my way to load just about every other app I had on the system, well over 1gb of stuff, and waited a good 15 mins, to make sure as little as possible of oblivion remained in the RAM cache, but should still be in the readyboost.
Reloading was then quite a bit faster, and the best part - walking to areas that I previously been to on the previous load was still accelerated...very cool stuff. Made the game a lot more playable.
When they come out with the internal, PCI express caches, I'm sure it'll be an even bigger difference.
Those two features alone are practically worth the price of entry...but there are a few other things that stick out to me as particularly awesome.
The new task scheduler - WAY improved over the old one. I used to have to time apps out through the night, giving each one enough time to finish. Now you can sequentially schedule a list of actions, set it to begin at a certain time of night. Can also prevent it from starting if you're not idle, and then kicking in when you do eventually leave.
So every night, I can effortlessly scheduled a restore point, backup, virus scan, disk check and defrag, in order, without ever having to worry about it cutting in on me if I'm still up that late. And if I do get up that late, itll back off until I'm done using it. And because it's not screwing with the disk cache, the system is still 100% responsive whether you cut it off, or use it the morning after.
Reliability and performance monitor - It's like the task manager we wish we always had. Instead of staring at it, trying to judge what is using the most CPU etc, it can measure out average CPU over 60 seconds, tell you which app is hitting the disk the hardest, which app is clogging your internet, and which app is hogging memory etc...it's quite useful.
The reliability monitor aspect keeps track of all the bad stuff that happens. Much easier than digging through the event log, and a good portion of the stuff that seems to always crash (X-fi drivers), I was completely unaware of, as it took care of it without bothering me...which is also quite excellent.
Other features that deserve mention:
The low priority I/O does work well - I ran a manual defrag and scan while I was using it, and while it did drag a bit, it dragged much less than it would have on XP.
The sidebar widgets are pretty good, and seem to use far less memory and CPU than yahoo widgets do.
The games manager is definitely a step up from treating games like regular apps.
Built in disk imaging is sweet.
And I do dig the new UI - the glassy windows are nice, the new explorer is very good (favorites bar rules), and its no slower than XP in any way.
The photo manager is a good alternative to just using explorer as well.
I could care less about the new built in apps. Thats not what vista is about for me, and probably won't be for most people here. But if you're thinking of skipping vista cause you think it will be slower than XP, you're pretty much dead wrong. Nearly anything that does take up more resources can be disabled, as well as anything annoying (UAC and security center can go to hell), and the built in enhancements more than make up for it. I'm impressed.
Vista does take up more memory than XP, but that memory is put to MUCH better use.
Superfetch - This is where the biggest gains are realized. I was skeptical at first myself. It claims to do keep track of what programs you use, when you use them, and always keep them in memory. It works. I used to leave certain programs open just to keep them resident in memory...no need for such a thing anymore. The programs I use the most are ALWAYS loading from main memory it seems, no matter when I close them.
Another big benefit - it won't flush your cache when you're idle and running system utilities. On XP, I set it up to run various things while I slept - backup, defrag, virus scans, torrents etc...every morning I'd wake up to a sluggish PC because the scanners and such completely took over the system cache. XP was simple - it just kept the last files read in cache, with no care as to where they're coming from.
Right now, I could walk away from my PC, set up a scan that would destroy the cache on XP, and since I'm idle, superfetch will know not to bother caching it, and I can come back at any time during it to a perfectly responsive system, where apps still seem to load straight from memory. This is good for those of us with plenty of ram, and even better for those with little. Even with 1gb of memory, it never felt like I hit the page file for no reason. Windows has NEVER been this responsive before.
Readyboost - Another feature I was skeptical of - but it works. Very well. There seems to be some confusion as to what it is. Some say its a disk cache. Some say its virtual memory. In reality, its both and then a little bit more. I got a 2gb OCZ drive in there.
In normal app usage, the amount of disk thrashing has gone down to pretty much zero. I rarely if ever heard the drive really kick in unless I'm loading something huge, or something that I rarely access. Flash is cheap, random access is ten times faster than a hard disk, and for the 20 bucks a 1-2gb drive would cost, there is absolutely no reason not to use it.
So if superfetch doesnt happen to have what you need, the readyboost cache likely does - and it'll almost always be faster than hitting the disk. Boots and wakeups are at least twice as fast with the cache, even though I rarely do either. For laptops with low memory, it will be a godsend.
But I wanted to really push both these features, so I loaded up oblivion. The game itself takes up massive amounts of ram. Running around the world forces loads of pretty much entirely random parts of the game.
Without the readyboost cache in, with 1gb of ram, it performed similarly to XP. Always had to hit the disk to load things, even if you just were there. Quitting the game and going back to the desktop resulted in a good 30-60 seconds of thrashing just to get things loaded back into memory. The game just demands so much memory that windows HAS to forsake everything else for it.
I formatted the USB stick, and made a new, clean cache. Popped the stick in.
1st load - I expected it to load at the same rate, but I was wrong - even with an empty cache, it was faster. I suppose it was a lot easier for it to write off to the flash drive to clear needed memory, than it was to hit the disk while simultaneously trying to load the game off the disk.
Walking around, it was a lot snappier than usual. Walking into new areas was sped up a bit, walking back to old areas was sped up a LOT. 1GB is barely enough for this game, but it felt like a lot more was in there with the cache. Not quite the same as having more RAM, but much better than hitting the page file.
Quit the game, and it reloaded the desktop also a hell of a lot faster. I then went out of my way to load just about every other app I had on the system, well over 1gb of stuff, and waited a good 15 mins, to make sure as little as possible of oblivion remained in the RAM cache, but should still be in the readyboost.
Reloading was then quite a bit faster, and the best part - walking to areas that I previously been to on the previous load was still accelerated...very cool stuff. Made the game a lot more playable.
When they come out with the internal, PCI express caches, I'm sure it'll be an even bigger difference.
Those two features alone are practically worth the price of entry...but there are a few other things that stick out to me as particularly awesome.
The new task scheduler - WAY improved over the old one. I used to have to time apps out through the night, giving each one enough time to finish. Now you can sequentially schedule a list of actions, set it to begin at a certain time of night. Can also prevent it from starting if you're not idle, and then kicking in when you do eventually leave.
So every night, I can effortlessly scheduled a restore point, backup, virus scan, disk check and defrag, in order, without ever having to worry about it cutting in on me if I'm still up that late. And if I do get up that late, itll back off until I'm done using it. And because it's not screwing with the disk cache, the system is still 100% responsive whether you cut it off, or use it the morning after.
Reliability and performance monitor - It's like the task manager we wish we always had. Instead of staring at it, trying to judge what is using the most CPU etc, it can measure out average CPU over 60 seconds, tell you which app is hitting the disk the hardest, which app is clogging your internet, and which app is hogging memory etc...it's quite useful.
The reliability monitor aspect keeps track of all the bad stuff that happens. Much easier than digging through the event log, and a good portion of the stuff that seems to always crash (X-fi drivers), I was completely unaware of, as it took care of it without bothering me...which is also quite excellent.
Other features that deserve mention:
The low priority I/O does work well - I ran a manual defrag and scan while I was using it, and while it did drag a bit, it dragged much less than it would have on XP.
The sidebar widgets are pretty good, and seem to use far less memory and CPU than yahoo widgets do.
The games manager is definitely a step up from treating games like regular apps.
Built in disk imaging is sweet.
And I do dig the new UI - the glassy windows are nice, the new explorer is very good (favorites bar rules), and its no slower than XP in any way.
The photo manager is a good alternative to just using explorer as well.
I could care less about the new built in apps. Thats not what vista is about for me, and probably won't be for most people here. But if you're thinking of skipping vista cause you think it will be slower than XP, you're pretty much dead wrong. Nearly anything that does take up more resources can be disabled, as well as anything annoying (UAC and security center can go to hell), and the built in enhancements more than make up for it. I'm impressed.