Microsoft Windows Vista: How much memory is enough?

[Sharktooth]

PC Stats analyzed Windows Vista's memory usage in various applications.
The conclusion is... here (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2163)

[Dr.Khron]

Good article.
Sounds like the requirements from XP to Vista have basically doubled... IE XP's 1 GB = Vista's 2 GB.

Anandtech published a series of articles describing the differences in memory addressing between XP and Vista, specifically how some games can use up all the address space and crash. Good read, I'd never really understood how virtual addresses work before i read it.

http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3044

http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3060

[Sharktooth]

the address space thing is going to be fixed soon (or maybe it has just been fixed) but the problem will become more serious when videogames will exploit the full potentialities of DX10. at that point 2GB wont be enough and the approach to the 3.5GB limit is a big problem for the 32bit versions.

[check]

Some motherboards can 'fix' the memory hole issue on 64bit OSes. Normally, you will still have the memory holes in the same physical location on a 64bit OS, to increase backwards compatibility. That means you'll lost the same amount of RAM, even though you don't need to.
What some clever motherboards (mine apparently included) can do is to actually remap the 'lost' memory up to a higher address, thereby letting you use all your RAM.
I guess it's still a workaround, but nobody will ever use 64bit of memory address space anyway :)(you may not quote this line in any year after 2012)

[Doobie]

I upgraded to XP for the stability vs. Win9x.

I'm not going to Vista until I'm forced to. I see no benefit in it and I prefer a highly responsive computer than a sluggish computer.

[Sharktooth]

(you may not quote this line in any year after 2012)
IMHO it will be much earlier...

[LANjackal]

I run Vista Home Premium quite capably on 1GB of RAM.

[Sharktooth]

even 4GB is not going to be enough...
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=129412
at least for games.

[burfadel]

If you want to use 4GB of ram, or more, you have to use Vista 64 bit. A lot of people try and run 4gb of ram on Vista 32, then complain that they're missing a lot of memory.

Its true Vista uses more memory currently, but its still be improved. At some point in the future, it will actually be beneficial performance wise with hardware etc to run Vista over XP!

[Sharktooth]

i dont think so. more bl0at = more wasted resources.
also Vista64 is more restrictive than the 32bits version (DRM and stuff)... and eats even more memory.
however i switched to linux (and will keep XP on the other box until it dies), so that's not my problem. i just wish ppl understand the 32bits OSes are very SOON going to be replaced by 64bits ones. sooner than what they can imagine...

[deets]

i had to upgrade from 1gb to 2gb on my system as the disk was constantly being accessed.

I cannot work out a single reason why anyone would upgrade to vista over XP

[HyperHacker]

i had to upgrade from 1gb to 2gb on my system as the disk was constantly being accessed.

I cannot work out a single reason why anyone would upgrade to vista over XPIt's new and it's pretty and they don't know any better. As far as they know, the "new" features that Mac and Linux have had for ages really are new. (Not saying Mac/Linux have had all of Vista's "new" features for ages, but there are a few.)

Even XP64 isn't that great. I ended up having to go with XP32 on my 64-bit laptop. Though I intend to install Ubuntu on it one of these days (if I ever get around to it) and see how that goes, because I'm pretty sick of XP and I'm sure as hell not "upgrading" to Vista.

[foxyshadis]

What's bloat to one person is a long-missing feature to another. You can strip XP to run comfortably in 32 mb ram, I've done it, but you lose so much functionality that it's just not worth it to me. (I get the same feeling going back to 98.) nLite for Vista exists - you want the OS and not the bloat, go customize it yourself, the default is there for people who have no idea how to customize anything.

The 16->32 transition was painful, the 32->64 has been painful, but hopefully in two or three years it'll all just be a bad memory.

[Nematocyst]

The 16->32 transition was painful, the 32->64 has been painful, but hopefully in two or three years it'll all just be a bad memory.

Perhaps. I remember the 16->32 transition being relatively smooth. But the situation was rather different then. Most of the hardware that existed was already 32bit capable, and the limits of 16bit were being heavily strained. The move to 32 bits was mostly welcomed by developers because a flat addressing model was so superior to all the hacks used in the 16 bit world.

Today, there is little need for 64 bit systems by average users or even developers. There aren't any pressing problems that 64 bit systems solve, and there are vast numbers of 32 bit systems that do everything their users need. It is true that *some* applications benefit greatly by the 32->64 bit move. But the situation is nowhere near as necessary as the 16->32 bit move.

[Shinigami-Sama]

Today, there is little need for 64 bit systems by average users or even developers. There aren't any pressing problems that 64 bit systems solve, and there are vast numbers of 32 bit systems that do everything their users need. It is true that *some* applications benefit greatly by the 32->64 bit move. But the situation is nowhere near as necessary as the 16->32 bit move.

what about email servers?
MS Exchange is already at the limit, as well other email servers
rendering as well
also high end photo work is getting close

on the consumer side I agree, we don't need it yet - but an once of prevention is better than a pound of cure no?

[JohnnyMalaria]

at that point 2GB wont be enough and the approach to the 3.5GB limit is a big problem for the 32bit versions.

Eh? What 3.5GB limit? Default Windows Workstation installations since W2K support 2GB for a real mode process and 2GB for kernel mode processes (less memory-mapped hardware resources).

3GB real mode is possible via the boot /3GB switch but only if applications are explicity written to be aware of the /3GB. The switch changes the kernel mode base address from 0x80000000 to 0xC0000000. Typically, that's a crap shoot - history tells us of many disasters including supposedly noble products like Adobe Premiere and Autocad. Very often, users of those (and their ilk) with the /3GB can't run "normal" applications without something breaking something else. /3GB aware apps can also wreak havoc on a non /3GB system if sloppy programming is afoot (highly likely).

If you want multi GB games, you need a 64-bit OS. And since serious gamers have 64-bit processors along with both the 32- and 64-bit versions of Vista on the Vista installation DVD, what's the problem?

[Sharktooth]

The problem is not the 32bit->64bit transition. The problem lies in the Vista 64bit OS.
There are more strict limitations on certified drivers, supported hardware, DRM (IIRC hdmi is mandatory on 64bit vista to watch HD DRMed content), etc that will be a real pain.

[JohnnyMalaria]

True - but the gaming software houses make gobs of money to be at the cutting edge. Can't really be sympathetic with them.

[noclip]

Vista will find a use for literally all the memory you give it. Even if you have the 64-bit version with 32GB of RAM it will still find something to dump into memory (in the case of 32GB, the entire OS).

[sportcenter]

recommend at least 2Gb to actually enjoy all the graphics and visualizations vista has to offer

[Bathrone]

I have 2GB on Vista, along with the dx memory address hotfix and it plays any game I have ever tried to fine.

Vista is far better at memory management and caching than XP.

Too many clueless users think cos all they see as different is Aero they dont need it. Superfetch, service hardening, the windows server 2008 kernel (in the sp1 beta) and countless other features actually make it more snappy and responsive than XP from a user point of view and the additional security over XP is substantial. Things like the 80% prioritisation of multimedia on initial process startup on the kernel make it just more responsive.

Yes there is more DRM but what do you expect? Too many cowboys on this forum who break the law. MS had the choice to other comply with the IP owners / patent pools or simply not implement it. MS would have been in court quicker than Osama Bin Laden should it have breached IP owners rights in their software.

And most of you know Slysoft has the solution for those who cant live with it.

[Sharktooth]

hotfixes... hotfixes... hotfixes.
all i recently heard about vista are hotfixes...
that OS is buggy as hell, filled with crap and bloats and INSECURE at least the same level as XP.
it only makes you "feel" more secure but the real thing is Vista is plagued by serious (and critical) vulnerabilities and bugs... same story as XP (advertized as "the most secure OS Micro$oft made").
Also i have my doubts vista with 1GB is more responsive than XP with the same amount of RAM...
it's a half-assed OS rushed into the market to say "we did it!" while it was (and still is) buggy, incomplete and bloated.

[Bathrone]

Your claims are factually incorrect Sharktooth.

If you compare the number of hotfixes released from say XP, Red Hat Linux Enterprise and Mac OS X you actually see the least hotfixes released by MS for Vista out of all of them.

To claim that Vista is atleast as insecure as XP is really just demonstrating your ignorance of the issues at hand in all honesty. Go and read up from someone qualified on the subject such as book written by Roger Grimes that discussed in details the very real security enhancements in Vista.

Again, if you actually took the time to get over your bias and irrational thinking and actually compare the number of security issues (both unpatched and patched) with Vista against XP, MacOSx and common Linux distros you'd find quite an interesting result.

These things said I very much respect what you do for the video community here at doom9. Thankyou.

[Sharktooth]

well, look at the number of fixes in Vista SP1 ... oh wait... SP1 is not even final and Vista is less than 1 year old...
my thought is Vista was released as an unfinished product. people struggled with its bugs and even after applying the SP1 there will still be tons of bugs...

[foxyshadis]

NT4, 2K, and XP all had similar shakeout problems initially, with tons of patches and service packs. It's too early to say whether Vista will suffer the same sort of total system cracking leading to megaworms that 2K and XP did in their early years, but so far it doesn't really look it. Compare:

http://secunia.com/product/13223/?task=advisories_2007 Vista advisories YTD.
http://secunia.com/product/22/?task=advisories_2007 XP advisories YTD - much higher, more than double.
http://secunia.com/product/22/?task=advisories_2002 3-month snapshot of XP in Q4 2002. There were many more but secunia doesn't go that far back.

What looks more secure?

Also, if you want to compare SP1s, look at how hueg XP's and 2K's were, and how quickly they followed after release. XP's was released in only 9 months, 2000's in only 7. Stop making it out to be something terribly unusual for microsoft. (Although it certainly doesn't show off the kind of confidence they're trying to project in their new processes.)

[Sharktooth]

maybe you should read more invisible things (http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/)...
expecially this one (http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2007/02/vista-security-model-big-joke.html)

[foxyshadis]

I do, it's a good secondary source for security discussion, and she's very intelligent, but has a habit of believing that the application of enough technology can solve social engineering.

All kinds of people complain about Vista breaking their favorite applications in the same breath that they complain about it not being secure enough. As a business, Microsoft is forced to do its best to let people have their cake while they demand to eat it, too - people just plain won't buy if it's too secure, and then 5 years will be wasted while we're stuck with XP. The transition has already proved that major vendors won't make an effort to make their products compatible with a new OS until people are actually using it and raising hell. (If security an stability were all that mattered, people would have dropped 98 for Windows 2000 immediately, but it took tons of hacks for old applications in XP to make the switch make sense.)

[wmansir]

I have 1GB on Vista and it's fine for general usage, but I think 2GB would have a significant benefit for the more demanding tasks I do like encoding, video editing, Photoshop, etc. and of course games.

I cannot work out a single reason why anyone would upgrade to vista over XP

That's a bit of an overstatment, IMO. While I agree it's generally not a worthwhile upgrade there are a few things I would miss if I went back to XP.

The single biggest one is per-application volume control. For me it is really a godsend. I always have Firefox muted, so now I never have to worry about stupid flash ads or background music annoying the hell out of me.

And Vista is smart enough to remember settings for individual programs, so I can set DVD Decrypter to 5% volume and not have to worry about the job "success" wav sending me into cardiac arrest. That was such an annoyance on XP I eventually edited the default .wav file to reduce the volume, which isn't even an option on most programs.

[Bathrone]

The discussion the lady has on UAC really isnt very fair. MS has to balance security vs usability. The 60 million plus people using Vista arent all Unix command line veterans. IMHO UAC is a good balance between low privileged modes of general operation and "the hassle" of security restrictions. Its far better than the common XP style of everyone being admin.

The fact is that Vista is the first MS OS out the door using their secure software development lifecycle. That methodology has delivered too - it has less security patches than common Linux distros or MacOSX in the same time period. Same with the number of unpatched security flaws that have a critical rating.

Recently I tried Ubuntu for something new and having spent professional time on various *nix servers I was appalled at how buggy feisty fawn indeed is in comparison to Vista. The Linux kernel is great but the remaining other software to make it a polished desktop OS simply isnt mature. Unlike the *nix zealots, atleast the MacOSX zealots who try to rubbish MS have a good desktop OS to compare too - it has taken the strengths of *nix and polished it into a nice user experience. MacOSX is good. The problem is the limited hardware it can run on from the closed sales model that Apple have with it.

[Inventive Software]

Regarding the need for 64-bit OSs, the only real-world application I can see any feasible use for it is RAM, and even then, it's only really servers that'd benefit from that much. Though with the HD encoding scene and AviSynth asking a lot of memory, perhaps that's one consumer use. ;)

[deets]

I have 1GB on Vista and it's fine for general usage, but I think 2GB would have a significant benefit for the more demanding tasks I do like encoding, video editing, Photoshop, etc. and of course games.



That's a bit of an overstatment, IMO. While I agree it's generally not a worthwhile upgrade there are a few things I would miss if I went back to XP.

The single biggest one is per-application volume control. For me it is really a godsend. I always have Firefox muted, so now I never have to worry about stupid flash ads or background music annoying the hell out of me.

And Vista is smart enough to remember settings for individual programs, so I can set DVD Decrypter to 5% volume and not have to worry about the job "success" wav sending me into cardiac arrest. That was such an annoyance on XP I eventually edited the default .wav file to reduce the volume, which isn't even an option on most programs.


yep, i didn't know you could do that and i know exactly what you mean about the simpsons tune blaring out :P

I just paid 60 quid for vista OEM which is only a little more than XP OEM so thats the main reasons i went for vista.

I dont think vista is actually that bad, but i dont think its that good either. Im writing this on XP and have vista on the htpc which i had to put 2gb of ram in to get it to run as smoothly as my laptop!

Im sure in 6-12 months when vista is patched up nicely and hardware prices have come down and specs gone up for the same relative price, vista will be a more worthy choice.

What i will say, avoid like the plague for laptops unless you have a really top end system or just want to use vista basic (then why not just use XP!).

one thing i do like, the tick boxes to select files, v.handy :) oh and the bubbles screensaver, but you can get that for xp as well ;)

[Sharktooth]

The discussion the lady has on UAC really isnt very fair. MS has to balance security vs usability. The 60 million plus people using Vista arent all Unix command line veterans. IMHO UAC is a good balance between low privileged modes of general operation and "the hassle" of security restrictions. Its far better than the common XP style of everyone being admin.

The fact is that Vista is the first MS OS out the door using their secure software development lifecycle. That methodology has delivered too - it has less security patches than common Linux distros or MacOSX in the same time period. Same with the number of unpatched security flaws that have a critical rating.

Recently I tried Ubuntu for something new and having spent professional time on various *nix servers I was appalled at how buggy feisty fawn indeed is in comparison to Vista. The Linux kernel is great but the remaining other software to make it a polished desktop OS simply isnt mature. Unlike the *nix zealots, atleast the MacOSX zealots who try to rubbish MS have a good desktop OS to compare too - it has taken the strengths of *nix and polished it into a nice user experience. MacOSX is good. The problem is the limited hardware it can run on from the closed sales model that Apple have with it.
well, vista has less security patches coz major security problems CANT be patched. The OS should be rewritten ground up (infact Vienna will replace Vista after just 2 years) to fix the major issues.
also on OS software, you can read the source and spot problems, while you cant on "closed" source ones...
Also dont forget the UAC is the same thing *nix had from the beginning... that's quite a few years ago...
for what concerns linux, i dont think ubuntu is the right choice to evaluate the GNU/Linux OSes maturity.
get a more "commercial" distro, like suse, slackware or redhat... they have a "commercial" support team as M$ has...
however since this thread is about memory consumption, i'd like to add OSX and AXGL have both a better graphical interfaces than vista and they eat up much less memory. They also work with non PS2.0 video cards... something required by Vista to use Aero.

[Bathrone]

Thanks mate I'll check out suse I think. Even basic things in Ubuntu like configuring the refresh rate of my monitor turned into an hour long exercise of manually exiting the x conf file with arcane entries that I had to research online on horizontal and vertical frequencies that only ended in X not booting afterwards. In Vista PNP detects my monitors capabilities and I can nicely choose my refresh rate in a simple drop down list.

Anyway the argument that says Vista has less patches on security because it strangely somehow cannot be patched is a false one. If you look at securina or other websites that audit these things you will see the number of unpatched security issues is actually less than many alternative OS's.

The argument that says open source is inherently more secure to closed source is an argument which is not supported by audits. If you actually compare the numbers it proves that claim false.

I'm not a Vista zealot, I use other OS's professionally and at home. The reality is though that many people like to belittle MS and arent fair in what their criticisms are. Vista has faults, but the arguments your presenting are not real ones.

[JohnnyMalaria]

well, look at the number of fixes in Vista SP1 ... oh wait... SP1 is not even final and Vista is less than 1 year old...
my thought is Vista was released as an unfinished product. people struggled with its bugs and even after applying the SP1 there will still be tons of bugs...

Rant, rant, rant.

You started this thread asking "Microsoft Windows Vista: How much memory is enough?"

Almost immediately, you turned it into yet another anti-Vista, anti-MS, pro-Linux temper tantrum. As might be expected.

To answer your original question:

I found 1GB adequate for Vista Ultimate 32-bit. My main use: software development using Visual Studio .NET 2005.

However, trying to run VS and one instance of Virtual PC 2007put it slightly over the edge (by about 50MB). So I changed to 2GB (for very little money in the scheme of things) and now it hums, even when VS is running along with two Virtual PCs (an XP Pro and a Vista Ultimate).

Yep, Vista Ultimate and XP Pro running simultaneously on Vista Ultimate without any performance issues at 2GB.

What do I think of Vista? I'm not going to say because it isn't germane to the topic.

[salehin]

I was wondering apart from nice outlook, if there is any other net advantage of choosing Vista over XP. My limited use (housemate's laptop) tells me it's just marginal

[JohnnyMalaria]

I was wondering apart from nice outlook, if there is any other net advantage of choosing Vista over XP. My limited use (housemate's laptop) tells me it's just marginal

At the moment, not really.

[Sagekilla]

On the note of Vista, apparently M$ is planning on releasing new OS's more frequently, with the next one targeted for 2010 It think. I read it in article, I think it was in my latest issue of Maximum PC; the article goes on to say how M$ is going to make Windows go to an almost "year subscription based OS." This annoys me to no end if they have the gall to actually do this. If they ever follow up on this idea, I can see Windows XP being used for a very long time even if M$ stops supporting it. I know I'll still be using it, unless one of the new "yearly" OS' has features I "need."

Plus, I don't even see how they're going to be able to pull off a frequent update platform when they had trouble even developing Vista -- which, in my opinion, has relatively few USEFUL improvements for the average user -- in a timely fashion. It's going to take a hell of a lot of effort out of M$ to create a "new and improved" OS that's worth upgrading to on a more frequent basis.

[JohnnyMalaria]

On the note of Vista, apparently M$ is planning on releasing new OS's more frequently, with the next one targeted for 2010 It think.

With the notable exception of Vista, this has always been the case - if not more frequently.

Win3.1 - April 1992
WfW3.11 - November 1993
Win95 - August 1995
Win98 - June 1998
Win2K - February 2000
WinMe - September 2000
WinXP - October 2001
WinXP MCE 2003 - December 2003
WinXP MCE 2005 - October 2004
WinXP Pro x64 - April 2005
Vista - November 2006/January 2007

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Windows_Family_Tree.png

Full history at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows

[Taktaal]

It seems that a large part why Windows sucks so much is the laziness and incompetence of driver developers. Nvidia can't figure out how to write a graphics driver that properly works with 3GB+ main memory, and nobody has written an AHCI driver yet that isn't a horrible piece of ****.
And we haven't even started looking at 64 bit issues yet!

As things look right now, it might take until 2010 to make Vista64 as usable as XP32, and that's gonna put a large dent in Moore's law when nobody can upgrade their workstations past 2GB memory :(

[Sagekilla]

Indeed it hasn't always been the case, but the point is that in the mainstream consumer market there really has been little improvement. From Windows XP to Vista, with Media Center in between, there really was nothing added in to Vista or MC that I can't do with free software. Granted there was the 64-bit edition released in there that you simply cannot reproduce without buying that edition, but that isn't exactly "mainstream" either.

My point was that for the consumer running a regular computer, not the professionals using multi-gigabytes of RAM and more then one CPU socket, there really was very little improvement from XP to Vista. I have tried the latest Media Center as well as Vista and I found both to be subpar. At least with vista there's some hope of it improving somewhat since it's very young. If I recall XP had it's own share of troubles when it first came out.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Indeed it hasn't always been the case, but the point is that in the mainstream consumer market there really has been little improvement. From Windows XP to Vista, with Media Center in between, there really was nothing added in to Vista or MC that I can't do with free software. Granted there was the 64-bit edition released in there that you simply cannot reproduce without buying that edition, but that isn't exactly "mainstream" either.

My point was that for the consumer running a regular computer, not the professionals using multi-gigabytes of RAM and more then one CPU socket, there really was very little improvement from XP to Vista. I have tried the latest Media Center as well as Vista and I found both to be subpar. At least with vista there's some hope of it improving somewhat since it's very young. If I recall XP had it's own share of troubles when it first came out.

Yet.

There are new features embedded into Vista at a fundamental level that will gradually be used by new applications which will only run on Vista (or higher).

When Win95 came out (the first truly 32-bit consumer Windows), there was hardly any 32-bit software except for Win32s stuff for Win3.1. To most people at that time, Win95 simply offered a new GUI.....I remember buying it in August 1995 only to find that my 16-bit video capture card wouldn't work. MS refunded my money :eek:

[Bathrone]

I was wondering apart from nice outlook, if there is any other net advantage of choosing Vista over XP. My limited use (housemate's laptop) tells me it's just marginal

The biggest advantage is substantially better security. The new search method is better.

DX10 probably doesnt matter to you.There is slightly better time to boot and better use of memory by the kernel.

The mobile features make it easier to synch your laptop and do all the common laptop things but this in my view is an evolution rather than a massive new benefit. The benefits to imaging and managing builds wont matter to you cos your not a company.

I dont see MS getting into yearly OS releases at all. The business market simply would not deal with it. MS wont do that. There is over 55 million lines of code in Vista. Even with thousands of devs in their teams they just arent going to be releasing new OS's in any quick fashion.

[Inventive Software]

Vista may have better use of memory, but it still uses about twice as much on average than XP!

[Bathrone]

I encourage you to explore more deeply where that memory is actually being used.....by what processes.

People are too used to seeing the XP style kernel wasting free ram and having it unused. Then they see Vista with like 1mb free and they have a panic. Whats really happening is that Vista is far better at caching and has a smart algorithm that actually understands what your computer usage patterns are and sets things ups to best suit that.

Vista works in 1GB and I ran that config for some months during CTPs and beta.

[Waleska]

Vista performs slower than XP on any memory amount, yet it doesn't seem to offer one worth-noting advantage over the former except for the eye candy, which I don't care for.

[Sharktooth]

exactly. the "improved security" is BS. Blue pill style rootkits still work even with beta SP1. this is an UNPATCHED MAJOR SECURITY ISSUE. the MS One Care is useless since the antivirus is crappy, the antispyware is crappy... etc.
All that stuff eats memory and performance while the average joe just havent a clue on whats happening and why his PC is so freaking slow.
Caching sux too! Coz those algos eat CPU cycles and gamers cant get the same performance in videogames as they get in XP.
Vista is a POC that hogs your system just to show you a nice but much more complicated user interface that need tons of clicks to get in places where you could get there with two clicks in XP... Should i continue?

We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP.
and to sum it up:
Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP.
100% eye candy, 0% good stuff. That's what Vista is.
The name says it all...

[Bathrone]

Sharktooth present a real argument and will you have a point. You dont apply rational thinking to points being made. You claim illogical things that are not supported by metrics. Your so far out on the lunatic fringe your now trying to assert that products such as OneCare, which isnt even part of a Vista build, somehow relate to your debate on Vista. There is a number of 800+ page books on the additional security found in Vista. Qualified security experts, some of which are known to dislike MS greatly, have acknowledged the substantially better security in Vista compared to any OS MS ever released. Until you present a proper argument all your contributing is Linux evangalistic noise. Linux, which the top three distros as a matter of fact has more unpatched and patched security issues than Vista not to even begin to consider the poor device support and poor user friendliness. At the end of the day you can put out as much nonsense as you like, but the reality is Linux stands to have an OS market share on the web of about 0.77%. Next to the great majority of desktops running Windows.

Waleska you claim no performance benefit. Yet, we see Vista booting faster than XP. And Vista being faster in memory benchmarks to name two examples. The additional security you ignore, all with all the other features. Just because Aero is all a simplistic user see's, does not mean thats the extent of the changes.

[Inventive Software]

Vista may well boot faster than XP, but how much stuff does it load in the background immediately after giving you a desktop? I could almost guarantee there's disk activity as Vista loads more of it's bloat that most people won't need.

[Sharktooth]

what i presented are all valid arguments and the source i quoted was tom's hardware.
Your so far out on the lunatic fringe your now trying to assert that products such as OneCare, which isnt even part of a Vista build, somehow relate to your debate on Vista
yes coz it comes with Vista! and it is also vulnerable!
im pleased you have the usual "Micro$oft defender at all the cost" attitute that can be spotted on every microsoft fanboy but let me tell you one thing: read more, get more informed and dont look only at one side...
everyone has preferences but you're ridiculous.
im sick of all this and to hear BS. so im off. keep living with your ignorance.
when you have something to prove Vista is better than XP coz it's PERFORMING better and it's effectively more SECURE, then you're welcome. otherwise keep your mumbo jumbo for yourself.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Most benchmarks comparing Vista and XP *fail to turn off Aero". Just open Task Manager and see how much CPU time dwm.exe uses. Often, it is between 5 and 10%. The more going on on the display, the more it uses.

I've ran multiple benchmarks of CPU and graphics intensive software and XP, Vista and XP Pro x64. Without Aero, XP and Vista are indistinguishable and x64 is slightly slower. With Aero, Vista is slower.

I'm a highly qualified and experienced scientist, I design and execute experiments all the time and then disseminate the findings in peer-reviewed journals. Present to me a scientifically sound experiment and results and maybe, just maybe, I'll pay attention to some of the anti-Vista tantrums that plague this place. Don't just run a couple of applications and come back with stupid qualitative statements or numbers that aren't substantiated by details, details, details of the methods employed.

The extra 10% that it takes an out-of-the-box Vista configuration to run is:

1. "So what?!!" - if you're running overnight (very common), it might mean an extra 15 to 20 mins. Just enjoy the option sit on the toilet longer in the morning
2. About the same amount of time spent ranting and raving about it
3. Avoidable by knowing how to optimize Vista and optimizing platforms is something nearly everyone here does

OK, I feel better now.

[Sharktooth]

not everyone knows how to optimize his system expecially the average joe. even computer experts may want to spend their time in tasks other than spending hours optimizing their OS... consider also tweaking XP and Vista is a whole different story.
the only reasons the average joe would buy Vista are the nice interface and DX10. If you turn off the nice interface (Aero) you're loosing 50% of the fun...
You may ask "what about security?" and my answer is "security is a joke in vista":
Unfortunately, UAC is not perfect. On her blog, Joanna Rutkowska details several flaws in Vista's UAC implementation that are potentially exploitable. For example, software installers are always allowed to run with full administrative privilege, just like in old-fashioned Windows. In addition, Symantec security analyst Ollie Whitehouse points out that Vista ships with executables that can be used to compromise UAC.
Microsoft has added numerous other features to Windows Vista besides UAC, many of which are intended to increase the overall security of the OS. But upon closer examination these add-ons are only marginal improvements over previous versions of Windows.
... In other words, Vista’s firewall won’t provide significantly more protection than the one included in XP SP2 without manual configuration.
A new program called Windows Defender adds anti-malware capabilities to Windows, but it’s primarily consumer-focused and so far does not seem to be up to par with the major aftermarket options already available for XP. According to competing anti-malware vendor Webroot, Windows Defender misses the vast majority of spyware. Worse, in February Windows Defender was shown to actually be a vector for attack on Vista, with the disclosure of an exploitable bug in Microsoft’s malware detection engine. Similarly, while Vista includes a new hard drive encryption feature called BitLocker, it is not enabled by default, and whether it offers any real protection against advanced computer forensics techniques is questionable.
and so on...
however the principal fact is there are oustanding differencies in how XP and Vista (out of the box) are performing.
Vista ultimate x64 is the ultimate sucker and hogger...
Vista includes all the fancy add-ons (one care, UAC...) that should make Vista secure.
But as we seen (and proved) Vista is a "hey! nice try!" at security but not enough at all, while filled with tools (i just like to call them crap) that compromise the performance (by rising memory usage and eating CPU cycles) and some of them, paradoxally, even security.

[deets]

as a regular user of vista i can say its more like XP+ but cost more to get it to run at the same sort of speeds as XP.

I do wonder if the old thing applies, the more someone pays for a product, the more they need to defend it to appease their crazy purchasing decisions.

im neither pro or against MS. I have vista 64 and i do struggle to work out what benefit this gives me over my old xp 32 bit, apart from having to pay out for twice and much ram to get it to run smoothly :p

sorry if thats not scientific enough :p

[Surf]

I am chiming in with a slight off-topic pipe dream....

Remember the ramdrive back in DOS? How about a wizard utilize the remaining 512mb off the 4gib rig?

[JohnnyMalaria]

I have vista 64 and i do struggle to work out what benefit this gives me over my old xp 32 bit, apart from having to pay out for twice and much ram to get it to run smoothly :p

Right now, not much. The benefits of Vista 64-bit will come when 64-bit software becomes more available. People will argue that XP Pro x64 would be better but, for most users, it isn't readily available.

sorry if thats not scientific enough :p

np - you're not spouting the odds about this, that and the other as if it were absolutely gospel :)

[foxyshadis]

Er, Sharktooth, OneCare doesn't come with Vista at all, it's as much a retail product as Office is, and it's made for both XP and Vista.

I am chiming in with a slight off-topic pipe dream....

Remember the ramdrive back in DOS? How about a wizard utilize the remaining 512mb off the 4gib rig?

It's not that the memory is unavailable to Windows, but that it's simply not physically addressable at all under a 32-bit OS. When you try to access it, the BIOS will give you something like video card memory, the network card cache, chunks of the chipset, or whatever else happens to be mapped into the upper area. Making that a ramdrive wouldn't change that. In 64-bit mode none of this is the case, of course.

There are plenty of ramdrive products on the market if you do want one, though the performance benefits are very small except in specific situations.

[Sharktooth]

IIRC vista ultimate comes with windows defender, firewall, etc...

[Shinigami-Sama]

It's not that the memory is unavailable to Windows, but that it's simply not physically addressable at all under a 32-bit OS. When you try to access it, the BIOS will give you something like video card memory, the network card cache, chunks of the chipset, or whatever else happens to be mapped into the upper area. Making that a ramdrive wouldn't change that. In 64-bit mode none of this is the case, of course.

There are plenty of ramdrive products on the market if you do want one, though the performance benefits are very small except in specific situations.

I had always thought that was on different memory buses not on the primary memory bus
thats what we learned for A+
o.O

[Sharktooth]

well that was BS... :)
peripherals are mapped into ram for fast access. win32 (and not the BIOS) reserves the "high" area (over 3.25Gb) for that purpouse.

[Waleska]

Waleska you claim no performance benefit. Yet, we see Vista booting faster than XP. And Vista being faster in memory benchmarks to name two examples

"We see"?, sorry but I don't. Do show the benchmarks.

The additional security you ignore, all with all the other features. Just because Aero is all a simplistic user see's, does not mean thats the extent of the changes.

I'm not the kind of person who trusts her own security to the same people who brought us netbios. I use third party software for such purpose.

Aero is barely just a candywrapper, an unjustifiedly resource-hungry and poorly optimized (just like the rest of the OS) candywrapper that looks like arse. My XP desktop bears less fanciness than a glass teletype yet this doesn't cripple it's fucntionality whatsoever. Makes me wonder what would remain of Vista without the GUI...pretty much nothing.

Reliability and even usability in operative systems take YEARS of crash 'n' burn development after the initial release, and Vista certainly isn't the exception.

[mpucoder]

"I'm not the kind of person who trusts her own security to the same people who brought us netbios.

Like many things in Windows and other Microsoft products, Netbios was "assimilated", here is the history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBIOS#History)

[outsiders71]

A lot of M$/Vista bashing going on here. I've been a Vista 32bit user since the day it was released. Before that I used XP, 2000, 98ME/SE, and yes... 95.

Anyways there's always going to be haters of M$ products and that's fine. As a gamer however I cannot depend on Apple or Linux to meet my needs and therefore do not bother with them. My rig is sadly outdated, near 4 years old (nforce2 mobo, AMD 2800, 1gig ram). Vista handles my games the same way XP did, I have not seen any degradation in frame rates or performance. I will note that I did have some hardware incompatibilities but that's due to old hardware. If you like XP and your hardware is compatible with Vista (M$ has a hardware compatibility checker), there's no reason not to upgrade to Vista. I will never look back to XP.

As a M$ user it is common sense that their products are going to be under attack more frequently. Their products are used more and therefore are targeted more. If you are so worried about security, you shouldn't rely solely on the OS to protect you. Get a virus scanner, setup a firewall (software or hardware), and encrypt any important files. It's not that hard really, and the threat is definitely not worth installing an inferior operating system such as Linux.

[foxyshadis]

Startup speed is sort of a red herring, the speed is really completely dependent on how much junk you install. If you have nothing much, it's always fast. Vista has support for NCQ and disk access prioritization to help, that can make heavily-loaded startups faster, but in the end it all comes down to how much extra you have. I can't do any kind of benchmarks because I have totally different software on my work system's Vista partition (and I still don't use it that often, I hate transferring settings and reinstalling things).

[Bathrone]

Foxyshadis the startup in Vista is very different to XP. For example Vista uses a technology like ramdisc during the startup.

To the others that are calling Vista bloated I think it depends on what bloat actually is. If your talking about the search indexer process running at idle cpu times to make searching better I think thats good. If your talking about the smart caching Vista has that actually develops a model of your computer use patterns and optimally configures caching for those I think think thats good too.

If you dont like it, turn it off.

Because Vista is a GUI OS its simple to do things. Try using Linux! In no time you'll be hassled with arcane sudo terminal commands and manually editing conf files that otherwise would be simple and easy.

[deets]

there is always MS bashing of some sort. Wouldn't it be nice if each situation could be judged on its own merit, no agenda to prove. thats one of the reasons i dislike some of the pro apple brigade, its a corporation your in love with, have some self respect!

As for vista, i actually think its a good OS in its own right. It works well, has a modern look and feel and does improve on a lot of things.

saying that, its not a big leap from XP, which is also a good OS. My thinking also includes the price, for OEM or systems that include it, its fine, do not go get the boxed version if you use XP unless your very rich.

Vista also had a lot of bugs to work through using the consumer as a test bed, bad news, but sort of expected with so much code. This and the lower spec of machines when launched has led to a larger than deserved negative response for vista i feel. I know some folk who have it on laptops and understandably its a nightmare.

In six months 2gb of ram will be the norm (if not more) on most dekstop PC's and home builders can already pick it up quite cheaply. Graphics cards are coming down in price as nvidia and ATI push their top spec cards, so a aero vista card will be very cheap very soon, if not already.

Vista is a step forward, just not too sure how big a step that is and in 6 months it will run on most new machines well, maybe turning opinion towards it a little more.

[Sharktooth]

editing some "arcane" text files is much easier than finding arcane keys in the registry...
also, what's difficult in putting a CD or DVD in the unit and reboot? oh right, windows needs to be installed to work...

[JohnnyMalaria]

IIRC vista ultimate comes with windows defender, firewall, etc...

I'm afraid your recollection isn't quite right.

What Ultimate has that Premium doesn't:

Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore
Windows Fax and Scan
Remote Desktop Connection
Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption

I make no judgement on the usefulness or otherwise of these.

See http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx for feature comparisons.

Look at Home Basic - Oh dear!

[Sharktooth]

i meant Vista... dunno why i added ultimate...
however the point is windows defender sux at malware detection and the vista firewall doesnt scan outgoing traffic by default...
so the "added" security is more like a marketing stunt...
you can get better products for free and have a better security level (than the Vista crappy stuff) on XP...

[thearklight]

Jumping at the end of a thread, so don't bash me if i repeat something,

but I got my Vista from a certain
manufacturer where you can turn
all that fancy aero stuff off.
Everything to the BARE MINIMUM needed.

I had to do this because my computer
started to slowly grind to a halt.

And guess what. It's still slower than XP.
And on an older machine! and that's with
over a gig of RAM.

Plus you will need a even
a cheap GAMERS graphics
Card to run it well even
if you are not a gamer.

this was not what I expected
when I got a brand new machine.

Oh yes, now my Scanner
don't work because they
are not supported under
VISTA something microsoft
and the retailer forgot to
print or verbally advise me.
And no, the manufacturers
(HP) are not planning on
creating driver support
for these machines under Vista.

so plan on buying new pheripherals
if you have old ones.

Heri.

[outsiders71]

i meant Vista... dunno why i added ultimate...
however the point is windows defender sux at malware detection and the vista firewall doesnt scan outgoing traffic by default...
so the "added" security is more like a marketing stunt...
you can get better products for free and have a better security level (than the Vista crappy stuff) on XP...

What forces you to ONLY depend on windows defender and windows firewall? Only a novice computer user who doesn't care about their security would depend on these alone. I think these programs are better than having nothing, and the fact they are installed with the OS makes it easier on you. However I choose not to use them because I use alternatives. It's the same with IE, Outlook and WMP. You are not forced to solely use that software, there are free alternatives. Next your going to complain that the calculator tool that Vista comes with is inferior to X and therefore Vista blows.

[Carpo]

1gb of ram is not enough for vista - having tested it out i found that it was using 400meg plus and that was after a fresh install, even turning off the services i knew what was what (how many new services does vista have and which do you need) i managed to get it down by about 30meg and turning off areo saved anouther 25meg+.

maybe when sp1 comes out they may very well fix many of the issues ppl have been having - one example i can give is that a so called critical update i installed trashed vista, and looking on ms site even says they are aware under certain instances that can happen and a re-install is required!!!

over all once you get past the eye candy its really just win2k3 server with a few areas re-writen. like most things some ppl have no problems with it - some ppl do, it just needs a little bit more time and patches/updates to make it stable/usable.

still any os that requires more than 1gb of mem is a bit much, then again bill did say once that he couldnt see ppl needing more than 640K of mem ;)

[outsiders71]

1gb of ram is not enough for vista - having tested it out i found that it was using 400meg plus and that was after a fresh install, even turning off the services i knew what was what (how many new services does vista have and which do you need) i managed to get it down by about 30meg and turning off areo saved anouther 25meg+.

maybe when sp1 comes out they may very well fix many of the issues ppl have been having - one example i can give is that a so called critical update i installed trashed vista, and looking on ms site even says they are aware under certain instances that can happen and a re-install is required!!!

over all once you get past the eye candy its really just win2k3 server with a few areas re-writen. like most things some ppl have no problems with it - some ppl do, it just needs a little bit more time and patches/updates to make it stable/usable.

still any os that requires more than 1gb of mem is a bit much, then again bill did say once that he couldnt see ppl needing more than 640K of mem ;)

You don't need 1 gig of ram to run or install Vista. You need 1 gig of ram to use Aero. Also it doesn't matter how many services you disable or turn off, Vista will delegate all the free memory to programs currently in use.

[Carpo]

i never said you need 1gb just to install i said you need 1gb plus when using vista, like i do in xp i turn off services i do not require and/or need - by doing thise you do recovery mem used, in vista there are many more that are rather cryptic in their descriptions and god forbid you turn of the wrong service then vista goes mental, as from what i have seen a lot of them depend on each other.

still im not bashing vista im just saying that on the hardware i have here its not stable or in a usable state - as with many things mileage will vary :)

[foxyshadis]

Oh yes, now my Scanner
don't work because they
are not supported under
VISTA something microsoft
and the retailer forgot to
print or verbally advise me.
And no, the manufacturers
(HP) are not planning on
creating driver support
for these machines under Vista.

That's because HP has gone from one of the most respected to the absolute least respected global IT company. Buy from a company that doesn't base their business model around making you buy again every time you upgrade, or planned obsolescence even if you don't.

[Shinigami-Sama]

thats also the same reason many companies still have a win2k print server
the drivers have issues with 2k3
but they do make good equipment if you get the older models but they really are slipping..

[Sharktooth]

just for comparison check those youtube videos about the compiz fusion (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=compiz+fusion&search=Search) or beryl (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=axgl&search=Search) capabilities on linux in conjunction with A/XGL:
as a sidenote i have it running and working perfectly smooth on an Athlon 800 (the Slot A version!) with a Radeon 7000 (a super crappy PS 1.0 video card with ridiculous 3D acceleration) and 256MB of RAM...
i still wonder why Vista needs a PS2.0 card, 1GB of ram and a modern CPU to have Aero enabled...

[Shinigami-Sama]

I had XGL and compiz-fusion running my compaq laptop
autodected and configured everything, had all the effects cranked and still worked fine
even in the live enviroment
this laptop only has one gig of memory as well, and a radeon 200m mobile videocard

[OvejaNegra]

A few comments as a network administrator in a country where MSoft is 80% and linux the other 20% and there are MANY people using very old computers (like 486dx2, pentium 200MHz MMX, pentium2 450MHz and doing some magic with old servers and old cumputers:
-ALL the big projects has bugs (like X264)
-MSoft is ALWAYS attacked and linux NOT
-ALL the operative systems has scurity holes, usually the time heals those holes
-The hardware is improving with the time, so the software MUST improve too (and of course EAT that hardware):
X264 is a VERY nice work but it needs a faster cpu.
BUT if you have a 800MHz CPU, XVID will be your friend, you CANNOT switch.
The games with pixel shader 2/3 and textures of 1024X1024 look nice, but you need a lot of ram and a capable card if you wanna play.
The newer (even if it's linux) will need more hardware, of course, linux is more conservative but still needs more with the time.

Sharktooth: There are A LOT of lies about windows security floating in internet (i'm talking as a person who check those lies). AND YES, there are some REAL security holes that are not in the news, but they are always fixed in the updates. Please don't believe all you read about windows/linux. Linux fans defend linux, windows fans defend windows. Windows haters ******* windows. Linux haters ******* X2 linux.


Everybody:
My opinion?
"The best software is the software that resolves your problems"

You like games? Maybe you need windows
You like free sofware? Maybe you need linux
You like Audio / Video edition + nice working enviroment and some other things i like? Maybe you need APPLE+MAC

You like security: You need the system better support (the fixes are released faster)

You have old computer? W95/older linux
You want DVD/HDDVD/BD SUPER authoring -> Scenarist
" " all this but you are not avanced user -> dvd architect or something like that.

YOUR personal NEEDS make something usable for you.

PAL may look better but i live in NTSC area
You like the grain remover filters but i'm anime encoder, so i don't need them.

Just my opinion
sorry for the english
PD: PLEASE ask about security questions to some one related, there are a lot of myths over there

I have a Celeron 1.2 GHZ with 500MB ram and 70 GB in a broken disk (with some damaged clusters) and an aTI rage 128 /32MB DX7 card.

I have WXP pro and i DON't have problems with memory, but i don't do hard work i my computer like encoding or gamin. It's enough for me
Thanks
Don't fight

[Bathrone]

I actually like Compiz Fusion. One of the many things I dislike about *nix has been the lack of eye candy.

Believe me, I had attempted to get into *nix (just like the macbook pro our family has Im no windows zealot) and like many things I encountered with *nix, Compiz fusion did not work. Hours spent on forums trying to get help resulted in wasted time and basically the statement to drop ati and buy an Nvidia graphics card. This, ontop of other experiences I have had with various *nix distros always ends up with me deleting the partitions and sticking with Windows, which actually works and has good device support.

*nix just plain isnt reliable enough. If its not for all the bugs, you then get hit with poor device support and no native directx for gaming. Have a look at the review a bloke did recently on Ubuntu feisty and his laptop. Mark Shuttleworth even admitted that it wasnt ready for mainstream when the journalist spoke to Mark about this review. The *nix fanbois can sook all they want but the basic truth is is just plain buggy.

I would much prefer to pay nothing for my operating system but the basic fact is *nix is not a viable alternative desktop OS right now.

[communist]

*nix just plain isnt reliable enough. If its not for all the bugs, you then get hit with poor device support and no native directx for gaming.
The *nix fanbois can sook all they want but the basic truth is is just plain buggy.

Haha... please go troll somewhere else.

[Bathrone]

Communist try to get yourself some rational thinking skills. I do not expect you to unilaterally agree with my argument, but in order to have any quality from your arguments you need atleast to address my position. To say I'm trolling because you don't agree with my point of view is really just childish.

[Hard Core Rikki]

Linux is never criticized? Seems you missed the Novell and Xandros mud throwing parties ;)

Any party that tries to enforce its own shady agendas despite reluctance from the public, is likely to be criticed and opposed. Linux mostly isn't criticized *specifically* because much of it is the very product of the public's desires and expectations. You cant enforce anything on people that can just vote with their feet and build better cities elsewhere ;) . A nice enough example would be the demise of XFree.


There is no "native DirectX for gaming" on Linux anyway. The main issue lies within imperfect graphic drivers. The rest can safely be assumed to be copyprotection issues (as with rootkit-protected games, like Lineage2, which used to work when there was no GameGuard). That concern is easy to dismiss since Cedega provides a convenient solution to that.

Linux might not always have the latest hardware supported, but a community of hobbyist can only do so much, in the absence of documentation and open specs.


Back on topic, Vista really is a memory hog. Quite too sluggyish, especially given XP's superior performance on similar hardware. Unless SP1 corrects these flaws significantly, *without* creating new one (privacy-centered for example), it just doesnt feel worth the hassle to "downgrade" to Vista ;)
PCLinuxOS and Ubuntu seem wiser choices. Why complain?

[communist]

Communist try to get yourself some rational thinking skills. I do not expect you to unilaterally agree with my argument, but in order to have any quality from your arguments you need atleast to address my position. To say I'm trolling because you don't agree with my point of view is really just childish.
You asserted that *nix is plain buggy - which is plain wrong. That it is not reliable - again wrong. It has no native DirectX support - a rather laughable argument considering MS only offers DX for Windows. You also point out that you've been advised to go with nvidia rather than ati - you know why? Because the ati linux drivers are just crap compared to nvidia's.

If *nix was plain buggy and unreliable why would so much people use it on very expensive hardware?
http://www.top500.org/stats/list/29/os
Just until recently Windows was not even on this list. I dont think I need to mention uptimes and other stuff like security model etc.

The only real point you raise is the poor device support - which is correct and the result of device manufacturers simply not providing drivers for *nix based system let alone specs so free drivers could be written.
If calling *nix plain buggy isn't a flame bait post then I dont know better.

[Bathrone]

Its good that you have enthusiasm for your chosen OS. You are however attempting a straw man argument, which is illogical. My argument is about desktops, where I said "basic fact is *nix is not a viable alternative desktop OS right now."

Honestly, my experience is that *nix is buggy for my use. I fully appreciate that it is widely used in the server world and in my previous posts I have commented on how I have professionally worked on *nix servers.

I have previously listed the sorts of bugs I have encountered when trying various Linux distros. I know first hand that the distros Ive tried has more bugs than Vista. Why dont you pop on over to Ubuntu's launchpad and:

1. Enter the bug section
2. Do an advanced bug search that doesnt include invalid or already fixed bugs
3. See that Ubuntu currently has 32901 current bugs in the launchpad.
4. I fully appreciate some might be duplicates, yet to be classed as invalid and so forth, but the fact remains there is a very significant number of bugs in Ubuntu.........

As too, the reference I made to the Ubuntu fiesty review. The very review where Mark Shuttleworth admitted that Ubuntu isnt ready for the mainstream. There was some bugs mentioned in this review that I have not personally seen - such as loosing sound after returning from sleep.

Honestly, its great that people like yourself and Sharktooth are enthusiastic about Linux but it really does come across as being lunatic fringe stuff where it's somehow deeply engrained in the *nix fanbois that Linux is wonderful regardless of any realities to the contrary and that MS is the evil empire of assimilation that has wrecked the entire computing industry.

As I said before I would much prefer not to pay for Vista but the fact is there is no realistic alternative for my desktop.

It is a great mistruth to suggest that because servers run *nix, the desktop Linux distros are solid. Desktops have to do more things than servers which typically are designed in depth to be secure and have a minimum operational footprint. Desktops are entirely different.

[communist]

I will not comment on this further as your initial comment did indeed sound rather flamey to me. I simply wanted to point out that saying *nix (=! Ubuntu) is plain buggy is wrong!
Anyway PLEASE do not compare me with Sharktooth ;) - I would never go on such a mindless posting spree about how much Vista is teh suck.
I dual boot between Debian/XP and have no Vista-bashing agende as some people have - just check my posting history ;)

[Sharktooth]

communist, you know, im a nazi so we cant be compared by definition:p

[Sharktooth]

i finally installed vista to prove you it EATS memory and its not just caching it...
vista ultimate just out of the box with sidebar disabled, indexing disabled, no background, etc. , everything disabled (even UAC) except aero AND the opera browser opened since IE eats even more ram...
here we go:
http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/8408/therealshitho1.th.png (http://img108.imageshack.us/my.php?image=therealshitho1.png)
as you can see there is 628MB of cache and 1024-628=396 and this result is the RAM eaten up by the system with ONLY aero enabled.
uhm, i think it's a bit too much, and you?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Out of curiosity, is that 32- or 64-bit? I assume you don't stoop so low as to have integrated graphics(?)
I think there's general consensus that whereas 1GB is comfortable for XP, 2GB are really needed for Vista.

But since RAM is s-o-o-o cheap, I don't really see the problem. Old enough to remember when 8MB needed a second mortgage?

[Sharktooth]

32bit .... however no.. its an AGP videocard (gf6600 with 256MB).
the ram is cheap, the hard drives have limited speed... reading and caching all that stuff means the hard drives and RAM should work hard...

[Sharktooth]

... just to add to the pile...
http://www.tech-hounds.com/article29/ArticlesPage1.html

[InorganicMatter]

i finally installed vista to prove you it EATS memory and its not just caching it...
vista ultimate just out of the box with sidebar disabled, indexing disabled, no background, etc. , everything disabled (even UAC) except aero AND the opera browser opened since IE eats even more ram...
here we go:
http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/8408/therealshitho1.th.png (http://img108.imageshack.us/my.php?image=therealshitho1.png)
as you can see there is 628MB of cache and 1024-628=396 and this result is the RAM eaten up by the system with ONLY aero enabled.
uhm, i think it's a bit too much, and you?

The RAM being eaten is a feature called Superfetch, please read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfetch#SuperFetch
That feature is forced on you in Vista - it cannot be turned off. It is good. It is not bad. You bought all that memory, an OS that finally uses it is a good thing. The memory is not "eaten," and will be freed up and used if needed. Yes, Superfetch requires at least 2GB to perform as good as XP, but that much RAM is standard today, and the performance benefits are well worth it.

I know how much you like to bash Microsoft around here on the principle that they are Microsoft, but please at least come to an internet fight prepared.

[Sharktooth]

think whatever you want but vista eats much more RAM than XP. it's proven by the fact it starts swapping on the HD like a mad with software that was running fine on XP.

[Revgen]

The whole reason I'm thinking about getting a 64-bit OS is to personally be able to use 4 GB of RAM to run in Quad-core with my upcoming QX6850 CPU with filters like MCBOB+NNEDI in 4 separate avisynth processes, which take up loads of RAM. Looks like I'll be using WinXP-64 instead.

[reepa]

"That feature is forced on you in Vista - it cannot be turned off. It is good. It is not bad. You bought all that memory, an OS that finally uses it is a good thing. The memory is not "eaten," and will be freed up and used if needed."

I'm pretty sure every Windows since NT fills unused RAM with disk cache. At least my XP reports ~1,2GB free RAM (1,5GB total physical), but ~1GB "System cache" (which includes disk cache?). That isn't counted towards "Total Commit Charge", which hovers around 280MB with Firefox and Winamp open.

Too bad Windows doesn't let you adjust swap behavior. I tried setting my minimum swap to something low like 32 MB, but Windows complained that it had to increase swap size even though Commit Limit never reached above 500 MB (I have 1,5GB of RAM).

Silly anecdote: I tried out the new Lenovo dual-core Vista PCs at our university's computer labs. Solitaire was basically unplayable because of a very low framerate because hardware acceleration wasn't available.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Too bad Windows doesn't let you adjust swap behavior.

Something must be wrong because you can adjust the swap behavior. Are you changing it just after booting (when not too much is running) or when you have a lot of stuff running that won't fit into the smaller amount of memory you are asking for? If the latter, that's why it might complain (just a guess).

You can change the size and also the disk that the swap file is on. You can even have multiple swap files on multiple disks.

And you can even turn it off completely. If you never exceed your physical RAM capacity, the swap file isn't necessary and you can free up space on the hard drive. Typically, the swap file size is similar to the RAM size.

[Schrade]

While I agree it's generally not a worthwhile upgrade there are a few things I would miss if I went back to XP.

The single biggest one is per-application volume control. For me it is really a godsend. I always have Firefox muted, so now I never have to worry about stupid flash ads or background music annoying the hell out of me.
I'm coming in late to the party but if you really must have per application volume control, there's a shareware application out there that does it for ME/2K/XP/2003:

http://www.indievolume.com/

It's $25.00 but it has a 7 day trial.

[reepa]

Something must be wrong because you can adjust the swap behavior.
By swap behavior I mean something like Linux's "swappiness". Windows will swap stuff out of RAM into the paging file even if you have plenty of free RAM:
http://i17.tinypic.com/681wcn7.png

And you can even turn it off completely. If you never exceed your physical RAM capacity, the swap file isn't necessary and you can free up space on the hard drive.
I know, but I'd like to keep a (small, but expandable) paging file available just in case. For example, the antivirus software I have allocates all of the available RAM for a while during boot for some reason, causing Windows to complain about the lack of a swap file. If I set the swap file to something really small (32 MB for example), Windows will expand it anyway because it wants to pre-emptively swap stuff to disk (like in the picture I linked to). That can't be adjusted.

[deets]

i wonder if all these tests were done before the performance and reliability patches were released, or even if they would make any difference :P

[Sharktooth]

A crappy windows remains a crappy windows... as we seen with previous windows version some critical behaviours and flaws cant be corrected with patches, or at least they dont want to do it and advertize the fixed flaws as a new OS features...
so if vienna will eat less RAM than vista they will advertize it in some funny way like: Vienna uses less RAM, so it will help keeping your hard drive cooler resulting in lower computer case temperature and a new level of energy saving...

[squid_80]

And you can even turn it off completely. If you never exceed your physical RAM capacity, the swap file isn't necessary and you can free up space on the hard drive. Typically, the swap file size is similar to the RAM size.

I wouldn't do that. The common way to share memory between processes is to map a section of the swap file to memory... You can guess what happens if you don't have a swap file.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I wouldn't do that. The common way to share memory between processes is to map a section of the swap file to memory... You can guess what happens if you don't have a swap file.

The sharing of memory between processes uses the same API call that is used to share a common file but the sharing doesn't make use of a file. i.e., calling the CreateFileMapping() API function with a handle of 0xFFFFFFFF instructs the OS to use an area of system memory rather than an actual file. Though the shared area is "backed by the operating-system page file", where possible the shared area remains in physical memory. i.e., a paging file isn't required for the mapping to work correctly.

An upcoming new version of one of our programs makes use of this to share DV frames between processes as quickly as possible. I haven't had any issues on a system with no paging file.

There are plenty of folks running Windows happily without a paging file:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000422.html
http://agileprogrammer.com/geeknoise/archive/2005/10/16/8673.aspx

I'm curious to know if you have experienced any problems running without a paging file?

[Manao]

if you have experienced any problems running without a paging file?IIRC, Photoshop is ( was? ) requiring a paging file in order to run. It might not be the only software to specifically require a paging file.

[Shinigami-Sama]

IIRC, Photoshop is ( was? ) requiring a paging file in order to run. It might not be the only software to specifically require a paging file.

gimp does as well, well a swap folder atleast

[Sharktooth]

For XP:

1- Set the swap space to custom.
2 - Ensure you have both the swap Initial size space and Maximum size space set to at least the amount of RAM you have (or multiple of it)
3 - Use MSConfig to edit system.ini
Under the 386Enh section add:
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
4 - Reboot
5 - Use PageDefrag (sysinternals) regularly

[squid_80]

That only affects 98, not XP.

[Sharktooth]

right, 3 doesnt apply to XP...
however there are some other memory management tweaks in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\

Disable Paging Executive:
XP pages data from RAM memory to the hard drive. We can stop this happening and keep more data in RAM, resulting in better performance. Users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this setting. The setting we change to disable the ’Paging Executive’, is DisablePagingExecutive. Changing the value of this key from 0 to 1 will de-activate memory paging.

System Cache Boost:
Changing the value of the key LargeSystemCache from 0 to 1 will tell XP to allocate all but 4MB of system memory to the file system cache, allowing the XP Kernel to run in memory. The 4MB of memory left is used for disk caching, if more is needed, XP allocates more. Generally, this tweak improves performance by a fair bit but can, in some intensive applications, degrade performance. As with the previous tweak, you should have at least 256MB of RAM before attempting to enable LargeSystemCache.

Input/Output Performance:
This improves performance of large file transfers. If this entry does not appear in the registry, you will have to create a REG_DWORD value called IoPageLockLimit. The data for this value is in number of bytes, and defaults to Zero which equates to 512KB on machines that have the value. Most people using this tweak have found maximum performance in the 8 to 16 megabyte range, so you will have to play around with the value to find the best performance. The value is measured in bytes, so if you want, 12MB allocated, it’s 12 * 1024 * 1024, or 12582912. As with all these memory tweaks, you should only use this if you have 256MB or more of RAM.

also Windows does not unload dll files a program has used after it has been closed, to speed up a possible restart of the program.

Use Regedit to edit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer Add the DWORD value named: AlwaysUnloadDLL and set it to 1

however here's a collection of free tweaking tools for Windows OSes: http://mztweak.bravehost.com/index.html

[JohnnyMalaria]

Disable Paging Executive:
XP pages data from RAM memory to the hard drive. We can stop this happening and keep more data in RAM, resulting in better performance. Users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this setting. The setting we change to disable the ’Paging Executive’, is DisablePagingExecutive. Changing the value of this key from 0 to 1 will de-activate memory paging.

You can do this from the desktop, too. No need to use the registry directly.

My Computer/Properties/Advanced/Performance/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change....

[foxyshadis]

AlwaysUnloadDLL is a fake-out, it does nothing on 2000 and up. DLLs are always unloaded 10 minutes after close. (The vast majority of 'tweaks' online are taken on faith like that. Most actually do something, usually for good, but you could invent one out of whole cloth and say it's for Vista and probably get a fair number of tinkerers swearing by it by the end of the year.)

[JohnnyMalaria]

I'm going to get a giant size one of these and wrap it around my computer...

http://www.qbracelet.com/