Dudes, memory management is a little more advanced nowadays than back in the MS-DOS days.

Long video about Vista performance

Quote from arco :

Dudes, memory management is a little more advanced nowadays than back in the MS-DOS days.

Long video about Vista performance

And still today, when I calculate that memory usage goes past 1GB HDD starts buzzing and Vista becomes slow. Oh yes, machine has 1GB of ram...

Only way to get better performance is to do lighter software, no matter how 'advanced' memory management it would have and no matter how fancy words they are using, that is fact that stays from MS-DOS days and that will stay long after Vista too, in no way it is possible to make software performing better in limited space by increasing it size

holy shit! someone knows what "SuperFetch" is! wooh!

everyone is complaining about "oh my god 800mb ram after startup! OH MY FU**IN GOD!! DAMN VISTA!", but vista is finally USING the RAM!

"free RAM is bad RAM"!



if someone is complaining about the needed hdd-space... dont install Vista Ultimate (:razz and buy a new hdd! it always sounds like "oh my god vista is using 8 of my 200gb!!"

didn't see this mentioned yet

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

"..if you are not severely affected by this problem, we recommend that you wait for the next service pack that contains this hotfix."

The Quick Fix Executable (QFE) will be available for download at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105 on 8/23. Prior to that date, anyone can call PSS referring the KB number (KB940105) and ask for the QFE package which will be made available free of cost to the consumer.

X64 version
X86 version

might be worth the shot if you play a lot of resource demanding games such as stalker

Vista preloads (dedicates ram) to apps you might use sometime during your on time. Sounds dandy til you realise what that software is. 90% is MS junk (media player, IE, etc) and the other 10% is what it gathers from your frequent usage.
I personally don't need my software to load fast...software I use CAN NOT be loaded fast as it's very complex and requires a lot of processing power as well as ram. I just need my software to be able to use as much of my RAM as it needs ONCE I use it. (software in question is Adobe creative suite, 3d Max, LinoColor drum scanner software/module, and other stuff I use for living). My solution for this is OSX.
However, whenever I needed to use XP Pro, I was able to tweak the system to run as I wanted it. Not sure how possible that is with Vista so I can't comment but people that have tried sure don't sound happy.
I'm sure Vista will get better with time but so will Linux. For those like me that need the OS to work right NOW, Vista isn't my cup of Joe.

Quote from gohfeld23 :

Vista preloads (dedicates ram) to apps you might use sometime during your on time. Sounds dandy til you realise what that software is. 90% is MS junk (media player, IE, etc) and the other 10% is what it gathers from your frequent usage.

And where did you read that? Have you ever tried Vista?

*nix kicks Windows ass. I only have 1GB of ram, and I can run httpd, ftpd, sshd, sqld, smbd, gdm, firefox, a few text editor windows to play around in C, Python, or assembly, and still have 200MB of ram left. Debian specifically is the most efficiant OS I've ever used.

mine seems to run at the best health 1377gb left seems like mines and jakg's system runs at top condition btw i have wmp runngng and firefox which is using 140mb ram and kaspersky and ati tray tools and i disabled even more services i didn't need so conserved even more ram

Quote from arco :

And where did you read that? Have you ever tried Vista?

Feel free to enlighten me on how it works and I'll gladly stand corrected. Until then....

Quote from wheel4hummer :

*nix kicks Windows ass. I only have 1GB of ram, and I can run httpd, ftpd, sshd, sqld, smbd, gdm, firefox, a few text editor windows to play around in C, Python, or assembly, and still have 200MB of ram left. Debian specifically is the most efficiant OS I've ever used.

Indeed, Debian has to be by far the most efficient OS in terms of memory and CPU.

Quote from anik360 :

mine seems to run at the best health 1377gb left seems like mines and jakg's system runs at top condition btw i have wmp runngng and firefox which is using 140mb ram and kaspersky and ati tray tools and i disabled even more services i didn't need so conserved even more ram

Your system is using 2.2GB memory, almost 2.3GB and cache is not in these memory usage calculations.

Here is Vista with some optimizations, still quite heavy memory usage (again we ignore cache from memory usage, but still some things we include that) XP manages easily with half of that and at least for me XP so far works faster and Vista does not anything more that I could use.
That is around 0.787GB of ram used. That is roughly double what is used in my very similar specs XP machine and I clearly can see when that goes beyond 1GB, it becomes very sluggish to use, situation what MS has not thought too well happens, systems runs out of ram, then it starts to reduce cache dramatically which results huge slowdowns as Vistas systems are designed so that there is lot of cache available and it has not optimized to load fast without cache function, however realities are that Vista runs out of ram even with 4GB in heavy usage, with 2GB for sure and with 1GB hard to fit Vista into that ram.

Neat features it has that do work in perfect world, but if some program uses more cpu that there is available Vista can't manage CPU load anymore, same with ram, but as long as you have huge amount of extra it does do the job even incredible well. However so would do XP and with lesser hardware and with less hardware problems. There is some HP Laser printers for example that still does not have drivers for Vista...

Quote from gohfeld23 :

Indeed, Debian has to be by far the most efficient OS in terms of memory and CPU.

Was Damn Small Linux (DSL) based to debian? Well anyway I use that + memory stick for some stuff and in machine where Vista is sluggish that Linux is flying. I guess so would be any other Linux. Only problem is that need to use external mouse as touchpad would need some synaptics drivers to work and those do not come with Linux unfortainly.

Quote from anik360 :

mine seems to run at the best health 1377gb left seems like mines and jakg's system runs at top condition btw i have wmp runngng and firefox which is using 140mb ram and kaspersky and ati tray tools and i disabled even more services i didn't need so conserved even more ram

?!?!!?

I want your memory usage

TBH although Vista (and my whole PC) is running great, i'm getting the feeling that's more my PC's doing). I've disabled lots of "unnecesary" services, and with Firefox MSN, and XMPlay running i'm still using 1 GB

EDIT - Are there any "Vista tweaking guides" on the net?

Quote from Jakg :

?!?!!?

I want your memory usage

TBH although Vista (and my whole PC) is running great, i'm getting the feeling that's more my PC's doing). I've disabled lots of "unnecesary" services, and with Firefox MSN, and XMPlay running i'm still using 1 GB

EDIT - Are there any "Vista tweaking guides" on the net?

No, it is not using 1GB, but loads more, that memory usage is not showing you real thing.

What is in paging file is also used memory, total ram - cache - free ram + paging file usage and you start to be closer to reality.

I don't know about guides, but for me, indexing service, ready boost, Ati driver's CCC, and some other things I don't need did free up huge amount of ram for cache, which results OS to work more quickly, there is really not free ram in Vista so you can't really free it, but kind of free it, isn't it very clear? LOL

If you keep looking that used memory, soon you will notice that it can be 800 or 400MB it really does not offer any real useful information as Vista dumps stuff to PF at times and then that reading changes again. So true memory usage is lot different story.

BTW sidebar apps do have serious security issue, in weather and RSS applications, if you use wrong page where to get data for those it is possible to hack your computer or something like that it was.
Isn't it great that Vista is so much more secure than XP?

Quote from Dajmin :

That 900Mb RAM on the desktop comment scared the bejesus out of me. I'm running 2Gb RAM but games like STALKER already use everything they can get their hands on, so I don't really want to upgrade if it's going to cause far lower frame rates.

Just saw this article posted somewhere, thought it might interest you.

In short:

Results in Vista after hotfix is pretty interesting. Quite close to XP, considering Vista is a much bigger system. So not bad imo.

All you guys bashing and trashing Vista, this is exactly what happened when XP was released - "Hell no! I'll never switch, cause it's soooo slow and using all my ram! Win98 forevva!"

I'll admit that I've never been the biggest MS fan. I've mostly been using Linux for like about 15 years to do the serious stuff, and Windows for games. But I have to admit, I don't think Vista is that bad as some say.

Well at least XP did offer some improvements.

Vista might be usable in year or two, when they have realised all silly things and fixed them to be working in sensible manner, that is what they needed to do for some XP functions too.

Some are so blinded by big NEW sign that they refuse to see realities, some are so blinded to see Microsoft sign that they refuse to see realities.

First thing to think is what you need (ignoring completely what different OS offers), then list what and how OS does it and pick one that fits better.

Quote from arco :

All you guys bashing and trashing Vista, this is exactly what happened when XP was released - "Hell no! I'll never switch, cause it's soooo slow and using all my ram! Win98 forevva!"

Honestly, I don't like XP either. I mean, it's functional, it doesn't interrupt me as often as 98 did, but I don't like the way it forces me to work. BeOS had some really nice, innovative features that are now making their way (via ex-Be Inc. employees!) into Mac OS, but Microsoft probably won't be able to make those kinds of improvements to their product because they are so shackled by the need for backwards compatibility. That's the killer IMO - and the reason why any future Windows OS is unlikely to ever provide me with what I want.

Quote from arco :

I'll admit that I've never been the biggest MS fan. I've mostly been using Linux for like about 15 years to do the serious stuff, and Windows for games. But I have to admit, I don't think Vista is that bad as some say.

I just don't see the point in Vista at all. What's it for? When it was called 'Longhorn' and was proposed with an indexed filesystem and other such power features it looked very promising, but then they dropped all that and ultimately after six years of development they released XP 1.01 with added eye candy and bloat. Why would I want that?

Quote from arco :

All you guys bashing and trashing Vista, this is exactly what happened when XP was released - "Hell no! I'll never switch, cause it's soooo slow and using all my ram! Win98 forevva!"

Really? I know when XP was released I couldn't wait to get it, because I had ME at that time. And when I got it I was very impressed by its speed and reliability. For me, it was the first OS which didn't require regular rebooting because it was unstable.
Back when it was released though I guess people were afraid to switch from the Win 9X architecture to the NT architecture.

I'm sure Vista isn't a bad OS, it's just that when you browse through all the benchmarks which compare XP to Vista, XP almost always beats Vista. So why go to Vista when XP is still king? Maybe it's best to wait until MS release some more patches for it, like they did with that Hotfix. I'm certain Vista will be faster than XP in about a year.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I just don't see the point in Vista at all. What's it for? When it was called 'Longhorn' and was proposed with an indexed filesystem and other such power features it looked very promising, but then they dropped all that and ultimately after six years of development they released XP 1.01 with added eye candy and bloat. Why would I want that?

Kev's right. Many features were dropped out of Vista, so in a way it's just like XP with some eye candy, and DirectX 10. Most of that crap I would never use. Video desktop? Probably eats too much memory, and I already have WMP for that. And Sidebar? What's wrong with the clock in the taskbar? Translucent windows? Doesn't help me at all in any way. The only thing which may be useful is the thing which shows what's currently open, and contents of each window (I don't know what it's called).

Comparing ME and XP isn't really fair - 2000 was more stable than XP on release, but XP matured and became a pretty damn good OS. I'm hoping the same will happen to Vista, and as i hate re-installing Operating Systems i seized the chance to install Vista, as i'm sure i'll have to upgrade at some point and tbh i'm starting to realise it's actually more stable!

Well, after ME anyone would be impressed by windows 3.1, it was that bad

If Win98 would stay up longer than 3-4 hours of heavy use and if it would have certain multimedia capabilites and driver support I would use it still today, XP and Vista have not had anything else that helps me than ntfs file system and ability to use it whole day.

Quote from Jakg :

Comparing ME and XP isn't really fair

Actually you can compare them, and the first thing you have to notice is that ME is a successor to 95 while XP is a successor to NT. You can make a side by side comparison and understand - instantly - which OS is losing by design.

This leaves another question open: which OS is better in its implementation, and once again we have to agree that NT - when working - does a better overall job than 95.

Third we have to see which OS can be more easily troubleshooted in case of problems. Once again NT beats 95 blue.

Then we have to think about third party support and developed software. Ten years ago 95 had more application and more third party support for the domestic market, for which 95 was designed.

Then Microsoft decided that XP would have been the product in which both the domestic and the professional market should converge, although in slightly different versions. ME was the last OS to belong to the family of windows 95, and it was crap. 2000, originally aimed at the professional market was considerably better and widely adopted even in the domestic market.

So you may be right saying you can't compare ME to 2000 since they have a completely different internal structure, but years ago you had think about comparing ME to 2000 if you thought about upgrading your PC or buying a new one. You had to make a comparison, and given the amount of support for Windows 98 choosing Windows 2000 should have looked like a hazard, while it was rather the best choice.

But now, luckily, Microsoft has decided we only have to deal with different versions of OSes that share a very similar internal structure. So far, it has been a wise move.

Edit: sorry, the comparison was originally between ME and XP, not 2000. Anyway I can't find so many really important differences in XP and 2000, apart from some differences in management, bells and whistles and some general upkeep.

Longhorn looked damn impressive with all the new ways of doing stuff.
It even looked better then many flavors of *nix as well as then current version of OSX.
However, once they filtered all the potentially good stuff out, vista is what we get.
I HAVE used vista briefly.....6 weeks or so. I have to say it looks very nice.

But here's what I have issues with.
There is an app called desktop X with is an XP to vista morph.....same old code, vista looks and eye candy. And while it uses a large amount of resources to run, it STILL uses less then Vista in it's native form. I know it's not a fair comparison, but if all we get from Vista is eye candy, we might as well emulate it under XP and retain driver and hardware support.
Also, I'm not bashing Vista as I truly wish for a MS OS to become something good (even better then XP Pro). However, until MS starts building an OS for functionality first and eye candy second, we wont see it anytime soon.
BTW, I was one of those people that really liked XP once it came out. It wasn't as good as today but it did beat anything from MS before that (nice balance between NT stability with added eye candy). XP has also become so tweak-able in both looks and feel, that possibilities seem endless. There's only one thing Vista has over XP; DX10. But if you don't have a DX10 card, do you really have a need for Vista?

Just my morning ramble.....filter as you go

I don't really want to switch to Vista, but after reading the article JakG posted, i'm not so sure. If Vista is becoming more reliable..etc, I suppose I'll have to take the plunge some time.

Quote from gohfeld23 :

if you don't have a DX10 card, do you really have a need for Vista?

I put a DX10 card in the PC I assembled in April, and I installed XP on it.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I put a DX10 card in the PC I assembled in April, and I installed XP on it.

Do you get full support? E.G. does everything work including DX10 software? If so, that makes Vista even less necessary.

BTW, what card is it?