Story: http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/...80&pagtype=all

This is all part of the growing up of an OS. Hardware will develop & reduce loading times, just like XP.

Now .. what really pisses me off is network performance!
10GB on XP = 10-20 minutes over gigabit ethernet.
10GB on Vista = 3 sons, 2 daughters & a grandchild over gigabit ethernet.

I still have not found any use for my two Vista licenses.

Going, Going, Going .. Sold!! To the clueless individual on ebay that believes that Vista will magically cure all the problems with his PC .... the truth being that cyanide would be cheaper and much more effective ... and FASTER!

Bwuhahahahhahaa!

Just a few days ago, I helped one set up a new Lenovo laptop, which features a Core Duo T2250 (1.733GHz), 1GB RAM and a 80GB 5400rpm HDD, something that should be reasonably quick, at least from what I would imagine with Windows XP. It came with Vista Home Basic and to be honest, it is has been my worst experience with a new PC to date, with the OS running quite sluggish on this laptop. It took over an hour just to go through its initial set up, which included the installation of 17 patches (from what I recall).

After I finished with setting it up and installing the patches, I timed how long it took from the point where the OS starts loading after the BIOS screen. After about 50 seconds, the desktop icons show up, followed by a further 2.5 minutes for the applications to finish loading. Even still, there is plenty of HDD activity. When I load up the web browser (IE7), it took about 15 seconds to launch and begin loading the homepage. Opening up the first new tab takes about 10 seconds. A short while after browsing a few pages, I got the typical Vista grey screen warning asking if I wish to allow Java. I allowed this and Java crashed out. A few seconds later I got a dialogue saying that the Google toolbar is not functioning properly and has been disabled.

While I'm sure some may start pointing at Lenovo's included software as the culprit, from what I can see, even with this included software, there is no way a new PC (even if a laptop) should be running so sluggish! I done the usual checks, such as checking the HDD's DMA mode, drivers, BIOS settings, etc. and all seems to be fine. The closest example I can give as a comparison for Windows XP would be like running Windows XP SP2 on a Celeron ~600MHz (or equivalent) with 256MB of RAM and a 10GB HDD. The only time the laptop felt quick was when I tried some video encoding tests on it in which it run just over twice as quick as my Athlon XP 3000 at encoding XviD 720p (multi-threaded version) and about 50% quicker running LAME (Intel Compiled HT version vs. standard version on my AMD).

Anyway, the person who bought the laptop is computer illiterate and the first thing she said after a few minutes of using it was something like "Can you please take this off and put Microsoft on instead? I don't like this software." She didn't believe that this was even Windows (what she meant by asking me to put Microsoft on) and really wanted me to change it to the "proper" software.

Her first impression of Word 2007 (came with the 60-day trial) was not great either and was not happy that there was no way of getting back the old style. Then again since she's a student learning how to use Word and Excel, so in my opinion, there should be at least a way of changing back to the old Office style! I have yet to warn her about the .docx, etc. formats. While Microsoft has an update to allow the opening of these in earlier versions of Office, that's no good if some (if not all) college PCs do not suppor this. Matters only get worse if one submits an assignment, only for the examiner to have problems opening it!

For now, unless one has a high end PC with a lot of RAM (2GB+), I would seriously recommend sticking with the more trusty XP and forget about Vista altogether. Anyway, I can't even see what Vista has got to make up for the sluggish experience I've had so far.

DRM.

Try copying some large files around and see the difference between XP & Vista

I'd estimate that it's between 1/6th & 1/10th the speed that winxp is.

You will find that vista is much quicker if you rarely shut it down & only use the hibernate & resume features of the laptop.

I personally, am eagerly awaiting the release of either Suse10.3 or Ubuntu/Kubuntu 7.04 which will hopefully correctly detect the sata controller & hence HD of my godawful dell laptop ......

I don't like that path that M$ is Heading.

To top it off, Vista Home limits the half-open TCP IP connections to 2 .. read T.W.O .. outgoing connections!
There was an uproar when XP SP2 limited it to 10 outgoing connections.
The reason being "We want to limit virus proliferation".

By my (admittedly quicky) calculations, at two PC's a second, a well written worm could still infect every PC in the world in approximately 30 seconds (one billion PC's)

The only valid reason they would do this is to hinder P2P activity.

Maybe that's why they also fubar'd the file copying/moving. No file sharing!

I don't think that's the sole reason...

Don't forget that Vista is also used by business customers. But then I wonder whether Vista Business or Ultimate support more connections or faster copying... Call me uncivilised, I have not acquired Vista yet, but will do this most likely this year.

(Yes, I'm also considering acquiring a Blu-ray drive.)

I'm using Vista Business Premium & winxp pro.
I'd call you smart, rather than uncivilised.

Hi
I'm running Vista Ultimate (32Bit).
I am experiencing as fast if not faster times with Vista than XP Pro.
It certainly has the feel of being faster.
Edit: I have removed all 'non essential' progs from startup. From cold to fully working is around just under 2 mins with offline defrag is running.
I have a PCI controller card (2 devices) & 4 HD's raided 0+1.

Does the time include defrag on each boot time? or does it only occasionally defragment the HDs? as the time you mention, considering you must have quite modern fast components is not very impressive. I remember my old Win98 system could boot in less than 60 seconds with old components.

Hi
As stated from cold with offline defragging running just under 2 mins.

Hi
Just timed a cold boot. Having installed new programs without defraaging.
Boot time bios/raid/pci 1 min approx +/- 1sec
Offline defragging........1 min approx +/- 1sec
OS booting time 30 sec. This included typing password "**********************".
If I defrag before shutdown offline defrag is just under half a min (25 secs approx).

Hi
Update:
Without any interuptions Vista loads in around 14 secs (no defragging/password etc).
Shutdown around 6>7 secs.
That's good enough for me,...for now.

Really are all the experztzz Mac users? HEHEHE look at me I cant install upgrades in side my comp. becuase Mac wants me to fork out another $2,000 for a new one!!!

Well I have been playing with Vista for a month now and have found it quite a bit slower. I just tested a cold boot and after bios post it took about 25 seconds to load and I have a fairly hefty O/C. I find at this speed XP is very fast but Vista kinda gets around to it. This Windows Experience makes me wonder what a PC with score of 3.0 would be like. Not against Vista but it is defiitely slower than XP, though it's still in diapers. I have read that the 64 bit version seems quicker but not many seem to have bought that version.

Hi
crossg I note some overclocking here.
I have noticed that despite improved WE ratings, that everyday tasks often appear to suffer when overclocking is present.
May setup is not overclocked & apart from 5.3 on cpu. The rest equals or exceeds most I've seen. (I had [borrowed by the unsavoury] an almost identical setup to you). WE rating was 5.9 for everything else.
When I had XP Pro it took almost the same time to load, if not marginally longer than Vista. A touch under 2 mins from cold to usable. About the same to shutdown.
Vista is around 1.55 minsfor startup & 6/7 sec shutdown.
Both setups were different, but optimised for their purpose.
So for me Vista is at least as quick if not quicker in terms of startup/shutdown.

I have been a consultant for 17 years and i have to say i really Dont Like Vista.
I just picked up a new sony laptop. Centruno Duo 1.8ghz, 2gb ram, 200gb hd.
Vista Home came on it and it takes forever to load, i cleaned up all unnecessary startups and its as slow as , well you know! I wanted to install XP and they dont have xp drivers on the sony site so i call them. Sony says they dont support it and installing XP will VOID the warranty. I ask this foreigner who cant speak english why changing the software on the system would have anything to do with the hardware warranty and she just keeps repeating the same thing over and over that it will void the warranty, either not understanding the question or just avoiding answering it.
I have tried readyboost, stripping even things i need on it off (skype, adobe, etc.) still runs like crap, crashes and overall performance is terrible. have a Acer AMD X2 system with vista home, doing the same thing.
Going to install xp in parallels to see if i can get it to work to know if the drivers can be found before reformatting. Might also try upgrading it to vista ultimate but its just horrible. So it sony!

There is a way around the warranty issue. Buy a second hard drive and install XP on it and replace the drive in the laptop with it. If you every need a repair done stick the original hard drive back in the case before sending it off. I have done this with my current laptop and the reason was this way no one will every have access to my personal information during a repair.

You can also use something like Acronis True Image to burn the original drive contents to a backup drive and then install Windows XP. If you ever need a repair backup the XP installation and then install the original Vista installation and send it off.

The news going around about Vista is still not looking great, particularly with Dell now warning businesses that there are challenges with migrating to Vista. This CRN story mentions that not only is Dell noticing the issues of moving to Vista, system builders are changing back to the Windows XP OS due to severe issues with Vista. Medical companies seem to be the worst hit with Vista problems as a result of specialised medical software running into issues. Worse for Microsoft, many companies looking to improve security sooner choose 3rd party security software providers than choose upgrading to Vista to take advantage of its security features.

So far, out of three laptops I set up which had Vista preloaded (2 with Basic, 1 with Premium), all encountered problems during the initial set up. The main issue I have encountered so far (besides performance) is Vista closing browser toolbars (Google & Yahoo) with the usual error saying that this extension has encountered a problem and has been closed. A Dell laptop I set up with Vista Basic preloaded had a non Vista compatible driver preloaded, so I had to download an updated driver that would work, something I would not expect someone buying a new computer to have to do.

For those interested in hearing if anyone has seen Vista blue-screen, sure enough I seen my first BSOD while setting up a new Acer laptop which had Vista Premium preloaded. The BSOD showed up for a few seconds just after I opened up the support page on the Dell website and then automatically rebooted. At the time, I was going to get a Vista driver for a Dell printer they had from their last PC, however, on my second attempt of getting the driver from the Dell website, it successfully downloaded and installed.

Finally, for those who decide to fork out on the Premium version just for the hyped Aero interface, all the running software needs to be compatible with the Aero interface or Vista will switch back to the Vista Basic interface with an warning message mentioning which software must be closed to re-enable the Aero interface. For example, when QuickTime was installed, just having its system tray icon loaded was enough to prevent the Aero interface from working. On the Vista Premium laptop I set up, the owner's supposedly "Designed for Vista" digital camera software ran into the same issue in which launching the application causes Vista to switch to the Vista Basic interface, followed by a warning message saying that this application must be closed to re-enable Aero. In the end, while the Aero has the nice preview task-switching feature, I don't see it alone being that special to go for Premium over Basic, especially with the application compatibility issues I experienced so far with this one computer I set up.

I doubt i will switch to Vi$ta anytime soon but i told myself that about XP Pro.

I have a 5.3 Rating as well and my boot times are 30 seconds or under as well, I'll also add that I have nothing tweaked pulled the stuff out and slapped it in the turned it on to install and run. Also my install of vista Ultimate just took about 7 tp 10 minutes as well.

When Comparing startup/shutdown times, everyone please ensure that Vista is actually shutting down correctly & not hibernating.

By default, vista hibernates when shutting down, for a very quick resume, In XP, it shuts down, rather than hibernates.