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Microsoft suggests disabling ReadyBoost until SP1
Microsoft plans numerous fixes including an update to ReadyBoost

Microsoft officially launched Windows Vista for volume licensing on November 30. The company also simultaneously launched Office 2007 giving Microsoft a 1-2 punch in the realm of operating systems and productivity suites.

"These are game-changing products," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the launch. "It’s an incredible step forward for business computing in a year of unprecedented innovation from Microsoft. We expect that more than 200 million people will be using at least one of these products by the end of 2007."

Microsoft followed up with the retail launch of both products two months later on January 30. Both software products were made available in over 70 countries and over 40,000 retail locations.

Windows Vista is not even a year old, but Microsoft is already orchestrating the launch of Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta 1 for the week of July 16. Many companies will not even touch a new Microsoft operating system until the first service pack is released, so the quick rollout of SP1 isn't totally unexpected.

According to ZDNET's Mary Jo Foley, SP1 will RTM in November after just four months of testing. Microsoft will also release Windows Server 2008 at the same time.

Expected updates/fixes included with SP1 will be a revised Desktop Search, faster file copying and shutdown speeds, support for SD Advanced Direct Memory Access, enhancements to BitLocker Drive Encryption and Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) support on x64 machines.

There will also be changes made to Windows ReadyBoost. There have been numerous complaints around the web concerning ReadyBoost and resuming from S3/S4 sleep. Sluggish performance on resume can be attributed to numerous writes to 'Readyboost.sfcache' on the ReadyBoost storage device.

According to Microsoft’s Robert Hensing, "[ReadyBoost] uses an AES 128 key that is generated once per OS start (the data in the file on the thumb drive is encrypted with this key) . . . the key isn't persisted anywhere (i.e. it lives in memory only) and so apparently when you sleep / hibernate - the key goes bye bye and thus you need to rebuild your 2GB ReadyBoost cache on your USB disk when you resume again."

Hensing continues, "Vista realizes that it needs to regenerate the ReadyBoost cache as soon as it wakes up and loads the USB drivers and realizes the ReadyBoost drive is plugged in and it starts helpfully doing this as soon as it can . . . ya know - while the OS is trying to page all that memory back into my 2GB of system RAM as well and generally restore the OS to a working state  . . . sigh . . ."

The changes made to ReadyBoost in SP1 will ensure that cache data is reused during S3/S4 sleep so that 'Readyboost.sfcache' is not repopulated on resume.

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Copy speed
By Griswold on 7/9/2007 10:06:44 AM , Rating: 2
Well, I hope this solves the incredibly slow performance when handling the content of ZIP archives. Its just ridiculous how slow the built in zip routines copy files from an archive to another location - according to vista, the datarate is sometimes (when it is alot of small files) below 1MB/s.

On the other hand, I've never had any performance problems when copying files from A to B - as long as neither A nor B is a zip file.




RE: Copy speed
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 10:16:02 AM , Rating: 2
I think what you're seeing is the extra CPU and IO time required due to the compression/decompression. I don't think the speed figure you cited is out of bounds.

Using the latest version of WinZip (which is pretty performance optimized) I get similar copy rates here. I just did a test of unzipping a ZIP archive containing 4455 files totaling 26MB, and that took about 40 seconds. Zipping (compressing) would be a little slower. My machine's a 955EE dual core @ 3.5Ghz with dual raptors.


RE: Copy speed
By Mitch101 on 7/9/2007 10:20:02 AM , Rating: 2
Could also be anti-virus software. Trend Micro used to have problems when copying compressed files because it would have to expand the file and scan it causing additional performance hit even if the file was already scanned and confirmed virus free.

If we could get away without having to have AV, firewall, malware, and spyware software running all the time well then we would get a nice boost in performance. Probably one of the big reasing a 733mhz x-box can play FarCry but it crawls on a PC with twice the ability.


RE: Copy speed
By cochy on 7/9/2007 1:05:59 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Probably one of the big reasing a 733mhz x-box can play FarCry but it crawls on a PC with twice the ability.


Hmmm probably not. Probably something to do with the port being optimized poorly for the PC.


RE: Copy speed
By Mitch101 on 7/9/2007 2:05:11 PM , Rating: 3
It was released for the PC first then ported to the Xbox.


RE: Copy speed
By Omega215D on 7/10/2007 12:43:09 AM , Rating: 2
Would it have to do something with the different resolutions between the PC and XBOX?

A 733 - 800 PIII with a Geforce 3 can probably handle the game at 640 x 480 but move to 800 x 600 and it may crawl.*

*I haven't and won't try this out.


RE: Copy speed
By sxr7171 on 7/10/2007 12:55:20 AM , Rating: 3
Exactly. Who on their PC plays it at 640x480 no AA no AF? I play that game at 1920x1200 8x AA and 16X AF and it purrs on a 8800GTS, it did fine on a 7800GT also. You could today probably run the game at 640x480 with a budget card or even some of the better integrated solutions and a budget CPU. Also, they dumb down things like textures for console versions and implement performance enhancements by taking away things that would scarcely be visible on an analog TV (which the XBox was designed for).


RE: Copy speed
By shortylickens on 7/10/2007 4:10:03 PM , Rating: 3
While I have to say this is a little off topic it is also VERY true. I always find it amusing when people tell me how much faster consoles are than computers and its exactly because of this sort of thing.

Back on topic:
As soon as SP1 becomes final and official, I think I will finally make the transition to Vista.


RE: Copy speed
By PrinceGaz on 7/11/2007 9:53:38 AM , Rating: 2
I'm afraid if Microsoft think that rushing out SP1 very early will make those people currently holding-off feel confident to switch, then they are wrong. An early release of SP1 will mean I'll probably hold off until SP2.

It's not like there is anything wrong with XP which Vista could do better (at least for me), and there's a lot which Vista would do worse (especially when it comes to drivers and compatibility with certain apps I need). In a year or so, SP2 should be on its way and by then Vista will probably seem a lot more tempting. As it is, I've got a partition already available for installing Vista, and a copy of Vista RTM ready to install, but I really don't see the point just yet.


RE: Copy speed
By Imazalil on 7/12/2007 2:32:51 PM , Rating: 2
Finished the game on a GeForce 2 GTS 32Mb (w a Athlon XP 1.4Ghz, 768Mb Ram) card playing 800x600, there were a couple parts that would consistently crash the game, too much info for the 32Mb video ram was my guess as to why - just had to enter a few cheat codes to bypass the level segments that crashed it.

And yes, the game looked like ass, but hey I wasn't complaining, it played. Q4 played surprisingly well too, except in the areas with more than half-dozen characters on screen at once.

A Geforce 3 should make up for the slower CPU and play the game about the same.


RE: Copy speed
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 10:24:55 AM , Rating: 2
No, Vista really has a problem with Zip files. It probably would have taken hours with that 4455 file archive using the built in decompression routinue.


RE: Copy speed
By omnicronx on 7/9/07, Rating: 0
RE: Copy speed
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 11:05:37 AM , Rating: 2
I don't use the integrated, but a lot of people that don't know better do and it is much worse then it was in XP.


RE: Copy speed
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 10:23:19 AM , Rating: 2
This is so true. The built in zip function in Vista is the worst. On one Vista PC I was working on that had no other zip program installed, it was estimating 2 hours to extract 7000 files from an archive. Thankfully, there are some really good open-source zip programs out there.


RE: Copy speed
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/9/2007 11:02:02 AM , Rating: 4
Winzip, the defacto standard, is closed source, and freeware. No need to push the "Open source is better" mentality without reason.

If you want options WinZip, WinRar, WinACE, and more!


RE: Copy speed
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 11:05:04 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not pushing the open source is better then everything mentality at all. Its much better then the built in system in Vista by a long shot.

Personally, I like WinZip the best.


RE: Copy speed
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 11:09:52 AM , Rating: 2
Hate to reply again, but WinZip isn't freeware, its commercial and well worth the licensing fee.

I've probably used it more then any other utility ever.

For people that don't want to pay or can't afford it for all their systems, the open source alternatives are ok and like I said way better then Vista's built in system.


RE: Copy speed
By ultimaone on 7/9/2007 12:40:33 PM , Rating: 1
he never did say "winzip" at any point in his first comment
and just said "open source"

so give the guy a break

and i'm thinking he meant "freeware" as well


RE: Copy speed
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 12:46:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Winzip, the defacto standard, is closed source, and freeware


Guess you didn't read the post I was replying too or you just replyed to the wrong post. Yah I meant freeware as well in my first response.


RE: Copy speed
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 7/9/2007 11:26:52 AM , Rating: 5
WinZip? Pfff.

I personally use 7-Zip. It's completely free, light and efficient.


RE: Copy speed
By AlexWade on 7/9/2007 11:35:22 AM , Rating: 5
Yeah, 7-Zip is the best. It offers a 64-bit version, it supports multi-core CPU's, 7-zip compression is awesome. It is fast and efficient. Nothing is better than 7-Zip.


RE: Copy speed
By yehuda on 7/10/2007 12:09:42 AM , Rating: 1
7-Zip is nice but I don't like the way it handles drag'n'drop. Ever tried to drag a file or folder off a zip archive? For some reason, this operation uses a temporary folder as an intermediate stage and I find it very annoying.


RE: Copy speed
By GTMan on 7/10/2007 11:47:51 AM , Rating: 4
All unzip programs work this way. Windows is designed so that the application has no idea where the drop destination is. The output is supplied to Windows via a temporary location on your system drive and Windows takes care of moving it to the final location.


RE: Copy speed
By yehuda on 7/10/2007 12:58:53 PM , Rating: 2
I see. Thanks for pointing that out. It didn't occur to me it was a Windows limitation. It makes sense, now that I think of it, because the destination could be something other than a folder path name, like an office or e-mail application.


RE: Copy speed
By TomZ on 7/10/2007 1:40:36 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
All unzip programs work this way. Windows is designed so that the application has no idea where the drop destination is. The output is supplied to Windows via a temporary location on your system drive and Windows takes care of moving it to the final location.

Incorrect. WinZip 11.1 doesn't do this, for example. There is nothing in Windows that forces an application to be programmed in the way that you describe.


RE: Copy speed
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 12:33:17 PM , Rating: 2
Whenever I've refurbed an old system to give to a family member or whatever, this has been what I've installed.

Its really great and its the only thing I've found for free that runs reliably on Vista 64.


RE: Copy speed
By VooDooAddict on 7/10/2007 3:32:14 AM , Rating: 2
yup only 64-bit Vista Zipper.


RE: Copy speed
By AsicsNow on 7/10/2007 1:34:32 PM , Rating: 2
Izarc is a nice program as well.


RE: Copy speed
By Parhel on 7/9/2007 11:39:42 AM , Rating: 2
I highly recommend 7-Zip, and I'm honestly not one to push open source software for ideological reasons.

A few years ago, it wasn't anything special, but today it's really worth the download. I do a lot of zipping and unzipping, and I haven't used anything but 7-Zip in at least a year.

It has a decent interface, it supports all common compression types except for ACE, and although you may not use it for compatibility reasons it's own compression algorithm (7z) consistently outperforms the others that I use.


RE: Copy speed
By Ringold on 7/9/2007 1:48:16 PM , Rating: 4
If it had recovery records and all the features of WinRAR.. I'd switch. Given that rar compresses nearly as well as .7z in some situations, and is faster, and also utilizes dual cores.. I prefer WinRAR. But if I didn't need any of that. 7zip aint bad.


RE: Copy speed
By Screwballl on 7/11/2007 11:03:00 AM , Rating: 2
I have been a WinRAR fan for a long time... I have tried almost every major (and many many minor) compressions programs. WinRAR is the best IMHO


RE: Copy speed
By kamel5547 on 7/9/2007 12:09:15 PM , Rating: 2
Since when is WinZip freeware?

WinZip is NOT free, check their website and the EULA.


RE: Copy speed
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/9/2007 1:32:59 PM , Rating: 2
Your never "forced" to purchase it, simply ignore the message. Much like SmartFTP.


RE: Copy speed
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 1:37:33 PM , Rating: 2
But that violates the terms of use; WinZip is commercial software, and they expect to get paid if you use it.

Just because it doesn't employ a strong license manager doesn't mean that you are legally or morally permitted to use it for free beyond the trial period.


RE: Copy speed
By nullCRC on 7/9/2007 2:00:55 PM , Rating: 2
Just because it doesn't employ a strong license manager doesn't mean that you are legally or morally permitted to use it for free beyond the trial period.

Exactly what is "morally permitted"?


RE: Copy speed
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 2:10:10 PM , Rating: 2
Sorry, I forgot we are supposed to write posts that are 100% perfect in grammar, spelling, diction, etc. Sheesh. I think you know what I mean, even if the wording is not just right.

In other words - I'll spell it out for you - WinZip clearly states they give you a 45-day free trial period, and that you are expected to pay for a license after that. If you continue to use it beyond that, then you are being naughtly. OK, clear?


RE: Copy speed
By nullCRC on 7/9/2007 2:21:33 PM , Rating: 3
I understood what you meant from the beginning. However, I wanted to know where Corel (Winzip) states that you are morally obligated to do anything. I read the EULA, and I found where the stipulations would legally bind someone, but not morally.

Lighten up.


RE: Copy speed
By TomZ on 7/9/07, Rating: -1
RE: Copy speed
By nullCRC on 7/9/07, Rating: -1
RE: Copy speed
By oTAL (blog) on 7/11/2007 12:43:27 PM , Rating: 2
A little guy walks into a bar, slips on a little pool of vomit next to the stools, and everybody starts laughing at him.
He gets up and sits down on a stool.
A few minutes later, a huge gets out of the bathroom, passes close to the little guy a slips on the vomit.
No one laughs... amidst the silence the little guy says "Man, I just did that!"
The huge guy beats him up.

Everyone laughs...


RE: Copy speed
By cpeter38 on 7/11/2007 7:35:27 AM , Rating: 2
Individual consumers are absolutely free to ignore the EULA - I am sure that most people will not feel guilty about it.

Corporations cannot ignore EULAs!

The liability is unacceptable. Picture unauthorized use on 10,000 computers. 1 disgruntled employee could sting you for $6 per installed program. An IT person in a large organization (if they are worth their salary) needs to be vigilant by preventing the unauthorized installs of proprietary software that is not in the budget/licensed. Even better, be proactive and remote load the most cost effective software on all machines BEFORE your users try to break into their machines.

I am not trying to be "preachy" - just pointing out that relative morality doesn't matter. The bottom line and risks do matter.


RE: Copy speed
By Some1ne on 7/9/2007 6:14:59 PM , Rating: 3
I've never been happy with the performance of the built in archiver on any flavor of Windows.

That's why WinRAR/Winzip rank amont the very first things I install after putting Windows on a new system.


RE: Copy speed
By Flunk on 7/10/2007 11:33:09 AM , Rating: 2
This is silly logic, you're saying the integrated zip functionality is allowed to suck because I expect it to. Just because Microsoft has never made a decent zip file decompressor is no reason why they shouldn't. There is no excuse for the world's largest software company to bungle something so simple.

Even saying that there is some sort of horrible bug that effects the Vista version making it completely unusable (not just slow but super slow). Also, file copies take longer in Vista for no reason (even same disk to same disk) let's hope they fix that too.


RE: Copy speed
By KamiXkaze on 7/15/2007 12:08:17 AM , Rating: 2
I'm more of a winzip fan myself have been using it for 7 years.

KxK


Hmm...
By encryptkeeper on 7/9/2007 10:23:48 AM , Rating: 2
5 months of Vista and we have a beta service pack already? The full XP SP1 came out 11 months after XP was released, so this is pretty darn quick. Although, knowing the general feeling toward Vista pre-launch was "I'll consider buying it when there is a service pack" Microsoft may have intentionally left some fixes out so they could deliver them in a service pack. Just a conspiracy theory, and it is more likely that the fact that Vista adoption has been relatively slow and people are complaining about every little thing (speed) with Vista, it may have just lit a fire under them. Either way, it's good for Microsoft (and early adopters) to have this SP out. Nice to hear about 2008 too.




RE: Hmm...
By darkpaw on 7/9/2007 10:26:41 AM , Rating: 5
Vista has been out for 9 months now. It was relased in November. The Service pack is going into beta this month and will be released in November. One year for the service pack to be released.


RE: Hmm...
By ultimaone on 7/9/2007 12:57:53 PM , Rating: 1
well for business it was November
really the official release data was January

so really its 7 months

not sure where the other guy got 5 months from...


RE: Hmm...
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 1:19:11 PM , Rating: 4
Vista was "released" to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, according to Microsoft. That is separate from it being "available" to retail and OEM channels in January. Also, the release bits didn't change from November to January, so you should consider November as the release date.


RE: Hmm...
By encryptkeeper on 7/9/2007 3:45:30 PM , Rating: 1
well for business it was November
really the official release data was January

so really its 7 months

not sure where the other guy got 5 months from...

Counting from the retail and OEM skus, its 5 months...all of February, March, April, May and June. Not enough days of July have passed for it to round up to 6. Where did YOU get 7 from?


RE: Hmm...
By spindoc on 7/10/2007 2:23:09 PM , Rating: 3
Oh I'm getting in on this!

The official service pack release will be November. One year after the oem launch.

About 10 months after the retail launch.

Did somebody post this already? :)


RE: Hmm...
By decapitator666 on 7/11/2007 2:59:44 AM , Rating: 2
Well a lot of people have said they will not upgrade until sp1 arrives.. This is M$ counterploy, introduce sp1 and have a large part of the people part from their money..


RE: Hmm...
By decapitator666 on 7/11/2007 3:09:42 AM , Rating: 1
Or maybe they have already a sp full of critical errors... In line with observations. Lets hope they finally bring out a driver catalogue that recognizes more than 50% of the devices


please fix UAC
By Stacey Melissa on 7/9/2007 10:48:13 AM , Rating: 4
<sigh> No mention of improvements to the abomination that is UAC. At the very least, could MS please let me turn off UAC and the resulting Security Center nag, without turning off Security Center notifications altogether?




RE: please fix UAC
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/9/2007 11:06:14 AM , Rating: 2
You can if you knew what you were doing. UAC can be disabled and security center can be set to alert you based on type of alert or whatever else you want. This is basic stuff you can do in Vista. If you are having trouble with this, feel free to shoot me an Email with exactly what you want to do, and I can write instructions.


RE: please fix UAC
By fake01 on 7/9/2007 11:35:42 AM , Rating: 1
Start->Accessories->Run (type-msconfig.exe)->Tools "tab"->Select "Disable UAC"->Launch>Restart Computer.

As simple as that :-)


RE: please fix UAC
By Radeon117X on 7/9/2007 11:41:05 AM , Rating: 2
Yep. That's one way.

However, i have my UAC off (turned it off the second i installed Vista on my new computer lol) but i was wondering, Master Kenobi mentioned getting rid of that silly alerts saying : UAC is turned off and giving me that annoying red X in my notification tab. How do i get rid of this?


RE: please fix UAC
By ChronoReverse on 7/9/2007 12:40:05 PM , Rating: 2
If you go to the Security Center, on the task list on the Left side, look for the item that says something like "Change how alerts are presented"


RE: please fix UAC
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/9/2007 1:35:24 PM , Rating: 2
That's one way but I don't think that offers the amount of customization he needs for just turning off UAC notification, I think that turns off all security center notifications with it. I will have to check when I get home, but since I'm knee deep in technet and corporate IT, I can tell you there is a nice collection of local policies on Vista to mess with that stupid security alert center. I will look up the one you need to change for UAC and either build you a script to do it, or just post instructions here, T-6 hours till off work and kickin back :)


RE: please fix UAC
By KeithTalent on 7/9/2007 1:44:47 PM , Rating: 2
What, exactly, is the problem with UAC?

I do not have any problems with it, so please enlighten me.

Thanks,
KT


RE: please fix UAC
By Ringold on 7/9/2007 1:52:38 PM , Rating: 2
After I got everything I commonly used installed and rolling along until I hear that malware has figured out how to bypass it I'm fairly happy putting up with a dialog every now and then instead of having to relax and listening closely to detech a "disturbance in the Force" as malware passes through the ether of my internet pipe, in to my NIC, through my memory and on to my disk. I also like that Defender is absolutely anal and reports every annoying little change that it's able to detect. Annoying, yes, but useful.

It's all probably even more useful for relative noobs. My mother knows when one of those dialogs pop up she needs to reconsider what she's doing. I've had to clean up "free screesavers" enough times...


File Copy Issues
By spookware on 7/9/2007 12:57:46 PM , Rating: 3
Personally I will be very happy if the file slow file copy/move issue is fixed. I am a developer so I tend to move around directories with thousands of small files in them quite frequently. This is unbearably slow in vista due to a poor design decision.

When you perform file move/copies/deletes from the Explorer it notifies the search service about each change individually. This is a huge overhead and results in massive decreases in performance. We are talking about say a 100-1000X performance decrease for very large directory trees. If you do the same operation from the command line, or an alternate file manager, then it is very quick, just like XP.

This has been a deal breaker for me. If they would just fix this I would be so much happier with vista.




RE: File Copy Issues
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 1:23:18 PM , Rating: 2
What copy/move issues do you mean? Got any links?

I'm curious, because I also do development, and I have about 111,000 files / 10GB in my development tree, and I never noticed any slowness in file copies/moves in Vista compared to XP.

Have you tried turning off indexing for your source directories?


RE: File Copy Issues
By spookware on 7/9/2007 2:19:34 PM , Rating: 2
Yes. Take a look at this technet thread for example. If I do disable search indexing then the problem is for the most part resolved (with the exception of network shares), however that is not really a great solution as I would like to be able to use indexing to search source code.

It really is just beyond me why I can't configure it to perform a background reindex instead of having explorer try to keep the database in sync. That seems like a terible idea especially since I can duck out to the command line and mess up the search index by doing manipulations from there.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?...


RE: File Copy Issues
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 2:30:01 PM , Rating: 2
OK, I see what you're getting at. Vista tries to generate "live" search results that it is probably trying to update. For example, if I do a search in one window, and then do file ops in another window, the search window is dynamically updated to reflect the file ops I'm doing. I can assume that's pretty computationally expensive for that level of notification.

And I agree with you - it should be possible to make that a background operation, for people who don't really need the dynamic, live search results.

Do you find the Vista search useful for searching source code? I typically use Find in Files in my IDEs, because they have the ability to show the context lines that included the search text, and to be able to quickly open an editor to the location in the files where the search matched. I also find that the Find in Files is pretty fast, at least as fast as indexed files in Vista.


RE: File Copy Issues
By spookware on 7/9/2007 2:51:08 PM , Rating: 2
As for IDE's I find them to be a mixed bag. I mostly use Visual Studio 2005 or Eclipse, though some times I break down and use an old school editor. Mostly because I do kernel level development,so I have to write makefiles and what not. IOW no IDE has a nice build in project type for kernel driver.

VS2005 has been a mixed bag as far as search is concerned. It is not bad if the tree is not that large, however when the tree gets to be quite big I find it will chew up hundreds of megabytes of ram and take forever to search. It is very fast for smaller projects though.

I did find vista's search indexer useful in this repsect. If you work from file system based source code control systems such as SVN or CVS, then if your like me you have many different copies of said source on your drive. If I want to search in VS2005 I would have to pick on tree and try searching that, move on to the next tree, etc.. With vista indexer I can just let it plow through all my source code. It does quite well here.


"After just four months of testing..."
By redbone75 on 7/9/2007 2:49:31 PM , Rating: 2
It could just be me, but Vista felt rushed to begin with. I'm thinking this service pack will inject some serious life into Vista because it's what MS wanted to release when Vista launched.




RE: "After just four months of testing..."
By colonelclaw on 7/10/2007 6:56:48 AM , Rating: 2
ah, it's nothing new. for as long as i can remember the initial releases of MS operating systems have always felt like betas to me. i'm fairly sure i'm not alone in thinking that SP1 of any MS os is actually the 'release version'


RE: "After just four months of testing..."
By TomZ on 7/10/2007 8:54:50 AM , Rating: 2
I think the reality is that software - especially of that complexity - is never "done." It is always being worked on and moved forward.


RE: "After just four months of testing..."
By colonelclaw on 7/11/2007 7:08:03 AM , Rating: 2
well you say that, but it is still possible to achieve very high levels of quality. recently i was using the 3D modelling package Maya during my day to day work. now when it comes to big and complex there's little to compare to Maya short of a full blown OS - in fact i remember that when version 5 was released the programmers of Maya boasted that it had more lines of code than the then-current version of OSX on which it ran.
as for Maya, it was massively beta tested, and when it came to the release version it was more or less bug free. furthermore during it's version lifespan it either recieved zero service packs or just the one.
a similar situation is happing with Photoshop these days. it's practically bug free, recieves very few updates during it's version lifespan and at 300mb cant be considered a small or simple application

what i'm trying to say is i'd like to see a whole lot more beta testing done by MS before they release their operating stsems as commercial products


By TomZ on 7/11/2007 7:20:45 AM , Rating: 2
I didn't say anything about level of quality. Microsoft probably does more internal and beta testing than any other company. There were literally millions of beta testers for Vista and Office, for example. I'm not sure how you can get better than that.

Also, you can't realistically compare Photoshop to Windows - Windows is like 100x to 1000x the code size.


By kilkennycat on 7/9/2007 5:03:43 PM , Rating: 2
... (whether financial-incentive, technical or both) to 3rd-party developers for the release of Vista patches for existing mature XP applications. Many 3rd-party developers are not providing patches for existing fully-functional XP applications to run on Vista without errors and are delaying any Vista upgrades until their next full product refresh, for which they will charge mucho, mucho $$$ .... Adobe is a classic example. And many peripheral hardware developers ( e.g Matrox) have stated categorically for even their latest product line that they have no intention of supporting Vista unless there is a ground-swell of customer-feedback to force them to do so. And since much of this hardware/apps works just fine under XP, where is this ground-swell going to come from?? Classic Chicken 'n Egg. Seems as if the only way for Microsoft to break the Vista log-jam with key 3rd party developers is to offer a cash incentive and full technical support such that a Vista upgrade for existing applications is at least a cash-neutral prospect for the developer.

The fundamental problem for Microsoft is that XP is far more stable than any previous MS operating system and XP applications when fully debugged at the application level run extremely well. Thus no developer or customer incentive to upgrade... expecially in government departments with widespread 3rd-party software deployment under XP --- where a major upgrade to a new OS requires many months (or years) of time and money reinvestment in test and validation. If Vista had a user-selectable 100%-compatible XP mode, then Microsoft would have successfully built an applications-bridge for the OS, but Microsoft took their usual too-arrogant view of their OS development and burnt all such bridges when they developed Vista. And the OS-security issues in XP overblown by the media (and MS themselves in pushing Vista) have turned out to be low on the customer-priority list. Far lower than ensuring existing applications continue to work flawlessly regardless of OS change.




By TomZ on 7/9/2007 5:15:10 PM , Rating: 2
In my experience, I haven't come across any XP apps or drivers (with one exception) that I couldn't get to run properly in Vista using the compatibility settings.

The one driver exception I found is a Netgear driver for a non-Vista supported network card, and I think they updated their driver to specifically check the operating system, and it quits immediately upon seeing Vista. The previous version of the same driver worked fine in Vista.

I think that the real problem is that many software and hardware vendors see the potential windfall in basically forcing customers to upgrade their software and/or hardware to newer versions for Vista. So they tell customers their current hardware and/or software doesn't support Vista, and ask them to buy new hardware and/or upgrade to newer software versions. Even though in most cases, the older stuff would actually work fine in XP compatibility mode.


By RaisedinUS on 7/9/2007 11:26:32 PM , Rating: 2
I have had Vista since the business release. I installed it on a separate drive to play with. I have a lot of broadcast software, audio software that I paid a bit for that won't work well with Vista. SAM broadcaster and fleximusic are but a few programs that just don't play nice with Vista. Sam works fine until you try to use your mic, then all you get is a garbled mess. Several of my DJ's have had the same experience.
I won't completely change over until either the programs are updated to work properly or I can afford to buy the Vista versions of the programs.Maybe the SP will help. That being said, I have no problems with Vista.


By sxr7171 on 7/10/2007 4:08:56 AM , Rating: 2
It's like the circle of life.


EFI?
By Xenoterranos on 7/9/2007 12:59:20 PM , Rating: 3
Does EFI support mean you can isntal Vista on an Intel Mac without bootcamp?

Or am I completely out in left field with this one?




RE: EFI?
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/9/2007 1:37:14 PM , Rating: 2
It means you should be able to yes, as long as you or Vista have the proper drivers for the hardware.


RE: EFI?
By killerb255 on 7/10/2007 3:36:18 PM , Rating: 2
EFI also supports booting from partitions larger than 2 TB (GPT partitions), in which the standard PC BIOS does not.


Please fix system restore
By ATC on 7/9/2007 3:54:34 PM , Rating: 2
The main issue that I have with Vista is my ever disappearing hard drive space. I know hard drives are cheap, but for god sake every time I fart, Vista goes and creates a restore point. My hard drive went down by 10GB of space for system restore in a matter of a couple of days.

Not only that, but I cannot manually delete restore points that I find useless; I'm only given the option to delete ALL restore points except for the most recent one.

I really hope they can do something about this in SP1.




RE: Please fix system restore
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 4:51:40 PM , Rating: 3
Vista uses no more than 15% of your HDD space for system restore points. Once that limit is hit, it will delete old ones to make space when it saves new ones. So, over time, the total amount of disk space used will be constant (15%), not gradually increasing.

Is is working differently in your case?

I can understand why you would want more control, but unless you're manually creating all your system restore points, it is just going to fill up the 15% again anyway.


RE: Please fix system restore
By ATC on 7/9/2007 10:01:23 PM , Rating: 2
I didn't know it maxes out at 15%. That is a bit of a relief. I just wish we were still given the option, as in XP, for setting the percentage maximum of drive space dedicated to system restore. No such thing in Vista.

quote:
Is is working differently in your case?

I guess not; I don't think it's exceeded 15% drive space as far as I can tell.


Yea
By Mitch101 on 7/9/2007 10:15:56 AM , Rating: 2
I really like Vista with the exception of some driver and performance issues and cant wait to be using it all the time. Hopefully this will bring them up a bit so Vista is somewhat comparable to XP in graphics performance at least in DX9 in DX10 you cant expect a performance increase.

I am but doubtfull it can be done as DX10 is much more than DX9 so a performance hit is expected. Much like when everyone expected Physics processors to somehow speed up thier graphics cards I expected them to slow them down because of all the additional objects moving around on the screen that the video card would have to draw. Physics was beaten down because of the lack of increased framerates same as DX10 is beaten down despite it having a lot more functionality built in. PPU took the load off the CPU while adding more objects for the graphics card to display thus increasing the load of the GPU. For DX10 over DX9 because the GPU has more information to process or additional layers of information that can be added even if they arent used one would still take a performance hit. Im sure second or third generation video cards will close that gap and we will have a lot more eye candy to be happy about.

For now Im not too impressed by first gen DX10 cards especially since there is no card in the $200 range which looks like the sweet spot as the sub $200 cards seem to lack the power and the above $300 cards will drain my wallet.




RE: Yea
By blaster5k on 7/9/2007 10:39:21 AM , Rating: 2
The 8800GTS 320MB from NIVIDIA can be had for around $260, making it the closest to the sweet spot you refer to. It is unfortunate that no true mid-range cards exist with the latest generation of cards though.


RE: Yea
By fake01 on 7/9/2007 11:30:03 AM , Rating: 2
Why is everything so expensive in Australia :-( 8800GTS 320MB $450, 8800GTS 640MB $550, 8800GTX 768MB $760, X2900XT $570.

Bought my 7600GT for $190, and it works perfectly well in Vista, it even overclocks better than in XP thus gaining better performance than what I got in XP :-)


Good news
By Nik00117 on 7/9/2007 4:26:27 PM , Rating: 1
I've decieded to wait until after my birthday to upgrade my PC and switch to Vista. And now this news only makes me switch even more.




RE: Good news
By Spoelie on 7/9/2007 6:16:43 PM , Rating: 2
News makes me switch all the time
Heck, I'm even switching right now
I love switching
I could do this all day!


RE: Good news
By danrien on 7/9/2007 8:40:37 PM , Rating: 3
is this a computer circuit talking??? i knew they'd figure out how to talk one day.


USB Devices
By mrdeezus on 7/9/2007 3:03:46 PM , Rating: 2
I sure hope this fixes the following:

Archos 402 mp3 wont work
Canon a540 camera wont work
Flash cards from camera wont work
Mobile phonetools wont work[wont allow ringtones to be transfered]

This is a short list basically all USB device fixes.




RE: USB Devices
By TomZ on 7/9/2007 3:28:39 PM , Rating: 2
Are these known problems with Vista, or problems with the device drivers for these devices?


Renaming a music file album name
By Wonga on 7/9/2007 3:21:36 PM , Rating: 2
One little niggle that bugs me is when you go into the properties of a music file and try to change the album name. In any other field (say the artist name), when you click on it the name remains. However, when you click on the album field, the name disappears. This can get a bit annoying when you only wanted to edit the album name, not re-write it from scratch. Give it a shot.

This is obviously not a big deal, but it is things like this that worked fine in XP but not in Vista that pisses me off.

Oh, and if you wanted a big problem I have, half the time I try and print something on my Samsung ML4500 the computer will just reboot! I'm not about to lay that problem at Microsoft's door though, Samsung has just released a stinking driver like the world has never seen...




By oTAL (blog) on 7/11/2007 12:52:36 PM , Rating: 2
You obviously never used Sony drivers/software...
And there's always Creative (not so bad, but always a reference - at one point they actually wanted to charge customers for their crappy driver updates).

P.S. I guess the charging for drivers idea was revisited with the Alchemy project.

P.P.S. - Oh! oh! Forgot one! Nokia!! Their software is awesome... crap! Funny that all the companies I mentioned manage to build quality hardware... guess they should outsource the software.


You are Now Upgrading your Beta OS To Final
By osalcido on 7/10/2007 4:00:29 AM , Rating: 1
Cancel/Allow?




By MobileZone on 7/10/2007 4:53:13 AM , Rating: 2
That's easy to solve. You can disable it and then life becomes normal again.


No Tv-Out fix?
By Farfignewton on 7/10/2007 12:13:01 AM , Rating: 2
Given the wide spread of late model vid-cards unable to do t.v.-out under Vista, I was hoping to see it mentioned. Apparently the finger pointing is going to continue for a while with Ati / Nvidia.




By MobileZone on 7/10/2007 4:55:15 AM , Rating: 2
I hope they fix this annoying issue. Sometimes when I close and re-open the lid after a while, the resolution gets set to 1024, so I have to set it (higher) again and organize all the desktop icons.

Anyone with the same problem?




AVI
By plonk420 on 7/10/2007 5:56:43 AM , Rating: 2
hopefully a fix for the malformed AVIs it writes (AVIFIL32.DLL) will be released (just use a program that makes its AVIs via the OS's AVI writer like .kkapture to see what kind of brokeness it produces)

http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=...




Important fixes
By thartist on 7/10/2007 2:56:33 PM , Rating: 1
Duh man, what a great service pack.

Maybe they should revise the "syshog" feature a bit.




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