Goddamnit! Why do I have to be the experienced, knowledgeable one here? I've got this
civic duty to de-bullshitize the entire internet, and I'm only one person. Why does God hate me? Why can't there be more intelligent people out there that can help me out? Worst of all, since I'm the only one here that actually understands these things, I appear to be the deluded, egomaniacal lunatic that goes around imposing his opinions on people. Sigh...
Okay, I guess I'll take this one from the top. I'll need my keyboard on my lap for this one... *moves* *opens another copy of the reply*
I can't believe I have to debunk this entire post, every word of it, because it's entirely false. Usually there are some truths and I admit my faults, but this one is just pure bullshit - the unfortunate problem is, it's the same bullshit almost all users of Vista believe. First, the statement that "you bitched about the same thing with all previous versions of windows!" is a huge half truth. TRUE that there was a lot of outcry over all previous versions of Windows. FALSE that it was about the "same things". Previous versions of Windows had the bloat problem well in hand, Windows seems to grow almost exponentially. We've almost taken that for granted now. But in the past, there were reasons for it - great new functionality like a greatly improved interface at the core, like back/forward navigation in folders, smart Start menu, things like that. With Vista, the bloat is unfounded, it comes from unnecessarily bloated runtimes and multiple copies of everything, sloppy coding and sloppy file management, 150 different languages all installed at the same time, crap NOBODY but the special 1% of the world actually need (like speech recognition)... all sorts of crap that already exists in various incarnations in Windows XP, just with a different name or face. Where the similarities in complaints end is with the complaints about Microsoft and the Hollywood relationship. NEVER BEFORE has Windows been so intrusive in making sure you're looking at, or hearing, what Microsoft and the big Hollywood companies want you to watch, when they want you to watch it. Never before has Windows been so intrusive in monitoring what you look at and enabling companies to track you down if they don't like what you're doing. Microsoft makes it all possible with Vista - all possible for Big Brother. Debunk that. I went over it in finer detail earlier in my posts.
Vista hides all its tweaks in the same way that XP does, in the "control panels" that nobody ever wants to touch. XP automatically reduced the quality of things to try to make things faster and blah, blah, blah, but Vista can't "reduce" low enough to even become near as fast as XP is out of the box. I deal with Vista on an all too occurring basis, and the most prominent complaint is "Damn my computer is slow!". You know why? Because Microsoft forces manufacturers to install Vista on a computer with 512mb RAM, which is barely enough to even run XP comfortably. It's no wonder it takes Vista 2 or 3 minutes to bring up a folder window. It's too busy "Supercaching" everything it thinks will come in handy -
in memory intended to be used FOR THOSE PROGRAMS. The PF Usage graph in Task Manager is a perfect indicator of how much actual memory is being used, at the moment, outside of system caching and other dynamic uses. In Vista, it is way beyond an acceptable norm, usually in the 1gb area just out of booting. In XP, it's around 200-ish MB or less, leaving plenty of room for programs to actually be loaded. And in XP, if you aren't using too much memory (which most people aren't, with modern RAM amounts), you can completely disable hard disk-based memory (the page file) and Windows will absolutely scream with performance. I've been using my computer like that for at least the past 3 years.
Super Prefetch is just a fancy term to describe an extension to something XP already does - use the unused RAM for caching and preloading. Windows NT has done that ever since Windows 2000 (even earlier, maybe, I'm not sure about NT4). It always uses unclaimed RAM for disk cache, and XP adds prefetching (loading common programs). It increases with the more RAM you have. At all times, all RAM is always in use somehow. It's nothing new in Vista. ReadyBoost is just a way to compensate for Vista's horrible performance and memory consumption, shoving some cache off to the easily-destroyed flash memory instead of keeping it in the now-stretched memory. It's absolutely ridiculous that Microsoft would choose to use a flash device for their "cache", since Flash memory has a limited number of write cycles, and is generally ill-suited for rapid write scenarios. Instead of using a faster external hard drive, they choose to use a flash drive, probably because it has the incorrect public appearance of being a solid state device, therefore it must be "Better". Isn't that just brilliant of Microsoft?
A Windows XP install, clean and out of the box, is about 1.1gb for the Windows folder, minus the "dllcache" SFC backup folder (which is compressed anyway). As you install things like the .NET Framework (bloated as hell! Guess what? Built into Vista in about 1,500 different incarnations), it adds several hundred more MB. Hotfix uninstallers and backup data add to that amount and aren't XP's fault. But the basic idea is, a clean Vista install is VERY, VERY MUCH LARGER than a clean, stock XP installation. Unlike the difference between 3.1 to 95, 95 to 98, 98 to ME, ME to 2000 (timeline fail), or 2000 to XP,
combined. It far exceeds any reasonable amounts of storage needed for an operating system given its capabilities. Mac OS X can do much more, in a much smaller space, with much less bloat. Looking at any other alternative option, even, Vista is just an unbelievable disk space hog, for no explainable reason other than that Microsoft wanted to make people have to upgrade their hardware.
XP does not have registry problems. XP "degrades" because programs, mainly ones that rely on Windows Installer, make the registry large and unmanageable. While it may be true that Vista has some great under-the-hood improvements to help manage the bloat and maintain the system better, all it does is minimize the impact of the additional bloat and horrible coding behind it. XP does a fine job of managing the registry - especially when all it needs to do is "exist" and let the programs go whacky apeshit. And for some reason, although I've had some dirty RAM stick contacts or slots causing RAM errors, I don't recall ever actually having a bad RAM stick. Chances are, you ditched a perfectly good stick because it was dirty or not contacting properly.
As for the stability problems XP had... yep, I'll agree with you there. It was always a capability, yet never really stable, to fully disable your page file, until SP2. However, it's not stability that Vista has a problem with. Vista will be cleaned up and stabilized over time. It's not that. It's the heart of Vista that's the problem, the same thing I've gone over and over in this thread. The things that users will never notice until someone like me brings it up. The bloat, that will never go away. The DRM, which will never go away. Those things you cannot change with service packs. Microsoft will not reverse their decision about those things as long as people keep accepting it and buying it up. While it might be stablizing now ("2 months"? LOL. It's not even "stable" NOW! Give me a break...), it's even got a long way to go in that department.
The sound system is one great reason to AVOID Vista. You say the sound system in XP is the same as in Windows 95, that's a huge joke. The same as Notepad LOOKS the same on the outside as it did in Windows 3.x, the sound system has been hugely redesigned between each version of Windows (except 98 to ME, but I think it had a change too). Each version of DirectX redesigns the sound system in a different way, as many programs use DirectSound to output their sound. Wave Mapper itself has gone through many changes, but kept the user front-end the same for familiarity's sake, trying to add new functionality whereever it fit. It's nice to have a change there, but Vista took it totally while in bed with DRM, making it nearly impossible to manage inputs and outputs like it was familiar to do in previous versions of Windows (good-bye, stereo output recording - it's usually used for copyright infringement, right?). They did away with the mixer console and put in its place a "program mixer console" that's essentially worthless. To access complicated pin-mixing controls, you have to go through the new Sound control panel and poke around for the option you're looking for, in the wrong place, that does the wrong thing and then some. This is improved?
Programs don't lock up in XP. What typically happens, is when a program neglects to redraw the screen (or search for user input) while it's processing something, Windows claims it's "not responding" - especially notable when the computer is busy swapping data to/from the hard drive in order to keep up with a lack of memory. Windows is too quick to label programs as "not responding" when they're really waiting on Windows itself to finish bringing it back to life. Almost all the time, this problem is entirely eliminated by eliminating the source of the problem, the page file itself. If you get enough RAM to run things entirely in the memory, you'll absolutely love the performance you'll get (and the extended hard drive life) by ditching that old piece of junk page file. And you can kiss "(Not responding)" good-bye - with the occasional exception of a program that's waiting on a hung hardware device (like a scratched CD, a malfunctioning scanner, a bad driver, etc). Those are problems you would also see in Vista, no matter how much you may say you never do.
So, with that, I invite you to argue these points. Your argument was pretty much just what may be expected from an inexperienced user, the same people Microsoft preys on with Vista. You may think Vista is better, but believe me - over time you will see that XP is better, and you didn't give it the treatment it deserved. You probably hated XP because it was running on your slow, old PC - so you bought a new Vista PC and love it, because it has the specs to run the programs you were running with XP and do the things you were doing with XP. If you would take that beautiful new system and put XP on it, you would see a renewed world of speed, functionality, and performance like you've never experienced before. I would know, I'm running XP on a Vista-class computer now, and it's nothing but sheer orgasm. Why else would I be arguing this?
