Re: OT: Vista

Judson McClendon wrote:
"LX-i" <lxi0007@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
RAM is the key to making Vista hum. My son's Vista machine has 512MB - and, while I've been able to make it a little more responsive, sluggish is it's MO. My wife's Vista machine has 1GB - on it, the processes and extra things are what makes the difference. When she's doing photo editing, it takes its time, but otherwise, it's responsive enough. It's a dual 64-bit machine, and I would think it should be more responsive. However, it's still faster than her previous one. My work computer has 2GB RAM, and it works fine - runs Aero and all the fancy eye candy without batting an eyelash. It has a dual 32-bit processor.

In the point of my son's machine - even if it's a brand new machine, it may be underpowered in the RAM department. Also, separate video RAM makes a big difference, especially when dealing with the eye candy. If the processor has to do the regular work *and* do all the display work, it's going to be slower than it would if something else handled the display.

In my son's case, he has 4GB RAM, and (he says) the fastest Intel dual
core CPU available at the moment, and a super fast graphics card (he's
into gaming). He just got it this week. Why a machine like that would be
sluggish beats me.

I'd check to make sure all that electronic goodness is being utilized. That was my problem with Vista - my laptop uses shared video memory, but it wouldn't utilize it. This resulted in higher temperatures and slower performance. :)

One thing to have him check is the process list in Task Manager. Under Vista, he'll have to click the 'Show Processes from All Users' button, as it masks processes he doesn't own by default. Look for something either really huge, or something pegging one of the CPUs. I forget who, but someone mentioned indexing. By default, the entire system drive is indexed, I believe - changing that to only index commonly used files (such as C:\Users\[his user name]), and the index update frequency, may reduce the grinding of the hard drive.

I agree with you - with the specs of that machine, it should run even something like Windows ME well. ;)

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