Vista slow? Says who?
I’ve read a bunch of complaints from people about how slow Windows Vista is. Frankly, I’m mystified by those complaints, because my experience is the exact opposite. Apparently I’m not alone. Carl Campos has documented his 10 weeks with Windows Vista:
After 10 years of supporting Windows systems, I have a good feel for how fast a system works, sort of like a mechanic who can listen to a car idle and identify its problems. Vista is quick, responsive and it seems to multitask better than XP. Vista, unlike XP, is still usable when applications hog the 100% of the CPU or constantly page the hard drive. Vista uses a tremendous amount of memory while not doing much, but it doesn’t appear to affect the feel of the system at all.
Overall, it’s an excellent piece of writing, with a well-rounded, balanced look at the pros and cons of Vista. Well worth reading.
I agree. I’ve seen a lot of bad press regarding Vista regarding slowness, and I have to say that my first experience of the OS led me to agree that my nan’s electric shopping wagon was faster…
Since then I’ve seen it on a number of different systems and it is speedy. I guess all the fanboys/haters will have to get comfortable and cosy with the OS before they make sweeping judgements….
Like all software released these days Vista is problematic. If you have no intention of plugging in any other hardware or running any other non MS software (without deep thought and stressing Google out) then I would say “go for it”…. a laptop with no external hardware an example.
To replace your desktop OS…. Not so sure…. Even if your desktop box works right out of the box it doesn’t guarantee your printer will.
Before you shoot me down, I realise that XP had the same teething problems, and I’m sure that Vista will do us all proud in the long run….. I am also sure that Vista won’t be the new WinME !
I’ll be waiting for the first service pack and confirmation of ATI/NVidia/HP driver support first… I do beta test software, but I don’t want to beta test my main OS on my primary desktop and primary laptop thanks all the same.
Rob (Vista ETA 2008)
I agree. My OS runs like a bat out of hell. And stable as a rock to boot.
Granted, I am running Vista on a new computer that was Vista home premium ready. I’m not trying to run Vista on an older system that can barely handle XP. I suspect that makes a huge difference.
I’ve said this since the start. Same hardware, all other things being equal, Vista runs faster — and without even using ReadyBoost. I still have to try that out, though, but it already runs well enough that I hardly need it.
Here’s a question: Are the people who complain about slowness running a system that was upgraded in-place from XP? All my Vista installs were clean, not upgrades.
Excellent Carl Campos article, indeed!
Serdar, my Vista install on my older Pentium 3.4GHz, 4G RAM machine was not only clean, but noticeably slow during disk-writes. Vista Explorer was intolerable. Fast-forward to new Core 2 Duo machine with same memory and Vista runs swell. However, having installed three different versions on five machines now, I can vouch that Vista wants new hardware, period. Which is why I recommend getting Vista when you’re ready to jump to 64-bit hardware. The few x64 apps I’m running are a dream, and the first vendor to come out with a 64-bit text editor will make a LOT of money.
I’m of mixed opinions on this one. For the most part Vista is as fast or faster than XP was on the same system *yet* at times I’ve found Vista just chugging on simple tasks, usually around files. It doesn’t happen all the time or very often but it just sorta… locks. Of course part of that could be the apps themselves but some of them are Microsoft apps that you’d hope would behave a bit better.
Then again I’ve noticed that there are certain actions in Vista that seem slower only because either I’m not used to the new layout or, and call me crazy, some of the click targets are smaller. Certain UI elements really require me to focus on the screen instead of just being able to do something automatically. A big one is the path bar that allows you to click on each folder as a dropdown. In theory I love it, it’s much more useful than clicking a back button but in reality I can hit back back easily and everytime because it’s always in the exact same spot, while the path segments obviously change in length and position. Because of that certain actions just feel like they take longer when they actually don’t.
Shawn, you’re on to something there when you say you have to “focus on the screen instead of just being able to do something automatically”.
Just like with a computer, we humans burn up needless energy when we have to visually and mentally sort thru a busy GUI. This is why I always prefer the “classic” look when using a computer. Less work for my brain and for my eyes.
I’ve also gotten to using the keyboard more for commands and I slow the double mouse double click down to it’s lowest level to keep from stressing the hand and wrist. Rapid double clicks are fatiguing.
I’ve found Vista to be “less deterministic”. That is, it seems mostly pretty fast but, as other have noticed, sometimes locks up or slows down on simple tasks and often around file operations. Interestingly such slowdowns can affect all open applications and not just the one that is having an issue.
I’m hoping MS has serious 24/7 perfmon on all of its own Vista systems and that we’ll see a significant improvement with SP1.
One of my machines is 64-bit, but is running the 32-bit edition due to drivers. The other is a 32-bit laptop. Both are clean installs and both are right speedy. I wonder if, again, this comes down to a case of drivers…
I’m running Vista on a computer that will be 5 years old next month and it runs acceptably (3.5 performance index and the determining factor is the 3D graphics performance). I spent extra when I bought this computer to ‘future proof’ it and I think it worked. I have a 2.53Ghz processor and a 533Mhz FSB. I upgraded the video card about 2 years ago (BTW, Aero Glass works fine) and upgraded from 512MB of RAM to 1GB after first trying the Vista beta.
I’m running a dual boot setup with XP SP1 and it seems to me that Vista runs at least as well as XP for most things.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’m looking forward to getting a new PC in a few months with a dual or maybe quad core and I expect that Vista will do really well with a new PC.
Vista runs okay… Incredibly slow boot times (2 day old Vaio wait Core 2 Duo @ 2.3GHz, 2GB RAM, 7500rpm drive, “real” nVidia card (256MB))… I mean about a minute to get to the login screen slow.
My old Vaio (same line, but 1.33GHz Core Duo, 1GB RAM) would boot to XP in about 15 seconds.
Still, in operation I haven’t notced any serious slowdon in Vista.
That said, I know that *I* function slower (having to confirm 3 times to delete a shortcut?!!!). Haven’t done any hackery or optimization, but I can see where the Apple ads (“Are you sure you want to confirm?”) could resonate well with first time users.
Which is sad. I should be excited to turn on my brand new machine with all the latest cool MS software. But instead I dread it
Jeremy, there is something wrong with your system. You should never (well, almost never) have to respond to a prompt to delete a shortcut. Where are these files located? it sounds like a permissions problem.
As for the boot time, I’d suspect you have something trying to load and failing. Boot times should be similar for those two machines.
Ed, I wasn’t actually meaning to complain. I would have gone looking for solutions when I ad time, don’t worry. But, since you asked…
I’m deleting “junk” that came with the machine. Y’know, AOL icons and the like. I’m guessing these were created by some super user (or other user) or something, or they’re in the equivalent in Vista to the All Users area, which may be causing perms stuff.
I’ve tested this on stuff I’ve created and it’s fine, but anyways, here’s what happens:
Delete the “Games” directory (which has nothing in it) in the start menu:
1. Are you sure you want to delete (whch is fine), click yes.
2. Desitnation Folder Access Denied, You Need to confirm this operation. Click Continue.
3. You have attempted to delete a file, please confirm. Click continue.
This is almost as silly as Norton asking me if I’m okay with Norton running a scan on Norton (which happened on my first full system scan)
Anyways, definitely a perms issue, but considering as how I’m an Admin right now, you’d think instances of that would be few and far between.
As I said, I’ll figure it out. Day 2 of Vista, so I’m not too worried. But the constant confirmation dialogues (Vista asked me if I was sure I wanted to open Word!) are a little … odd…
Btw, the Games folder? Still not gone, it’s been deleting that 0 bytes for 7 minutes now… I’m going to let it run just to see how long it takes to delete 0 bytes
Jeremy, the Games folder is a system folder, so you can’t just delete it, any more than you can delete the Program Files folder or the Accessories folder. That’s why you’re running into that problem from Explorer. You would probably have better luck using an elevated command prompt and then taking ownership of the whole Start menu.
You can delete any file or folder that you create without any prompting, including shortcuts for programs you install. If you want to get rid of the contents of the Games folder, go to Control Panel, Programs, Turn Windows Features On or Off.
Ed, thanks for the info, I’ll definitely look into that
Only Zaine seems to have made this point so far, and it bears repeating (it’s a point I would have thought you would have made, Ed, considering your insightful article on how the latest MS OS is always accused of ‘bloat’ whilst pervious versions are commended as svelte): — most new Microsoft OSes perform faster than their predecessors on relatively recent, current, and future hardware; but slower on significantly older hardware (i.e. hardware that was current for that predecessor).
This should not be news, and the reason is fairly trivial: new features require more resources, and hence slow performance on fairly old hardware; but at the same time newer OSes can take advantage of advances in hardware (dual-cores, increases in RAM, SSE{x} etc. as well as innovations like ReadyBoost) so would be better performing than older OSes on newer hardware that has features of which the older OS cannot take advantage.
I’ve been running Vista on a new Lenovo Dual Core desktop with 2Gb RAM for about a month and I think it’s fine. That said, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a nice skin on top of XP with some annoying security pop-ups (which I turned off after 24 hours) and the addition of some previously free apps (desktop search and a sidebar). It certainly is a LONG way from what Longhorn was promised to be. Remember this quote from BillG?
“Longhorn, the next version of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows desktop operating system, will be so different from its predecessors that users may not like it right away.”
regards,
Cameron Reilly
CEO, The Podcast Network (www.thepodcastnetwork.com) &
Host of Australia’s #1 podcast G’Day World (www.gdayworld.com)
Vista on my machine is slowwwwww! Vista is just a plain crappy experience. The machine is three weeks old. Running System Restore takes over 5 minutes until the dialog appears. Shutdown also takes too long. General applications run fine. This is reminiscent of my experiences a couple of years ago with some Linux distros. I dropped them.
Ed, your experience may be good, but please don’t minimize the other people’s experiences. Vista is still a beta even though Microsoft is selling it to the public. I will not recommend that any non IT professionals sign up for this type of experience. XP is better for the time being.
I’m not minimizing other people’s experiences, Richard. I’m trying to understand them. In my experience, which involves communicating with hundreds of beta testers and people using the RTM product, I have found that experiences like yours are the distinct minority, but they are real. I suspect there’s a simple explanation for your experience, and I wish I knew what it was.
Ed:
I suspect that my issue has to do with system calls, since the major problems seem to be with things like Shutdown and System Restore. I suspect that I will eventually identify and correct the problem. I have tried several “fixes” without success.
The thing about Vista vs. XP is that XP is relatively rock solid and snappy for everyone while Vista has many problems, not mine in particular, but the lack of hardware drivers and application incompatibility, even Microsoft’s applications, that it is just not ready for prime time IMO.
Furthermore, I find the Vista security model foolish for home users. One of my favorite examples is when I change a setting in MSConfig, reboot and then Windows Defender blocks the MSConfig dialog box from appearing. So I have to tell Defender it is okay to run the program. I have tried running “MSConfig /auto” and checking the dialog box’s checkbox before rebooting to no avail. This works fine in XP. This is a small annoyance but a stupid one for Microsoft, and not isolated by any means.
This is what I expect from beta software not commercially released code.