Windows Vista, is it your Primary OS ?

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14 posts

Geek

#71583 21-May-2007 22:38

rscole86:
.... and before I disabled all the running services that I didn't need, they were using 600GB of ram.

Now that is a serious amount of RAM!!!

/me starts drooling

/me blushes and quickly edits..
It always said MB, not GB.. misquote, misquote!

Saptha

35 posts

Geek
Inactive user

#71593 21-May-2007 23:48

i even use it for long time, for my home PC n notebook its all good becoz i got 2GB n 3GB RAM
personally i don't need this silly graphical effects and fancy things. talking abt security i don't belive Microsoft can protect me its better think abt getting 3rd party software as my firewall n anti virus. according to AV_competitiveness org live one care is a product failer. also my experience defender dose not protect me from spy ware i tested.
talking abt office environment i had hell of compatibility problems already. cant even think abt upgrading office workstation with current Micros-fedelio(Opera) environment.
here we got more professionals , what we get new from vista what do u enjoy ?
what makes you to keep it as primary OS
(am i asking too many things ? sorry guys!)

Saptha

35 posts

Geek
Inactive user

#71594 21-May-2007 23:52

KryNx:
rscole86:
.... and before I disabled all the running services that I didn't need, they were using 600GB of ram.

Now that is a serious amount of RAM!!!

/me starts drooling

/me blushes and quickly edits..
It always said MB, not GB.. misquote, misquote!

with my application setup i need more than 2GB for sure, i love to keep my memory utilization around 60 all the times. or else its too hard for me to work.

freitasm

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#71595 22-May-2007 00:00

Please do not use "SMS" language in the forums.

rwales

122 posts

Master Geek

#71599 22-May-2007 06:24

I've just bought a new notebook that came with Vista pre-installed. To
be honest, after a lot of bad press I had every intention of having a
good look, then wiping it for a fresh copy of XP.

happy with vista ?

Well, I've been running Windows Vista™ Ultimate 64bit (6.0, Build 6000) for a few days now and I really like what they've done. The UI looks and feels very slick. I know they've ripped ideas from *nix & Mac systems but I totally support this. Software in general would be terrible if people didn't borrow and improve. Although the constant need to restart after installing *anything* is still there, the nagging 'restart now or later' dialog seems to have vanished allowing you to restart at leisure.

what abt application compatibility ?

Since I'm generally the first to slate Windows faults, I need to set the record straight here. There were two prominent issues that stood out in literature I'd read prior to trying Vista; the infamous UAC 'cancel/allow' dialogues and poor driver support. Well, I've installed many of the latest (and most demanding) games, bluetooth devices, etc. without a single issue. Actually, Command & Conquer 3 failed to run, suggesting I install DirectX9 or better (DirectX10 is installed), but ran fine after updating with the latest patch. Hardly Vista's fault. On a 64-bit system I find that quite impressive. If an app doesn't support 64bit, it reverts to a 32bit install automatically, without any intervention (although you can manually set 'compatibility modes' if you desire).

The UAC does pop up a lot but I haven't found it intrusive and, providing it actually works (in a similar fashion to sudo), I see this as a big step in the right direction. I've spent my time so far doing nothing but admin tasks (mainly installing & configuring) and it hasn't annoyed me at all.

is your computer enough for it ?

Yeah, but I'm an avid gamer and bought a new high performance machine (Intel Core2 CPU T7600 @ ~2.3GHz, 2 CPUs with 4GB DDR2 RAM). Everything runs fast & smoothly, but it damn well should with this setup.

is it original ?

um...you can have an MPEG as your desktop background (DreamScene). I think that's original? Aside from that, it's an incremental design of a concept that's been around for decades. Originality might be asking a bit much.

according to AV_competitiveness org live one care is a product failer.

Yeah, but read between the lines. If Microsoft produces a decent AV tool and ships it for free, the whole AV industry (including surrounding media/journalists/websites) are finished so they're not exactly going to bang the drum about how good Defender is. Note, I've no idea how good Defender *actually* is - my laptop is behind a hardware firewall etc. so not a fair test. IMHO, the whole notion of reactive security is silly (unless you're making serious money by constantly pushing out 'virus updates').

Saptha

35 posts

Geek
Inactive user

#71600 22-May-2007 06:37

thanks rwales , seems like you got awesome game station with you.
may i know whats your graphic card if you don't mind ?

rwales

122 posts

Master Geek

#71613 22-May-2007 09:41

Sure, it's an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX with 512MB dedicated memory. The notebook is a Dell XPS - you can build your own on their website!

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

nathan

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#71649 22-May-2007 12:45

rscole86:
.... and before I disabled all the running services that I didn't need, they were using 600GB of ram.

Now that is a serious amount of RAM!!!

/me starts drooling

I assume GB=MB right ;)

This statement about Vista using too much RAM (in this case 600MB out of the box with nothing running) is a common misunderstanding of Vista - a "great" source of FUD that I have seen out there in the market

I bet the place you viewed this information in was inside Task Manager? Basically that 600Mb usage number does not mean the same thing on Vista as it does on Windows XP

The huge difference in numbers reported by task manager is simply due to the fact that these numbers mean different things on Vista vs. XP. Microsoft is partially to blame for this confusion, because we made task manager inconsistent between OS versions. Most people assume that Free is the same thing as Available but it's not.

We eat a lot of RAM for system cache now whereas before we didn’t use it as heavily. Right now, my 2gb laptop has 23mb free and I am only running one IE window, Outlook 2007 and one other WinForms app. Over 1.1gb is system cache right now. I’ve seen it trim as new apps open up, so we are just making full use of the RAM now and the kernel is more aggressive in this respect.

It isn’t so much that Vista is using more memory than XP was, it’s that XP was unable to use the memory that Vista is. The free memory seen in XP was completely going to waste.

Vista does a lot of caching. This means memory usage stays very high but it doesn’t mean there isn’t memory available. Fire up several memory intensive apps and see what happens. You can also use resource monitor to check disk activity. Note that even though memory usage appears high you won’t see much paging happening. If applications were truly taking all but say ~20 megs of physical memory, launching a new app should cause massive paging. This won’t really be the case.

Cheers

Nathan

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freitasm

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#71650 22-May-2007 12:48

On the other hand, I am running Windows Vista 64 Bit on a laptop with 2 GB RAM... I have currently open the following: Internet Explorer 7, WS_FTP, Skype, Carbonite, SnagIt, Outlook 2007, Live Messenger, Groove 2007, Windows Sidebar, WMDC, Hamachi, HandyBackup, Avast, FeedDemon - and the laptop still report 821 MB free.

nathan

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#71651 22-May-2007 12:51

freitasm: On the other hand, I am running Windows Vista 64 Bit on a laptop with 2 GB RAM... I have currently open the following: Internet Explorer 7, WS_FTP, Skype, Carbonite, SnagIt, Outlook 2007, Live Messenger, Groove 2007, Windows Sidebar, WMDC, Hamachi, HandyBackup, Avast, FeedDemon - and the laptop still report 821 MB free.

Under Task Manager, Performance, Physical Memory?

What does Total and Cached say?

freitasm

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#71652 22-May-2007 12:52

nathan: Under Task Manager, Performance, Physical Memory?

What does Total and Cached say?

Total: 2045
Cached: 1027
Free: 0

nathan

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#71653 22-May-2007 12:54

freitasm:
nathan: Under Task Manager, Performance, Physical Memory?

What does Total and Cached say?

Total: 2045
Cached: 1027
Free: 0

That sounds more like it.

Where does the 821MB Free come from?

freitasm

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#71654 22-May-2007 12:57

Those Sidebar Gadgets that report CPU and memory... Are they wrong, even though "Made for Vista"?

nathan

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#71655 22-May-2007 13:05

freitasm: Those Sidebar Gadgets that report CPU and memory... Are they wrong, even though "Made for Vista"?

Can you point me to the Gadget please and I'll take a look. I didn't think the Vista ones that shipped in the box gave a free memory usage like that in Mb free. Is this one from the Gadget Gallery?

The change in terminology is such:

Task manager in XP shows Total, Available and System Cache in the physical memory section.

On Vista it shows Total, Cached and Free.

Most people assume that Free is the same thing as Available but it's not. Free is zeroed+free, and Available is zeroed+free+standby.

Available memory is typically hundreds of megabytes or more, while Free is often just a few megabytes after the system has been running for some time. This leads people to believe that Vista is using a lot more memory compared to XP.

This perception is people's reality
We're looking at how we change the Task Manager in future version of Windows

Cheers
Nathan

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#71656 22-May-2007 13:10

The gadgets came from the gallery. They are both from here.

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