I've done some more hardcore-testing, taking Vista all the way down to the roots.

- Disabled Autostart for all Services that are not required for starting the OS (still allowing it to start them when required, which ironically it failed on User Account managing, Sound Output and the Aero GUI)

It is now running with a mere 20 of its 127 (!) default Services.
16% leaves the OS with all normal functionality, that's quite a record.

The result :
Now stripped of all unneeded overhead, but also taken away the opportunity to steal as much RAM as it wants, the effect was quite... astounding.

Vista still takes (without any Prefetch Cache) a whopping 500MB+ RAM.
It is slow, oozingly slow, now being forced to run like WinXP or any other Windows.
Being apparently written in an unprecendented level of unoptimized garbage debug code, it depends on caching so many System functions, as operating it in the same manner as all other Operating Systems would basically be nothing less than a pain in the arse even on high-end Hardware.

Now feels alot safer but about as fast as a feature-packed, aged WinNT install on a 64MB RAM system running off a cheap 4GB IDE Drive (until used Apps are cached of course)
Note : all while running off a 2.5GHz Quadcore with 4GB RAM and 250GB HD o.O .... and mind you, I haven't even loaded or worked any Programs yet! , this is just to get onto a naked Desktop and navigate basic OS functions *omg*

This is what the developers apparently urgently needed to hide, cost it what it takes - in this case Resources. LOTS of Resources.
Vista basically runs to a large extend from a Cached RAM-Disk in order to fake the feel of a performant OS.
Truth is, however, exactly the opposite. A cheap, resource-intensive masquerade.

Any other OS worldwide - in this stripped, absolutely clean config - would boot&run like a supersonic missile.
Not Vista, however, being the insanely overloaded slug it is.

I'm looking forward to throwing this POS off my harddrive again, my predictions not only have been hit dead-on, in many cases they have been exceeded (as usual, the curse of being a very analytical person).

The deeper I dig and the closer I look, the more dirt is becoming visible on Vista under its shiny hood

Mind you by the way, before I forgot to mention it, I've disabled quite a bit, sidebar, HD indexing. disabled UAC, disabled Windows Defender, disabled system restore, no hibernation stuff (diskclean up immediately recovered the hibernation file, 4Gb large!! lol). Things like that do speed the system up as well. Vista at stock isn't particularly 'clean'. Disabled one or two services like the search service, and similar basic services.

"A friend" has been using Windows 7 Ultimate RTM for a week now.  It blows away anything M$ has had on the market for a long time.

/edit - On a side note.....
@ Tim:  why don't you try easing up on your double+ postings  

IMHO Vista has long been overtaken by Win 8.

After all, Vista did work just like Win7 minus the lower GUI response times and the downright insane harddrive I/O. At least those issues could be migitated by an SSD.

I just installed a Vista on a system for data processing purposes and apart from the update marathon (which is another Vista insanity) - it chugs along nicely and is easy to setup.

In comparison, my new laptop shipped with Win8.1 preinstalled and after an entire weekend of trying to get it to do anything the way I wanted - it got booted straight from the HD and was replaced by Win7.

IMHO it's simply impossible to create something more inconsistent, impractical and downright unusable than Win8.
If there is a way to make it even worse - I wouldn't know how.

FalconFly wrote on 27.07.14 at 00:42:51:


I can give you one: Windows 2012 Server: It is absolutely insane what you have to do, to log yourself off if you're connected via remote desktop to one of these things, holy mother of Posseidon's salty a**