Save XP! - Page 2

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You should run HD tune on that USB stick. I don't know what Vista needs as a minimum to call it ready boost, but from what I have seen most USB flash RAM has abysmal read times compared to the HD. I'm not even sure Vista would use it, given the fact that you have 4GB of RAM, but it wouldn't surprise me. I used RC1 and I don't remember it taking 18sec to get to the home page. Something is wrong, and that's coming from a Vista disliker. I didn't want to be a hater.

Well, you are either a victim of your poor writing, or lack of comprehension.

First of all, let's look at the first part of your statement, "...you have to authorize XP through the internet..." You have obviously missed two of the three bullet points under Activation Methods (by the way, "activation" is the proper term) heading in the KB article you linked. And while mention of the modems, in today's day and age, makes me chuckle a bit, phones are not going away any time soon.


Second, and mainly, is your implication that MS can "shut off" XP via the activation tool. I can't really tell definitely enough what nonsense you mean by that - whether it would be denying activation after a legitimate purchase or that somehow after activation they could use it to shut off your machine - both statements are utterly ridiculous, although the latter is doubly so.

Activation is a tool for validation of authenticity. As in piracy prevention (less than ideal, which is why that behavior is changing in the upcoming SP). To think that MS would be able to deny activation for a legitimately purchased copy is ridiculous and would most likely be a violation of EULA (I would think, although it is quite surprising what those EULAs say with respect to who actually owns the software and what rights they have).

With respect to "shutting off" (again, whatever that could mean) a validated copy of XP - well that just is not how activation works, so...

Lastly, as people have pointed out already, older Windows versions really die when MS stops to support them (via service packs). The installed base is much much more of an important indicator than new installations.

And upgrading to Vista in the enterprise (Zorg) makes a ton of sense because the performance hit on productivity applications on adequately configured systems is negligible, while the ability to deploy and manage client installations is much improved over XP. Additionally, the security enhancements alone are well worth it. If you think (like I do) they are worth it on the home user end, it is certainly so when you have thousands of often borderline moronic users to manage.

So no, DX10 is not the only reason for upgrading to Vista... But I digress.

So, back to the subject; pip_seeker, once again, do you have any clue of what you are talking about, or do you just like to mix lack of understanding and poorly formed opinions in a public forum?

Vista sucks butt.
90 days after Vista went on sale MS said it would end -all- support for it at the end of December 2008.

Vista is this decades ME.
http://www.blip.tv/file/340692

As a gamer nobody -needs- Vista for DX10 gfx...use Google.

I would say that Windows ME is considerably worse than you.

That all sounds real good but I don't believe it. Vista uses the additional extremely slower Ready Boost RAM to load additional stuff that it can't load into existing RAM for SuperFetch. The idea behind this is that people with older machines that won't accept more RAM can use Ready Boost to make up the difference, thereby eliminating the need for an upgrade. Now whether they will exhaust all of the low latency high bandwidth RAM first is a matter of discussion. We don't know how well they have programmed their OS and only testing will tell, although I haven't seen any. Payola anyone? More of a concern is the relative speed of the USB RAM, which is generally very slow compared to the HD speed. Don't misunderstand me I am a proponent of low seek times, but if your throughput is 10MB/sec it means nothing. So as I said earlier, with 4GB of RAM you should probably unplug your thumb drive, or at least determine it's speed relative to your HD.

But don't listen to me I use XP and have a Raptor.

The save XP campaign won't do anything. And as said earlier, XP is good until at least 2012. Take a deep breath it will be OK.

register? activate? wtf is that????

and yes I still get all my updates..., nuff said

I'll probably get Vista at some point for DX 10, but I'm hoping the next Windows OS will be a much greater departure, like it being only 64 bit, and moving away from some of the legacy support to try something new.

My friends and I refer to Vista as a bloatware downgrade from XP. I will run Vista only when I have no other choice. I never have any security issues with XP. Most other minor features on Vista I might really want I can get as applet for XP. Maybe Vista support from third parties is not universal yet because they agree with this. UI for certain settings in Vista is a step backwards, with rediculous 'wizard-like' procedures instead of much better xp controls. If Vista is better in any particular ways, the sum of them does not add up to better overall. If it had better controls and you could fully customize and streamline it, maybe it would be ok. But they dont want you to have that control, a step towards a mac-like mentality but without the elegance.

pp40: I have the same problem. We're using a Cisco VPN to communicate with the corporate intranet from overseas work sites. There's some kind of incompatibility with the Cisco VPN and Vista. We just got a bunch of laptops that company IT downgraded from Vista to XP.

Hear hear.

A much better comparison would be Win95

every major new system from them causes the same kind of retaliation, resistance to move on, complaining about it at home then accepting it there, the stronger complaints about it at work, then eventually it makes its way into our work sites as well.....
soon enough, all thats left are the wierdos and geek still running "that OLD o/s" and the few even weirder ones wandering places like BestBuy wondering why they cant buy a copy of XP.

I said being able to use 4GB is possible with Vista but didn't specify 32 bit. It's true that the limit of a 32bit OS is 4GB of addressable memory. Where Vista has an advantage is that it's 64bit version is a legit OS comparared to XPx64. Going from Vista32->Vista64(Ultimate comes with both versions) is a seemless transition. In my experience XP Pro -> XPx64 is a nightmare.

Also I think the analogy to Win95 is very accurate. I remember when it came out people were screaming that it was the end of the world. I had to install it in a hidden directory on my PC because I was only 14 and my parents threatend me against trying to put it on the family PC. I have fond memories of sneaking around late at night, having to shut down Windows 3.11 then open 95 through DOS in order to play my DX games.

The funniest thing to me is I am not sure if they will stop selling enterprise licences, too. 'Cause methinks if that's the case than they will extend it (again) because a bunch of (poorly programmed, crappy) enterprise software still doesn't run properly on Vista, and enterprises would freak.

Purplerat,

My bad, I seem to assume everyone uses 32 bit, because that's the only type I've ever used .

Right now, it's still based on who needs what. Hardcore gamers will want Vista because of DX10, but otherwise you can still stick with XP. Hell, people still use Win95 because if you only surf the net and use MSN, you don't need anything more. I just wish that XP Pro didn't suddenly drop out of store shelves like it did, I have to order a copy online if I want to install it on a new computer now.

I'm glad you disagree with me because you said exactly what I did. I suggest you read my post again. I think you are confused that I believe Ready Boost and Super Fetch are the same thing, but that's not what I said. I said that the Ready Boost was a poor attempt at adding RAM, mostly for those that have the max RAM installed on their machine (or are too cheap to buy more). The additional RAM was needed to support the new Super Fetch feature because it is a RAM hog. Additionally my concern is the relative speed of the USB flash RAM in relation to the hard drive that it is supposed to be replacing (disk caching), because flash RAM thumb drives can be very slow and the reduced seek times are not enough to compensate for the low throughput. With 4meg of RAM installed, the Ready Boost USB flash RAM isn't needed anyway, and may even slow things down depending on how Vista allocates the RAM and flash RAM space.

Does that make more sense?

Well, no. I didn't say you thought ReadyBoost and SuperFetch were the same. I said that ReadyBoost is meant to provide a way to cache disk IO. SuperFetch serves an entirely different purpose. ReadyBoost does not replace RAM or adding RAM. It addresses the limitation of the IO interface, not lack of RAM. Further, they are smart about implementation and are selective with when they read cache from the ReadyBoost media vs. the disk drive. If the request is for small chunks of data in non-sequential patterns, they use the flash because random seek blows low-spindle HDDs out of the water. If the request is for a larger chunk that is sequential, then it goes straight to HDD without even trying to do a cache lookup. So you really get the best of both worlds. This is nothing more than larger HDD cache (adding HDD cache vs. adding RAM in your example), if you will, and again, not a replacement nor a supplement for RAM. That's the part of your post I was addressing. Plus the sustained transfer rate limitation of flash.

By the way SuperFetch is not a memory hog - it is a memory user. It does not have an exclusive allocation of RAM and having SuperFetch use it does not prevent apps from using it when needed - if an app request comes for memory, it is quickly allocated to the app and SuperFetch data is purged, I think.

OK were talking semantics here. If you have enough RAM then there will be no need to write to the HD, at least in theory. I know that is BS with XP, because even though I have 1.5G free it still pages to the HD. Adding more RAM is better than adding Ready Boost flash RAM because it is faster and would also limit the need to write to the HD. Any decent drive will give you 60MB/sec read throughput, and many thumb drives will give you 2-10MB/sec. So I don't agree that the reduced latency of the thumb drive will compensate for the reduced throughput. The write throughput differential is even larger. I do agree that if you have POS notebook 5400 RPM drive with a throughput of 15-20MB/sec it could be useful, but more RAM is still preferable.

I know that Super Fetch will give up it's RAM for other processes that need it, and have posted same here before. But the idea of Ready Boost is to provide additional RAM albeit slower flash RAM to minimize disk page writes/reads. I would imagine that this would include, when not used for other programs, space to write additional programs for Super Fetch.

This is from Windows Vista: Features Explained: Performance

Yeah, kind of semantics, I guess. But no, RB does not prefetch SF - way too slow for that (particularly since much of SF is sequential in pattern. And yes, if you have enough RAM, it will do its caching there, but really, ReadyBoost was designed for the slower spindle notebook drives.

And I think you are missing the throughput point. ReadyBoost is never designed to help you with those situations. Ever. That's why those requests are not even sent to the flash RB drive. Once the service thinks you are attempting a sequential access, it will send it directly to HD. If it's small chunks of randomly accessed data, though, it will go to the cache.

Btw, c'mon, trust Russinovich much more than MS marketing (my link vs. your link). Russinovich is the man. He knew more about kernel than MS did even before he was working for them.

It's already been shown were in gaming Vista has come from being far behind XP to just about dead even in just the first few months.

[url]http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] ce_update/[/url]

People just like to ignore the facts.

yeh,yeah,yeah, Its true but you will be able to play Crysis on ULTRA on XP before you can do it in Vista . You can play on high on XP too with a few hacks.

Relax

http://www.reactos.org

Can't decide if they are mad Geniuses (Genii??) or just mad.

Thats been out for a while actually. works OK but not the same as native XP/2000

^True, but the fact still stands is that DX10 so far has not offered much improvement over DX9.

Basically the way I see it is:
Current Gen hardware is adequate for vista
Previous Gen hardware is going to suffer
Next Gen hardware is going to fully utilize vista fully
Now, I am using XP Pro as my main OS, but I have Vista x64 installed.
I have a Previous Gen setup, it runs ok, just
If you look at all the major step ups in OS you will notice a significant change of demands
eg 98-xp more ram, bigger cpu required for high performance
while xp-vista isnt such a huge move as 98-xp was, its still a major revamp of the underlying core of windows.
I grumble all the time about how vista performs worse than xp.
I still grumble how xp sp2 performs worse than un-patched xp.
Its gonna take time but eventually everyone will move up, the main thing that pings me off was MS choice to only allow DX10 on vista (even though DX10 hasnt really shown its full benefits to me yet).
Once we hit next gen chipsets with the same gen processors vista will seem great. Until then most of us will be satisfied with XP.

I installed the beta version of SP1 and it increased Vista start up time as well as the overall speed of my system. Don't know why they would remove the speed gain from the finished version of SP1.......