Vista from a power user's perspective. My experience.

stimpy · Post by **stimpy** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 9:23 pm

You're way too easy.

Falcon4 wrote:I think if you keep putting your quotes below your replies, my head is going to explode.

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 9:49 pm

That was a joke... of all people I figure you'd be able to see that.

DiggityBiggity · Post by **DiggityBiggity** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 11:52 pm

So... wait... you're saying there is a program on Vista that takes thumb drives and converts them into "virtual ram"?

Sounds teh ghey...

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:05 am

Somehow, yes. I have no idea what logic they seem to have been using (read: what they were smoking) but the simple fact is, flash is the EXACT opposite of what they're using it for: for some reason, something in every single Flash device I've ever used has made it horrible for random access performance, but great at sequential access. In other words, think of a hard drive with stepping-motor control instead of a voice coil (the old days).

Microsoft's site says that the technology is great because Flash is better at random-access than hard drives, and can get the data faster. Sure, maybe in Microsoftland. But in the real world that's about as real as Britney Spears' tits.

The properties page shows one of two screens - it does some kind of testing on the device to determine if it has the "performance characteristics required to speed up your computer" and if it passes, it gives you the on/off option, and if it doesn't, it only shows a "retest" button. I guess I got lucky - all my other Flash devices (SD cards, CF cards, USB hard drive... etc) fail the test. It does seem to, somehow, speed things up. In places where I would be waiting for the crap to come back off the swap file or get loaded back into memory, it's somehow just "there" already. Go figure...

DiggityBiggity · Post by **DiggityBiggity** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:20 am

Wow... I'm really interested in the technology behind that... Flash drives are NOT meant for that type of use at all... :scratch:

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:50 am

Vista problems squashed:

Networking problem has been mostly fixed. There's a new "feature" that helps improve performance on peoples' internet networks with crappy settings, a "dynamic tcp/ip receive window". Disabled it and, well, let's just say network performance is blazin' again.

Still have the 1394 problem, but, meh.

I haven't even bothered to run TreeSize on this thing and find out how much HDD space it's devouring, but hey. All's well that stays the fuck invisible, no?

The advantages thus far have seemed to outweigh the negatives. File operations within Windows Explorer have gotten a MUCH NEEDED update. The "conflict resolution" dialogs are a little oversized and goony, a little counterintuitive (click the actual writing of the option you choose? why no buttons or radio selectors?), but much needed. You can now choose to automatically rename conflicting filenames (e.g. merging two folders that both have an "untitled.png"), keep the old one and continue, rename it with the new one and continue, or just skip that file completely (errm, isn't that "keep"?). The animations during file copying have been greatly improved, eye candy wise. There's now a Details section with remaining size, count, and time. It also shows actual transfer speed in B/s, KB/s, MB/s, etc... very sweet. A preview was posted earlier.

Power management has taken a huge, much needed leap forward. For the first time ever I can actually take control over my CPU speed without using additional software, manage every possible detail that Windows has control over (it still can't software-control my screen brightness automatically, darn)... so when I unplug the cord, I know it's good to go on max battery life (about 20 minutes, yay! I need a new battery so bad...).

The new Start menu design and folder layout is so cool. Finally my Documents folder is more than just a repository of junk - the Music, Videos, and Pictures folders are now their own separate folders from Documents. I also have direct access to my "Falcon" folder (user account) from the Start menu, so I can get to Documents, Downloads, Videos, etc, straight from the Start menu without having them take extra space. It's gonna take a little getting used to - using the Start menu instead of having an overly cluttered desktop (desktop lol.JPG) - but I really should quit making my e-desktop look like my real desktop.

Anywho, the general idea is, Vista's probably going to be more decent than I thought it would be. It looks awesome, runs good (high CPU usage is because it slows the CPU down to 600MHz automatically when it's not needed! great idea), and... well, looks great too. Haha. Man, this thing kicks so much ass...

Pyrthian · Post by **Pyrthian** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 9:40 am

every generation of OS has more operating overhead than the previous. new hardware makes this work. if you want to use a new OS, use new hardware. 1394? lol, so your the guy useing that port..... :thumbleft:
I have no doubt that Vista installs nicely - windows installs have improved greatly in every generation. I love XP's preloads & remote installs. I cant wait to see how Vista goes.
I myself wont be getting Vista untill I have software that the requires it. Just like XP. never switched untill I had too.

The Dark Side of Will · Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:06 am

I think it's amusing that as computing power goes up, software overhead goes up. Consequently, tasks you do on a computer are NO FASTER than they were 11 years ago when I was in high scool. It still takes just as long to open Word as it used to, etc...

Kohburn · Post by **Kohburn** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:25 am

The Dark Side of Will wrote:I think it's amusing that as computing power goes up, software overhead goes up. Consequently, tasks you do on a computer are NO FASTER than they were 11 years ago when I was in high scool. It still takes just as long to open Word as it used to, etc...

some of that is just sloppy coding. there are many ways to code software but few know enough to write it the most efficient way.

on a side note if you ever run old pre-486 software on a new machine its blazing fast.

most of the rest of the speed is limited by the access speed of the hard drive loading into the ram and having enough ram to run the entire program without accessing the harddrive. raid drives help

Pyrthian · Post by **Pyrthian** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 11:09 am

The Dark Side of Will wrote:I think it's amusing that as computing power goes up, software overhead goes up. Consequently, tasks you do on a computer are NO FASTER than they were 11 years ago when I was in high scool. It still takes just as long to open Word as it used to, etc...

of course. theres always the "little things"
like animated smileys
animated avatars
pop up tool tips

yes, running old software on new hardware is funny. CPU basicly sits idle, except for the few moments you actually move the mouse or something.

while software bloat does exist - most of the oversize comes from helps files, languages files, graphics, & movies. beleive me when I say: spreadsheets havent changed much. but, they have gone from a single 720k floppy to a full 640M CD install. almost 1000X bloat. ability to insert graphics. links to an external database. animated help files. instructional videos. spell check. ability to link to external spreadsheets. smart menus. pop up help on cells & menus.

and, for a brief moment between DOS & Win95 - software actually shrunk for a brief moment, as they no longer needed to include their own audio, video & mouse drivers.

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:58 am

I don't fucking believe this. I just ran into my first seriously critical problem in Vista (aside from ATI being little fags about admitting bugs in their beta Vista drivers, and the MS default driver failing to detect my displays at ALL, often resulting in a blank screen, oy... so much to mention...).

And as usual, it involves Vista's overly-"secure" setup. You know, if MS would just fuck "security" and just add new features, PCs would be surpassing God by now.

First I had to find a hack/tweak to re-enable administrative shares (\\computer\c$). K, wonderful. I copy some programs from my computer to others, and run them. I have them read from and write to other computers - one of which being my Vista laptop (the computer doing the processing was an XP box). All's well and good but it's going too slow (over wireless) so I decide I should do it from somewhere else. I cancel it and start moving files around. When I go to process it on my computer... what the hell? I can't modify the half-baked file! I can't read the file, I can't view permissions on the file, I can't take ownership, I can't do SHIT! It's a 300mb brick on my hard drive. I go off to the original computer that created the file, and try to check permissions on it. Bupkis, it can't read the file either. Nobody can touch this file.

I run chkdsk and it finds no errors on my drive. My ass! So now I'm stuck, I've got a brick for a file on my drive... OY. Amongst the hundreds of other bugs in Vista... wasn't that what the beta testers were supposed to fix? I knew it would have bugs... but I didn't think they were this serious...

DINSTAAR · Post by **DINSTAAR** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:17 pm

As far as IE7 is concerned, there were a few key features that were missing, preventing me from switching back from Firefox - the last time I tried switching to IE7, these got in the way...

* URL searches, like "google [blah]" and "image [blah]"
* Right click, View Image
* Right click, Copy Image Location
* Inline spell check (MSWord-style)
* Lack of menu bar which is driving me fucking insane.

If you look in the upper right corner of the IE7 screen you will see a little gear marked tools. In the dropdown is the checkmark for adding the menu bar.

Mach10 · Post by **Mach10** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 3:03 pm

Good writeup...

But a friendly warning: ANYONE that actually comes out and calls themselves a "Power User" immediately goes onto my PTSBID list.

:salute:

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 3:07 pm

PTSBID? :scratch:

Is that to say that anyone that calls themselves a "mechanic" is giving themselves too much credit?

edit: People that should be in debt? :scratch:

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:35 pm

Aha! After a lot of Googling and even searching the MS knowledge base, I found this solution...

A File Cannot Be Deleted or Accessed on an NTFS Volume

The problem, basically, was that it was stuck in an NTFS state known as "pending deletion". The file was in use - probably by some crappy Vista thumbnailing crap that kept throwing up 10 "this program has crashed" errors a second - and when I told it to delete, Explorer did that instead.

After a whole day of fighting with this POS, I decided to shutdown and restart the computer as per MS's suggestion. Voila! The file disappeared.

Yay Vista!

Xanth · Post by **Xanth** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:28 pm

Lol, come on now, with microsoft a Restart is the first and usually best solution :thumbleft:

Mach10 · Post by **Mach10** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:10 pm

Falcon4 wrote:PTSBID? :scratch:

Is that to say that anyone that calls themselves a "mechanic" is giving themselves too much credit?

edit: People that should be in debt? :scratch:

"People To Shoot Before I Die."

The difference between "Power User" and "Mechanic" is that "Mechanic" isn't a pompous lame-ass buzz-word. No mechanic would call himself a "Motor Vehicle Manual Technologist." And if he did, he'd be right on the list beside you.
:thumbleft:

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:16 pm

So what would you call a person that has built every one of his PCs, despises pre-built systems, tweaks everything to perfection, runs safely without AV, spyware, or firewall protection, and just about never asks about a problem he can't solve himself?

A n00b? :thumbleft:

Mach10 · Post by **Mach10** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:24 pm

How about "Experienced User?"

It's accurate, and non-pretentious. :thumbleft:

Falcon4 · Post by **Falcon4** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 3:29 pm

Actually, that sounds just about exactly as pretentious as "power user". To be honest, so-called "experienced users" have been known - commercially and personally - as "power users" for many, many years, to set themselves apart from the people that consider a computer to be an "appliance". If I were to call myself an "experienced user", that honestly sounds - by the logic I'm understanding so far, to be just like I'm saying I'm smarter than everyone else. So which one is worse, really? :scratch: