Putting Vista in the fast lane

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Loading programs more quickly is something that Microsoft has been working on for years, dating back to the time of Windows 98's development.

With Vista, Microsoft plans to have a control panel that lets people check up on system performance. There will be a particular focus on start-up items, which are a key threat to a computer's "nice out-of-box experience," Aul said.

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"Some of those things are things that users legitimately wanted to have," said Aul. "Many of them are things that either they don't expect to be loaded...or even worse, it's malware or spyware that has snuck its way on."

Vista won't go as far as to automatically notify users that their system is getting slower, Aul said. However, those who take a peek will get information on how much their system has declined as well as suggestions as to which start-up items might be to blame.

"What performance diagnostics can do is look at your average boot time," Aul said. "When it sees...a big change, it can diagnose what caused that by looking at a number of different factors in the system. It will either identify a specific application if it's a new application or it will present you with a list of start-up apps."

Not all of the capabilities that Microsoft is planning for Vista are evident in the initial beta version that shipped last month. For example, the tools for monitoring the performance decline are in Beta 1, but the means for alerting users and being able to take action won't come until later test versions. The SuperFetch feature is in Beta 1, but Microsoft plans to improve on it by the next test version.

Indeed, analysts say it remains to be seen how much real world improvement will be delivered by the Vista changes

"On paper they all look really good," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. But, he said: "You have to run for a period of time under normal conditions to see if it is really going to make a difference."

[cjohn17]

Vista Cruiser: Start Me Up

"It might help on a 128MB system that flushes the cache away very
fast, but on a 1GB system I doubt it can make a significant
difference..." Will Vista Cruiser even run on 128MB of RAM? I doubt
it. Not according to the early benchmarks and sys. requirements I
saw.

Besides, the average user system will be clogged with adware and
spyware within days of installation. It's a feature!

[201293546946733175101343322673]

Who are "Average Users"?

For people who are dumb enough to "invite" adware and spyware to their computers, they should buy a Mac because dumb people should use dumb OS :)