Vista Slowness

[Guest]

I recently purchased a new pc with Vista Premium Home package and noticed
right off the bat that it seems to be slow or clunky.
I noted that the pc has 1 gig of ram and wanted to know if I really need to
add more ram for Vista to work well.
Does Vista need more ram?

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

I recently purchased a new pc with Vista Premium Home package and noticed
right off the bat that it seems to be slow or clunky.
I noted that the pc has 1 gig of ram and wanted to know if I really need
to
add more ram for Vista to work well.
Does Vista need more ram?

Yes, Vista is pretty slow. I have a very fast PC with RAID-0 WD Raptor
drives, and it still doesn't feel particularly fast with Vista. Some of
this slowness may be addressed in the future, with updates.

One gigabyte of RAM is really the minimum you should be running Vista with.
Things will be faster with an additional gig, especially if you have more
than one or two applications running at the same time.

ss.

 

[PvdG42]

I recently purchased a new pc with Vista Premium Home package and noticed
right off the bat that it seems to be slow or clunky.
I noted that the pc has 1 gig of ram and wanted to know if I really need
to
add more ram for Vista to work well.
Does Vista need more ram?

Rest of the PC specs, please. Provide make and model. Desktop or laptop?
Before considering more RAM, what kinds of software came installed on the
PC, and what starts automatically when you boot?
I'm asking because I purchased a new laptop a while back and spent the first
few hours removing all the "junkware" the manufacturer had installed.

In general, I'd say that an extra Gig of memory would be a good thing,
especially as DDR2 memory is insanely cheap right now.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

The IE7 phishing filter slows the loading of websites, but can be turned off
in IE7 tools..

File indexing is initially slow, but gets better as time goes on.. however,
sometimes Vista seems to forget and will inexplicably slow up again on
occasion..

Network file transfer is generally slow, but can surprise now and again..

As with XP, it takes a little time to bed in..

I recently purchased a new pc with Vista Premium Home package and noticed
right off the bat that it seems to be slow or clunky.
I noted that the pc has 1 gig of ram and wanted to know if I really need
to
add more ram for Vista to work well.
Does Vista need more ram?

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[nsag]

Extra RAM will not speed up Vista hard drive operations which are time by
your wrist watch slower than identical operations in XP. This includes basic
chores like installing programs, program startup, moving files, etc.
Extra RAM can not solve Vista's fatal networking flaws.
Extra RAM should help in operations like processing large files in
Photoshop, video editing, games.
More RAM will not make any difference in things like word processing, web
surfing etc unless you have too many background programs running needlessly,
which most people do. Even then the differences will not be startling.

 

[carl feredeck]

As with XP, it takes a little time to bed in..

More MVP Vista propaganda? You know everyone who has brains can see right
through you.

Vista is crap and its slow.. XP is far faster on the same hardware...

I think you need a 4 core to get the same response from vista compared with
a single core and XP.

 

[carl feredeck]

I did see however a chart showing that 2 gigs did have a significant
improvment over 1

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

It does need a little time..

It is not crap but does undoubtedly have issues..

The issues do not affect everything in Vista..

Win 2000 was faster than XP on the same hardware..

Quad core does not improve network transfer rates.. that has yet to be
fixed..

Some can see right through you..

More MVP Vista propaganda? You know everyone who has brains can see right
through you.

Vista is crap and its slow.. XP is far faster on the same hardware...

I think you need a 4 core to get the same response from vista compared
with a single core and XP.

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Depending on what you do, more RAM may help.
Many feel 1 GB is the minimum with 2 GB being necessary for some.
For my desktop, 1 GB is insufficient, but it will run.

Find out what is running at startup.
It is normal for the OEMs to have a lot of unnecessary programs
running at start-up.
Look in the Control Panel by "Programs" and see if there is anything
you do not need installed.
Often the OEMs have many of these running by default.

Do you have Norton AV installed?
If so you will probably see a performance gain if you uninstall it and
install Nod 32 or the free AVG.

 

[Ian Betts]

I have both sitting side by side and I defy anyone to time any appreciable
difference in any operation. My network have no fatal flaws that I have
been able to discern. The only slowness is caused by Virus protectors,
firewalls and unnecessary program loading,

 

[Sue]

More MVP Vista propaganda? You know everyone who has brains can see right
through you.

Vista is crap and its slow.. XP is far faster on the same hardware...

I think you need a 4 core to get the same response from vista compared
with a single core and XP.

Oh I don't know about that. I'm college educated (4 year degree) with almost
30 years experience with PCs (started with an Apple IIe with 128K of RAM
running DOS), who's currently running Vista on a dual core 2.2.GHz machine
with 2gigs of RAM and I have no problems at all.

Sue

 

[Sue]

Do you have Norton AV installed?
If so you will probably see a performance gain if you uninstall it and
install Nod 32 or the free AVG.

Norton Internet Security came preloaded on my desktop and my laptop. I
immediately uninstalled it and installed AVG and AdAware SE instead. NIS has
to be one of the worst pieces of software ever!

Sue

 

[Bill Yanaire]

I think Carl, you need to go over to the Ubuntu group. Your views are
skewed !

 

[Charles W Davis]

As a volunteer for our computer club, I routinely uninstall Norton and
install AVG and AdAware SE (they have a new version).
As for the comment above regarding using the wrist watch to time operatons,
come on!
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128305-page,1-c,vistalonghorn/article.html

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I recently purchased a new pc with Vista Premium Home package and noticed
right off the bat that it seems to be slow or clunky.
I noted that the pc has 1 gig of ram and wanted to know if I really need to
add more ram for Vista to work well.
Does Vista need more ram?

There's no answer that's right for everybody. Just as with other
versions of Windows, how much RAM you need for good performance
depends on what apps you run. Most people need at least 1GB, but some
need more.

 

[Sue]

More MVP Vista propaganda? You know everyone who has brains can see right
through you.

Vista is crap and its slow.. XP is far faster on the same hardware...

I think you need a 4 core to get the same response from vista compared
with a single core and XP.

Oh I don't know about that. I'm college educated (4 year degree) with almost
30 years experience with PCs (started with an Apple IIe with 128K of RAM
running DOS), who's currently running Vista on a dual core 2.2.GHz machine
with 2gigs of RAM and I have no problems at all.

Sue

 

[Sue]

Do you have Norton AV installed?
If so you will probably see a performance gain if you uninstall it and
install Nod 32 or the free AVG.

Norton Internet Security came preloaded on my desktop and my laptop. I
immediately uninstalled it and installed AVG and AdAware SE instead. NIS has
to be one of the worst pieces of software ever!

Sue

 

[hls]

to be one of the worst pieces of software ever!

Sue

We agree on THAT! Symantec has some crow to eat.

I had trouble with Norton Antivirus for several years with unusual things
"just happening" with no warning. Once when I called Norton in
Whereverthehellitis,
India, they told me I obviously had a "wurrum" and that for $79 they would
fix online
for me. I asked why I should have a "wurrum" as I have been using their
'plenty fine'
software. "Well, sah, you have a wurrum." was the reply.

It turns out one of the defaults of the software had become corrupted and
the
program was just misbehaving.

I just bought a new computer preloaded with Vista 32 Home. I dont like it,
and
my peripherals dont work as there are no upgraded drivers for them. I am
not
at all happy, but dont want to downgrade to earlier Windows yet, as I am
afraid
I will get off into a quagmire.

Any comments appreciated.

 

[PvdG42]

I recently purchased a new pc with Vista Premium Home package and noticed
right off the bat that it seems to be slow or clunky.
I noted that the pc has 1 gig of ram and wanted to know if I really need
to
add more ram for Vista to work well.
Does Vista need more ram?

Rest of the PC specs, please. Provide make and model. Desktop or laptop?
Before considering more RAM, what kinds of software came installed on the
PC, and what starts automatically when you boot?
I'm asking because I purchased a new laptop a while back and spent the first
few hours removing all the "junkware" the manufacturer had installed.

In general, I'd say that an extra Gig of memory would be a good thing,
especially as DDR2 memory is insanely cheap right now.

 

[PvdG42]

We agree on THAT! Symantec has some crow to eat.

I had trouble with Norton Antivirus for several years with unusual things
"just happening" with no warning. Once when I called Norton in
Whereverthehellitis,
India, they told me I obviously had a "wurrum" and that for $79 they would
fix online
for me. I asked why I should have a "wurrum" as I have been using their
'plenty fine'
software. "Well, sah, you have a wurrum." was the reply.

It turns out one of the defaults of the software had become corrupted and
the
program was just misbehaving.

I just bought a new computer preloaded with Vista 32 Home. I dont like
it, and
my peripherals dont work as there are no upgraded drivers for them. I am
not
at all happy, but dont want to downgrade to earlier Windows yet, as I am
afraid
I will get off into a quagmire.

Any comments appreciated.

Perhaps if you could provide details of the peripherals that are causing you
problems, somebody here could offer specific suggestions or solutions.
As it is, we don't have much to go on.