Tuesday, February 5th 2008
Microsoft Releases List of Most Notable Changes in Windows Vista SP1
The 21 page document can be found in both XLS and PDF format.
Both can be downloaded from Microsoft.
In case you don't feel like sifting through 21 pages of Microsoft's PR team at their finest, I took the liberty of summing up the summary. Basically, Microsoft took in a lot of user feedback, and mushed it into Vista Service Pack 1. Service Pack 1 addresses a ton of specific reliability and performance issues. Microsoft even went so far as to re-do the Vista kernel.
Source:
Neowin.net
Both can be downloaded from Microsoft.
In case you don't feel like sifting through 21 pages of Microsoft's PR team at their finest, I took the liberty of summing up the summary. Basically, Microsoft took in a lot of user feedback, and mushed it into Vista Service Pack 1. Service Pack 1 addresses a ton of specific reliability and performance issues. Microsoft even went so far as to re-do the Vista kernel.
61 Comments on Microsoft Releases List of Most Notable Changes in Windows Vista SP1
Has Microsoft put Vista on a diet yet.
I haven't considered buying this operating system yet because of it's "appetite for RAM"
People put ram in their machines for the os to use,then complain when it uses it.I dont care how much of my ram vista uses,as long as it does what i want.
Changes to the kernal? mmm,i'm gonna have a read of the pdf later.
I'm sure you're an Apple user though, and you're used to being able to run your OS without it using anything close to 50%, but the fact is Vista isn't as bad with ram as you're making it out to be.
my games all ready take 1.52gig now and more in the pagefile yet another gig+ pending on game. Unless Riva Tuner is false lol.
They also did some improvements on SuperFetch and readyboost as well.
As soon as another application needs it though, like a Game, it instantly gives it all back up so that the game can use it.
EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS NOW? Its called superfetch. look it up.
If you even read the the improvment list for SP1 it mentions them improving SuperFetch.
Here it goes
"· Includes improvements to Windows Superfetch™ that help to further improve resume times, in many environments."
Here is what it does as explained by Microsoft...
"Windows SuperFetch enables programs and files to load much faster than they would on Windows XP–based PCs.
When you're not actively using your computer, background tasks—including automatic backup programs and antivirus scans—run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take up system memory space that your programs had been using. On Windows XP–based PCs, this can slow progress to a crawl when you attempt to resume work.
SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also runs background programs, like disk defragmenting and Windows Defender, at low priority so that they can do their job but your work always comes first."
and by wiki
"SuperFetch is a technology that speeds up the loading of commonly-used files and programs by pre-loading them into memory. It's based on the "prefetcher" function in Windows XP. [7]
The intent is to improve performance in situations where running an anti-virus scan or back-up utility would result in otherwise recently-used information being paged out to disk, or disposed from in-memory caches, resulting in lengthy delays when a user comes back to their computer after a period of non-use.
SuperFetch also keeps track of what times of day that applications are used, which allows it to intelligently pre-load information that is expected to be used in the near future.
While the necessary files by default are loaded into main memory, Windows Vista has the ability to instead use alternate storage methods, such as USB flash drives, which, though not as fast as RAM, often can be significantly faster than a hard disk drive, specifically for non-sequential I/O as there is virtually no random seek delay; thereby freeing up main memory."
You can shut off this feature, but there is no point in doing that.
Many people have bragged about how they got their system stripped down to only using 100MB of RAM (or whatever). This is great? A lean mean OS that has nothing loaded into RAM, so when you want to do something the OS has to go to the HD anyway.
It's not that Vista overuses RAM, it is that it will load up everything it thinks you want to try to facilitate the optimum performance for you.
Let's be honest. 2GB of RAM is not the standard. If you have 1GB, Vista will work fine. If you have 512MB, stay with something else.
If you have less than 512MB, upgrade or use DOS for crying out loud.
Minor Disclaimer : If you shut off SF and sit at the desktop and do nothing, Vista sill uses a fair amount of RAM for the default processes. But so what? What good is a computer that you don't do anything with?
If you want to do that you may as well save yourself a lot of money and just buy cement block to sit on your computer desk. I hear they don't use any RAM at all !!!
The only other issue i found is that Premiere hangs at start now for quite a bit longer (Premiere 2.0 mid you). A fresh install may fix this though, I have not tried.