Damn XP is fast

[HavocXphere]

I've been using Vista for a few months now. Today I toyed around with XP SP3 in a VMware virtualised environment.

The thing that blew me away is just how damn fast XP feels compared to Vista...

Vista SP1:
2gb Ram
2 cores
Latest drivers
Tweaked services + loads of stuff disabled (Shadow copy etc)

XP SP3:
512mb RAM
1 core
Virtualized
No extra drivers installed
No tweaks

All of those things should put XP at a disadvantage speedwise, and yet it still pwns Vista in terms of perceived responsiveness. One gets used to Vista's slowness, but this contrast today makes me seriously think of joining the "XP to the bitter end" crew.

I'll be missing the Vista built-in search function though.

 

[Gnome]

Formatted yesterday and installed my Windows XP integrated with SP3 + IE7 + WMP11 and after tweaking it a bit boot time is about 10 seconds

Everything is sooo fast. My previous XP install was really slow but this time I disabled everything added to startup by drivers (Sound drivers had a utility, Video card, etc.) and disabled some services. Now it's blazing fast, even memory footprint with Firefox and Winamp running right now is 200MB (commit charge)

Windows XP ftw

 

[Pooky]

I found Vista to be faster.

 

[The_Techie]

Well, I'll continue to use Windows XP on my main computer for as long as it's a viable option

 

[d0b33]

Vista and XP perform the same for me, both are equally fast... although Vista boots a second slower

 

[HavocXphere]

Different virus checkers also slow things down.

This I have to concede. In the above post, the Vista has Avast running while XP does not (Since its a cloned VM anyway).

Could someone recommend me a good search tool for XP please. The XP search function is useless. Something that can do a real search, not like those desktop search things that only index a handful of files.

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

You should turn off the window animations in Vista, that is the main thing which slows down "percieved" speed when browsing around the explorer. Also some thumbnail loading etc can slow down the explorer quite a bit, in case you haven't tweaked all of those settings.

 

[antowan]

I found Vista to be faster.

Only if you are using the Earth Simulator in Yokahama, Japan...

 

[HavocXphere]

You should turn off the window animations in Vista, that is the main thing which slows down "percieved" speed when browsing around the explorer. Also some thumbnail loading etc can slow down the explorer quite a bit, in case you haven't tweaked all of those settings.

Thanks, that made a difference. You wouldn't happen to have a fix for the rubbish network performance too? (<7MB/s on a link that can do 12,5MB/s)...pushing my luck, I know

 

[Gnome]

not like those desktop search things

Google Desktop is awesome! I haven't used Vista yet but there isn't anything that Google desktop couldn't find properly on my PC.

 

[Random717]

Could someone recommend me a good search tool for XP please. The XP search function is useless. Something that can do a real search, not like those desktop search things that only index a handful of files.

Windows 2000 search?

# Open the registry editor by clicking on Start > Run, type "regedit" and click Ok.
# Navigate to:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CabinetState]
# On the right pane, double click on "Use Search Asst" and change its value data to "no".

 

[Brawler]

yeah also gone back to XP. Had Vista on main pc & notebook for about 6 months and was quite happy except for the slowness on the laptop but eventually program compatibility made me chage back to XP. I am not one for a fancy desktop, plain ond classic windows theme FTW.

 

[medicnick83]

XP is very fast on my PC too, but you know what... Tea can do that!

 

[HavocXphere]

Google Desktop is awesome! I haven't used Vista yet but there isn't anything that Google desktop couldn't find properly on my PC.

Google Desktop indexes 70 000 files. I've got maybe 1 000 000 files on my PC. So when I'm hunting for say uxtheme.dll, 70k just doesn't cut it.

Random717: I thing one can achieve that without reg hacks. In the search dialog->Change preference->Change files and folder search behaviour->Advanced.

Normal XP search is just not good enough. e.g. I've got a bunch of delphi source files on my pc. The extension is *.pas. Every single one of those contains the word "function" multiple times, yet windows cannot find any of them with the "find word in file" feature.

This is quite reproducible:
Switch on "Show file extensions" under Tools-Folder Options-View.
Create a file "Testing.pas"
Write "function" into the file
Do a search in that folder with a file mask of *.* and "function" in the word in file box.

Results: Windows finds nothing.

 

[stoke]

Methinks gdiza hath been converted to the DARK side.
Yup, windows XP search is fatally flawed.

 

[Gnome]

Google Desktop indexes 70 000 files. I've got maybe 1 000 000 files on my PC. So when I'm hunting for say uxtheme.dll, 70k just doesn't cut it.

Hmm, really? Didn't know about the limit, I'll have a look...

EDIT: I see what you mean, got this from Google Desktop FAQ:

Before finding the file, Google Desktop reached its file indexing limit. Desktop will only index 100,000 files per drive during the initial indexing period. If you have more than 100,000 files in a particular drive, Google Desktop will not index all of them during this initial period. However, Google Desktop will add files to your index during real-time indexing if you move or open them.

 

[HavocXphere]

Hmm, really? Didn't know about the limit, I'll have a look...

Not a limit per se, but it only indexes certain types of files. Like .doc etc. That's fine for office use, but not if you're looking for a dll file.

 

[Gnome]

Not a limit per se, but it only indexes certain types of files. Like .doc etc. That's fine for office use, but not if you're looking for a dll file.

Windows search?

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

Thanks, that made a difference. You wouldn't happen to have a fix for the rubbish network performance too? (<7MB/s on a link that can do 12,5MB/s)...pushing my luck, I know

Not exactly, all I know of is SP1.

 

[HavocXphere]

Windows search?

Google search and all the other desktop searches that I know of. The Indexing part of windows search too. Its that way by design and there is nothing wrong with it...its just not useful to me if I'm looking for obscure files.

Not exactly, all I know of is SP1.

Was worth a try...