Jody Thornton

Hey MagicAndre1981: You mention that Windows 7 is worse than Vista because its SuperFetch is less aggressive? I would be cautious with that statement. Both times I have installed Vista, I have found there to be better performance using just conventional prefetch. I have seen other systems showing this as well. Perhaps, the system was slow in relinquishing memory from SuperFetch use to regular application use, thus causing a bottleneck. Who's to say? I would say that in practice, Windows 7 outperforms Windows Vista in this area.

Oh a biggie... Windows 7 now allows you to cleanup the update files stored in Windows Side-By-Side, thus saving some disk space.

To answer your original question, here's what at least I know you lose the ability to do by not going to Windows 7 (not deal breakers at all): No pinned taskbar. The tasks along the bottom operate akin to XP. No ability to upgrade beyond Internet Explorer 9 (v10 and 11 run on 7) Changes to Control Panel (no true classic mode, which is why I like Vista a little better) Faster Disk I/O (Even with Vista on SP2, I admit that Windows 7 seems faster for file copy/move operations, though my experiences are anecdotal) Wordpad with ribbon-mode interface Changes to Superfetch to make it not as aggressive on RAM usage Changes to Explorer interface and Search (any others?...)

I'm also not alone on this exact issue. http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Workstations-z-series-xw-series/xw8200-running-soooo-slow-Vista-64/td-p/1080576#.Uv-qF85tZ_c

By the way submix8c, I re-read my response, and it sounded a little non-appreciative. I didn't intend it to sound that way.

With DirectX 11, that feature is disabled (unlike XP). Apparently Vista and 7 render to the screen in a new way, thereby disallowing the defeat of Hardware Acceleration). Also keep in mind, it works as intended when memory remapping is defeated, so I don't think a band-aid solution should be necessary. It should work on x64 with memory remapping enabled Not that I don't appreciate your tips submix8c. I'm justy saying I hope to find a true cause and solution, that's all.

Well I wouldn't be to install 32 bit drivers on an x64 system anyway, would I? I'd have rampant errors in Event Viewer I'd think. However, I will check to be absolutely sure.

A video issue that I've come across is causing me a bit of grief: On my Vista x64 Ultimate installation, I use a fairly capable PCI video card (an old bus I know, but it works for me no worse than any PCI-E card I've ever stuck in it.). I'm using an nVidia GeForce 6200 on an HP xw8200 Workstation. I have 512 mb of RAM on the video adapter and 7 gb of DDR2 system RAM on the board. Here's what happens (and it took me QUITE awhile to trace down this iussue). When I enable memory remapping in the Bios to above 4G, the video becomes jerky when there is motion (scrolling or dragging windows). It will stop moving momentarily and resume mvement, or else it leaves severe trails while moving. In the process of tracking this issue down, I swapped out the card with two PCI-E cards: an ATI Radeon Sapphire of sorts and an nVidia Quadro 1300. I had the same symptoms on the Quadro, but not the ATI. Both of these cards had 128 mb of onboard memory. The ATI seemed to overheat mind you, as I received the appropriate beep codes every now and then. So I didn't want to continue using it. On both nVidia cards however, I found that if I defeated the memory remapping feature, the video worked flawlessly. My system ran with aplomb (even with Aero): HOWEVER, I only have use of 3 gb of RAM. Oh sure, if I go to "Computer" properties, it says 7 gb, but if I go to Task Manager -> Performance, it shows total swap (really memory [i have my swap file disabled]) as 3003 mb. As soon as I renable memory remapping in the bios, my total commit size returns to 6597 mb (7 gb minus video which is correct). However, the jerky video resumes. Last year, I performed a test installation of Vista x64 and at the time, I was using an nVidia GeForce MX 4000 PCI card with 64 mb of RAM. Although it was a tad challeged with Aero, it worked PERFECTLY with Vista Basic, which I was happy with. That card began to fail shortly thereafter, so I replaced it with the GeForce 6200. Keep in mind that the nVidia card that I am now experiencing these issues with under Vista x64 Ultimate, worked PERFECTLY with XP Pro x64 Edition. I have tried multiple drivers (the WDDM drivers supplied with Vista, and several Forceware generations including the latest and greatest.) I have ensured 3D generation was always set to "Performance" I wonder what gives?

Well I've run into recent video issues that I hadn't initially detected, so now off to the Vista forum to post. At this very moment, I am starting to miss XP...lol.

I wonder though that as Pale Moon, Seamonkey and Waterfox update their Gecko engines though, will they get the ads in their newer builds too? And what if I want my "new tab" page to be my home page?

Actaully, it's not so bad on "the other side". Once I've gotten Windows Vista "tweaked", the performance is definintely up there with what I had with Windows XP x64 Edition. For now, I'm sticking it out with IE 9 and Kingsoft Office. I'm enjoying the user experience.

Thanks for the help. I'll look into vLite. Highly recommended. I have a third installation finally tailored to how I like and I've been using it for a few days now. I have SP2, another 214 post SP2 updates and IE 9 all integrated.

Hmmm emClient and a few others look promising, but some of these were more out of date than Windows Mail to be honest. The truth is, Windows Mail along with Calendar and Contacts works well together in Windows Vista. So I am going to stick with it, but I appreciate all of your advice and tips folks. Thanks!

Actually I've been running it with AdBlockPlus. IE 9 even works well with Google Mail. Sure the yellow warning bar threatening the end of support appears, but it all works well.

It was integrated. I just thought not bering shown in yellow meant it did not integrate. My misunderstanding.

I actually had integrated it already. I just thought that because I hadn't seen it in yellow, it wasn't already integrated.

I've frquented this place for quite awhile now, however I've never formally introduced myself. My name is Jody and I hail from Stoney Creek, Ontario (a suburb of Hamilton, er that's 40 minutes or so south of Toronto) So anyone else here from Southern Ontario?

Doesn't matter, I figured it all out.

Wow; not a single response. Thank goodness I figured things out myself.

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I'd like to know in more detail what issues you've experienced. What's happened with me is that I'm running vLite using a Windows Vista x64 Ultimate disc with SP2 built in. I'm trying to integrate as many post-SP2 updates as I can, in addition to IE 9. I have the .msu file for IE9 for Vista. It appears that about 27 of the updates, including IE9 will not integrate. There are no errors, but they do not appear in yellow after I've built the image and restarted vLite. I've downloaded the updates with WSUS Offline. Most are .cab format and I even extracted the IE9 cab from the .msu file I downloaded. It doesn't help.

I will certainly check those out. Thanks!

I've downloaded a crap load of Vista x64 updates from WSUS Offline. 26 of them will not integrate and IE9 will not integrate in MSU format. I even tried extracting the CAB, but no go. What am I doing wrong?

No that's fair. I just want to know if Windows Mail would be as secure as say Outlook 2007. I really don't want to move to Office 2007 (I'm not a ribbon fan). So I've moved to Kingsoft Office 2012, which provides excellent Office 2007 compatibility for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I thought I would round out the suite with Windows Mail and Calendar. What I would REALLY love is that if there was a way to continue using Office 2003. I really love the suite as is, including Outlook. I just wish I could keep using it. I simply wish there was a way to keep it "reasonably" secure. I think most times that security is down to how the user behaves by not opening the wrong attachments or links.

I really liked the comment from "Nine54" on Paul's site. He made some good points about the outdated notion of "Windows Everywhere" On the thought of his response (which I cannot seem to paste here, so go read it first) why doesn't Microsoft focus on Explorer-based Windows on the desktop and notebook, while placing an RT-based Metro UI on Surface devices or maybe even other ARM devices like Chromebooks?

Yes I realize that Windows Mail is the next "Outlook Express" and has less faetures than Outlook. Is it any less secure though. I figured that using the Windows Calendar and Windows Mail would give me most of the features I need. I haven't tried emClient to my memory, but I HATED Zimbra. Outlook 2003 was MUCH faster.