NoelC

I've called Microsoft out on it on their forums. Let's see if they will make it faster in the next update or the one after that. It's hard to be too terribly upset, since 8.1 is quite stable now, and most I/O operations aren't slowed as much as the enumerations appear to be. Still, it would be nice if it were as fast as it could be AND stable. -Noel

A sampling of the sizes taken by some of my VMs, complete with their own disk images, snapshots, and whatever maintenance data take up the following space on the host system's drives. Not sure whether this proves or implies anything other than systems that get more attention tend to grow. 46 GB - XP Pro (32 bit) 21 GB - a really lean Vista Business (32 bit) 136 GB - Win 7 Ultimate (32 bit) 170 GB - Win 7 Ultimate (64 bit) 54 GB - Win 8 Enterprise (64 bit) 136 GB - Win 8.1 Enterprise (64 bit) -Noel

By the way, it was great of you to create a special version for me before, with just the Desktop thumbnail removed. That was very useful. Unfortunately I didn't end up using it long-term because the file mods break Windows system protection. Have you thought any more about maybe taking an alternate approach where you inject the changes at run-time, so that the Windows file(s) on disk don't end up changed? Maybe augment the tool with a little control panel that would allow a user to tweak the Alt-Tab functionality just the way he/she likes... That could also be a home for a [Donate] button... I know this is not trivial to do. It's just an idle thought.. -Noel

Do you code using Visual Studio? Have you noticed how Intellisense analyzes your code as you type? Pops up auto-completion prompts? Lets you know immediately about basic syntax issues like missing parens or misspelled keywords or variable names? It's almost irritating at first that it's so busy but by gosh if you embrace it, it can actually start to be useful and speed things up, making coding easier. It grows on you. I hardly ever finish typing a long variable name any more. I think that's a pretty cool use of excess computer power. -Noel

I thought it might be fun to compare some high tech then vs. now stories... -- Computers: I remember, for example, in 1987 at the company I worked at getting a $10,000 Dell 25 MHz 80386 system running Windows 3.1 for Workgroups and sporting 16 Megabytes of RAM with which to do system builds. Suddenly we could compile 50K lines of C code in under 30 minutes! And it would almost always finish without failure, as long as you ran only one build at a time. Sometimes you could get away with doing two, in separate DOS windows, but it took nearly twice as long so we usually didn't try. Productivity across the engineering group shot through the roof as we could actually build product software for testing several times a day. My last full software build on my current Dell Precision workstation with 12 cores at 3.47 GHz and 48 GB of RAM, here on my desk, running Windows 8.1 x64... 100 KLOC in... Well, see for yourself: 1>Build succeeded. 1> 1>Time Elapsed 00:00:07.42 ========== Rebuild All: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ========== That's 7 seconds. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digital cameras: My first digital camera in 1997 cost near a thousand bucks and made amazing digital photos right out of the box - no film needed! At 1024 x 768 pixels (almost a whole megapixel), it stored a hundred JPEGs on a single 16 megabyte flash card. If you held the shutter button down you could shoot almost a frame a second. Light sensitivity was ISO 200. A current digital SLR today that costs near a thousand bucks makes 20 megapixel photos, shoots 7 still frames a second and will capture HD video, and stores thousands of raw files, each of which is near 16 megabytes in size, on a 32 gigabyte flash card, and can tag photos with your GPS location. Daytime images are noiseless and night shooting is practical at up to ISO 25600. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cars: My 1982 Corvette was one of the first to feature digital fuel injection. Beyond taking it apart, modifying parts, and bolting on new parts, I used to tweak it by burning new timing and fuel tables into a UV-erasable EPROM that carried a whopping 2K bytes of data. The ECM (electronic control module) was a 10 x 8 x 2 inch box that sat in the battery compartment and did a passable job of fuel and timing management. The mechanical speedo read to 175 (not that I had the gumption to go that fast) and I used to calculate fuel mileage in my head whenever I'd fill up. The other day my Dodge Journey informed me that its left-front wheel speed sensor had a malfunction, which limited the effectiveness of its traction control system, its antilock brake system, its all wheel drive power distribution system, the cruise control, and a few other systems. Besides reading out the speed and RPM, the dash shows me the outside temperature, compass heading, time on the engine, trip mileage, and a few dozen other things. It also reads out the ongoing fuel mileage digitally, so I can adjust my driving habits to maximize economy. And that's not even mentioning the touch screen entertainment and information system. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Got any perspectives on then vs. now you'd like to share? This could be fun. -Noel

I ran across a compiler some 10 years ago that had a /BLOAT switch, for use when people wouldn't take seriously the "too small" output that was a very efficient executable. "Nothing useful could be THAT small..." A bit of perspective... Notwithstanding artificial / ignorance bloat, people today don't often notice nor correlate the massive increase in data size we deal with daily to an increase in need for stability in today's systems. The "golden age" operating systems we knew and loved didn't handle anywhere NEAR the amount of data we crunch through today. If you think back on, say, I dunno, Windows 2.0 back in the 1980s... It would take a couple of minutes to boot up a PC XT system, and it could run maybe half a day without crashing. If a modern computer could boot that system, running instructions at the pace we do today, it would be booted in a fraction of a second and maybe run 30 seconds before crashing. That's sobering. A couple of decades ago, I used to get real engineering work done when a 500 MB hard drive was a significant thing (and a significant investment). Within the past day I've saved still pictures that were several times that large. All done in a few seconds, without flaw. This even applies to fairly recent versions, such as our beloved XP. A system based on XP would crunch through hundreds of megabytes of data without flaw. Gigabytes, maybe. Terabytes? Maybe not. It used to seem very stable back then, but the glasses are rose colored. I know, I run XP VMs now for testing. It's a clunky old system by comparison to the new ones. Not that the new ones are perfect, but their problems are different. Here I sit with a Win 8.1 workstation that's been running now for what, 26 days on the same bootup. Looking at Task Manager I see processes whose I/O counts have reached many terabytes. And these are just the processes that are persistent! We're not seeing all the data that's been crunched through by the transient programs I've run. The System Idle Process has accumulated 15029:01:38 of CPU time (it counts up 24 CPU seconds for every clock second). That's 2 CPU-YEARS at modern Xeon speed. And, as they say, it keeps on ticking. I shudder to think how much information is crunched per second in a typical video game session. We speak of "hundreds of frames per second" like it's nothing. And if you can't play for hours, you complain about that stupid unstable Windows system.. A side effect of data size increasing is that systems are getting more stable. They have to. -Noel

It's nice of folks to offer to help. I imagine finding this tool and wanting to donate and get a donation key - then finding out you just missed the opportunity - feels frustrating. I'm sure patience will be rewarded. Not like THIS particular grasshopper, though... -Noel

Absolutely true. Only thing better (not counting exotic stuff) is more SSDs, but even then (as has been discussed) the gain won't be nearly as great as that first one gives over an HDD. And the computer is blessedly quiet. When I (rarely) spin up the old hard drives I'm surprised at how irritating that little tickety tick seek noise is. Once you've used an SSD-equipped system you'll never want to use anything else. -Noel

I believe I have heard - and don't quote me on this - that the Pro may be better than the Evo for use in RAID operation. However, most agree that all the Samsung models are smokin' fast. These are just made out of chips. Once production ramps up prices will fall more. Good times. -Noel

Seems like deep market penetration by Windows 8 ought to be a criterion for success, but hey, that's me. Ugh, I clicked on the video and listened for a few seconds. I actually heard the words "it's not about trying to change people, it's about trying to bring out the best in what we already do". Who coaches these people to be so devious? I think I need a shower. -Noel

You might want to look into some of the alternate themes available. They do have to be "hacked in", as Microsoft doesn't want us having customized desktops any longer - but it can be done in a way that does not break system protection on disk. If it's just the icons on the desktop you want to change, an alternative is to hide the standard Microsoft desktop icons and just put your own shortcuts on the desktop. You can then set them to display any icon you like. There's a handy tool called Vista Shortcut Manager that provides a way to eliminate the shortcut arrow overlays so the icons don't look so ugly. I was talking with another person just the other day who couldn't stand the Win 8 icons for various things that show up in File Explorer. My general advice: Try to get past your aversion to them and just get used to them. Or maybe don't upgrade to Windows 8.1 at all, which is not unreasonable since it really doesn't provide anything besides a few toys that you can't get in Windows 7. Only thing is that it's current, which may mean better support for security fixes and driver updates. Best of luck getting your system to where you like it. -Noel

And let me reiterate that whomever in Microsoft Marketing that thought up the BS phrases "skeuomorphism is bad" and "digitally authentic is good" is an evil, manipulative twit and ought to be barred from working in high tech forever. It's hard not to hate Microsoft with people like that setting policy. -Noel

Heh, yeah, that was me, and yes, I have a reasonable workaround, though not as fully integrated as it could be: I mentioned in that thread in my November 22, 2013 post that I now use a CSS snippet to redefine the scroll thumb coloring to a darker gray in IE. Makes it a lot easier to see, though it does not provide hover animation. It works with IE10 and IE11: html { scrollbar-base-color: darkgray; } Note the darker scroll thumbs in this screen grab: -Noel

Speaking of the devil, wow... Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB at Newegg is $379.99. OCZ Vector VTR150 480 GB is $359.99. I love the way prices drop. -Noel

Not exclusively on MTBF, no. I try to use all the knowledge and wisdom I have accumulated to make choices. And I try to share that knowledge when I can. That's one of the reasons I love forums like this one. It's also one of the reasons I started this thread - because I'm always looking for ways to improve that knowledge. Regular, ongoing benchmarking is one way I keep in touch with how things are working. Simply put, I watch for problems / trends using objective data. Regarding the use of published MTBF... It's one input, and like it or not bigger numbers are generally better. They tend to indicate how confident the manufacturer is in their products, and are arguably more meaningful with higher-end products, which in an engineering company I tend to be involved with. This round of questioning started with you asking me for specifics about my comment on an SSD array being as reliable as an HDD. I figured quoting numbers as one way to justify the comment made sense. But you're right, it's VERY difficult to compare apples to apples when considering different technologies. -Noel

Well, a correctly derived MTBF is meaningful - but maybe less so in the consumer world since Marketing seems to drive everything now and they're comfortable with outright lying. And who's going to actually test a whole bunch of parts to see if a 2 million hour MTBF is accurate? I personally believe consumer HDDs have MUCH less reliability (probably much less than half the true MTBF) as compared to enterprise class HDDs. That's a lifetime of experience talking. When I started buying enterprise class drives I stopped having data loss. And there are some indications that in this day and age of "buying on price alone" things have gotten worse. The brand of SSD drives I bought (OCZ) is by a company that makes enterprise class hardware as well, and the fruits of my research (which went a bit beyond reading the datasheets) implied their hardware is quite reliable (not to mention well-supported). Bottom line is I've gotten 2 years and 2 months of reliable service out of 4 OCZ Vertex 3 drives under reasonably intense daily use. I'd buy the brand again, on the assumption that their current hardware is as well-designed and manufactured. That being said, modern Samsung models sport slightly better numbers and since Samsung manufactures flash themselves, slightly better prices. Specifications always tempt... -Noel

I'm all for experimentation and customization, but you have to understand that current versions of Windows protect themselves multiple ways from modification. What you're trying to do is what malware tries to do. That's definitely paddling against the current. Maybe if you describe your goals someone here might suggest an alternate way to accomplish it. To each his own, but personally I would prefer that my system be able to pass an SFC check: -Noel

Oops, looks like Microsoft removed all the Help files for Win32 / desktop development APIs from Visual Studio 2013. Presumably they're trying to encourage people not to develop desktop applications any longer. Ridiculous, manipulative, $#%&s... Anyway, for those who haven't already found it, there's a workaround to get the help viewer to actually show info for Win32 calls - at least at the VS 2012 level. Very little is changing in Win32, so I guess this is still pretty valid. Download the VS 2012 help content manually from here (a nearly 3 GB download!): http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34794 Once that download is completed, mount the ISO and change the Installation Source in your Help Viewer to point to the help index at the root of the mounted ISO. There you will find the Windows Desktop App Development help content under the Recommended heading. Add it to the list of locally installed Help files. After that you will be able to get Win32 help again. Hope this helps someone. -Noel

Well, I don't have an analysis suitable for a Tom's Hardware article at hand, but the SSDs I bought have a 2 million hour MTBF. Even enterprise-class HDDs at the time (e.g., Western Digital RE4, of which I have two) were only pushing 1 million hour MTBF, with consumer drives presumably less. Let's say a half million hours in round numbers. I roughly figured RAID 0 with any single drive failure causing loss of the whole array: 2 million hours MTBF for any one drive / 4 drives in the array = a half million hours MTBF for the array. Roughly the same reliability as a typical HDD. And it's just common sense. A solid state device seems less likely to fail than an electromechanical one. Beyond that, consider that HDDs use more power and get a good bit hotter than SSDs. Heat kills electronics. My fans almost never increase above idle. Keeping in mind RAID 0 spreads the write load across several drives, one has only to make the array out of sufficiently large SSDs so that NAND wear is not a practical issue. I figured mine would last 10 years at the write load I use before NAND wear becomes an issue - and I use my system pretty heavily. -Noel

Heh, that pretty much defines a "clean desktop" look. Not the direction I go, but certainly an accomplishment. Well done. If it's at all interesting to anyone, here's my whole desktop layout. Note that the Taskbar normally auto-hides at the top. -Noel

That's the speed of modern computers for you. Hey, I envy 35.98 MB/sec since I get about 26. Note in the AS-SSD output above the small latency times reported - mere tens of microseconds. And of course the write times are representative of no-wait RAM write-back cache, which tends to batch the writes together to the actual drive. And speaking of cache, don't discount the effect it has on both writing and reading. Benchmarks don't actually do that good a job showing you how well it works in real-world operations. The bottom line is: If you have a fast I/O system and lots of RAM, you will have a very responsive system for real world operations even if your 4K QD1 random I/O benchmarks aren't gargantuan. Interesting read, that Tom's article. Thanks for the link. People sometimes don't realize that SSDs generally have so much higher MTBFs than HDDs that a RAID array of SSDs can be as reliable as a single electro-mechanical HDD. And everyone should be doing backups. After 2 years of practical experience I'm glad I went in the direction I did (4 SSD RAID 0) and would tend to do it again today (except I'd start with modern drives with low latencies). Next system I put together I'll certainly consider those Intel boards, though. It will be interesting to see what Samsung comes out with in that arena in the near future. -Noel

I guess. Such a tool might be helpful in an IT environment where people are not allowed to install anything they want. Does it have to have elevated privileges to run? If there was something wrong with installing Classic Shell - some problem that choosing to use it long-term causes - I'd be more concerned about those things. As it is, it's a problem solved. Completely. And you can't beat the price. -Noel

I'll come right out and say that there is literally NOTHING I've found essential in Win 8.1 that I couldn't have or do in Win 7. Only thing is, it's current - and that may matter for things like security fixes, driver updates, etc. I still maintain a VM that's the best setup I had done with Win 7, as configured per the best practices I listed in my book, and I have kept the system up to date. I ran it just a little while ago to ensure that even with the latest updates the file system is a fair bit faster than Win 8.1. I also maintain a Win 8.1 VM that's just like my host system, with an identical virtual hardware setup and configured to the best of my abilities, so I've been able to do some pretty careful head to head comparisons. I don't think they're any less valid or useful than two different systems running on the same hardware, but with necessarily different hardware drivers. In short, my well set up Win 7 VM is a good bit faster than my well set up Win 8.1 VM. I haven't had to tweak my Win 7 book much in the past few years because it is essentially complete - it takes one from an out-of-box experience to a fully functional, well-tuned workhorse of a system. Since I don't use Win 7 any longer for everyday work, I probably don't pay as much attention to the subtleties of Win 7, and I've put more effort into making my Win 8 book better, though to be fair I HAVE added a few sections to the older book in the not too distant past. Looking at the market now - with Win 8 basically flopping badly - I probably SHOULD put some more effort into the older volume. Thank you for the suggestions. -Noel

I've noticed another degradation in file enumeration speed. Enumerating files from the root of the hard drive is now MUCH slower than it once was, topping out at about 8000 files / second even after the data has been cached into RAM. This is now only 25% of the performance I was seeing in Windows 7. It's not my particular OS setup that's slowing down, it's something in the file system design/implementation. I 've just completed testing with various operating systems on the very same hardware. Windows 7 and 8(.0) are still as fast as ever, even fully updated. A clean, fresh Windows 8.1 is something like 3 times slower on the same hardware, and after all updates it's a whopping 6 times slower. Windows 8.1 is not only slower than its predecessors - it's growing more sluggish. And I don't think it's just File Explorer that's affected. Is this an initiative by Microsoft to slow down File Explorer gradually so they can say the next new system is faster? -Noel

Is this better than Classic Shell in some way? I'm probably missing something obvious. -Noel