NoelC

You're right, 4K is where it's at to improve responsiveness. Re: the wall, I've always figured what must be happening is that the entire system takes a certain finite minimum amount of time to do an I/O. At 4K bytes per chunk, you have to complete tens of thousand I/O operations per second to get better than 40 MB/sec throughgput. That means whole operations have to complete, end-to-end, soup-to-nuts, getting 4K of data in and out literally in 100 microseconds or less (and do it over and over again consistently, not just once). As one who was around when microprocessors could execute only four or five machine instructions in that time, I always find that impressive in a relative sense. The key of course to getting great small I/O performance is to minimize the latency added by the drive hardware itself, and that's what modern SSDs do extremely well. The Intel NVMe tech, on the other hand is apparently supposed to help with the latency in the pipeline. I don't think we've seen all that it has to offer just yet, and I suspect it's going to help with that "sonic wall". Perhaps Intel is purposely holding back, figuring as long as they can improve the speed and post bigger and bigger performance numbers, they won't need to drop the price. Marketing. No sense in showing their hand all at once. Every new technology always benefits from optimization. Just look at the differences between the drivers supplied by Windows and the latest versions downloaded from Intel. By the way, a user on the OCZ forum not too long ago posted ATTO results that showed his RAID 0 array of Vector SSDs, using a modern motherboard and Intel RST subsystem (which caches low level I/O extremely effectively) delivering over 800 MB/second for 4K I/O. ATTO uses Queue Depth 4 by default. Edit: I'm still trying to find that info. -Noel

Ah, I see - thanks. Nice find. That's something one can do through Old New Explorer as well. I'll have to experiment with this as it doesn't require 3rd party software. Not that ONE is bad, but having to run less software to accomplish a goal is often better. PM me if you'd like a free copy of my book. Though you seem to be accomplished at desktop tweaking, who knows, I might have found something you've not seen yet. -Noel

The DPC Latency Checker is incompatible with Windows 8, as mentioned. You simply can't trust what you're seeing from it. I wouldn't advise using it. Way back when, they had said they'd try to make it compatible, but I guess that never came to anything. And as DP mentioned above, you can even end up contracting malware through the download process. I guess it's a tool whose time came and went. Andre is a real expert on timing issues. I imagine that if updating/removing NOD32 doesn't fix the issue, he'll ask you to run some performance traces. Listen to what he says. -Noel

Thank you, ace2. Can't say I've wanted a Mac-like desktop, but to each his own. Can you please describe a bit more the implications of "NameSpace OFF"? -Noel

Over on anantech.com, they state: "A single P3700 ends up replacing 4 - 6 high performance SATA drives." -Noel

I don't see detail on how much of the low-level flash management is moved to the CPU. Dedicated controllers do the job of managing the hardware inside the SSD boxes with today's models. If NVMe moves much of that task to the driver, not only might that take resources away from your applications but it's not hard to imagine that data could be corrupted upon any PC instability. Given that the market penetration percentage of Windows 8+ is deep in the single digits, TELVM, do you think Intel might be working on Windows 7 drivers for the thing? Bet on it. I would like to see it compared to something like RAID 0 4 x 512 GB OCZ Vector or 4 x 512 GB Samsun 840 Pro SSD arrays using traditional SATA III. I've seen benchmarks with such hardware that compete favorably with the numbers they're posting, and without quirks (such as 344 BYTES per second with 512 byte writes - what's up with that?). The price seems pretty attractive, considering the $1.50 to $3,02 / GB range is list price for a newly announced part. I wonder what they'll drop to after they ramp up production. I'll bet server farm managers are salivating over this. -Noel

I have only practical hands-on experience with snapshots using VMware workstation. But I heard that at least some of the other virtualization packages had a similar function (jaclaz has confirmed this, above). I don't know how fast their implementations are, though. What's surprising is how mature virtualization technology is. It really works, and it provides serious value for a developer. For many things you can entirely eliminate a test lab by doing testing in virtual machines. -Noel

You've been told how to get rid of blur entirely (the BlurDeviation setting), but however you set it, Aero Glass blurs the same amount everywhere the glass attribute is set - the same on the sides and bottom as the title bar. And it doesn't appear anyone besides you expects/wants that to change. What other information are you missing? -Noel

You have already been told, several times now, that what you need to do to get it to look the way you want is to get a new theme that's designed to give you the borderless look you want. Altering border sizes is not something Aero Glass for Win 8.1 does. Though Big Muscle toyed with this functionality during development, facilitating a theme change is also not within the purview of things that Aero Glass for Win 8.1 does. Perhaps starting a separate thread, explaining your wants thoroughly, and requesting just the right theme is something you should try. FYI, Big Muscle did at one time release a separate tool that could be employed to get Windows to allow a theme change, even against Microsoft's wishes. I don't know where you can find it; I don't use it myself. -Noel

I can only agree partly, xpclient. Vista and newer did bring some nice things to the party - for example, GPU-integrated desktop composition is well worth having. And there were substantial things done to the kernel that help make the newer systems both more stable and less likely to be compromised by bad drivers or malware. Finally, Windows 7 was a much-needed optimization that Microsoft had avoided like the plague up to that time. But yes, they also tacked a lot of BS onto it as well. But all that said, it's hard - really hard - to see anything new of substance in Windows 8. I don't know, perhaps that's the good part, since (having not been touched much) the kernel is still quite solid and it can run essentially forever. And IMO it's still better than Unix and its derivatives. But regardless of the crap Microsoft's marketeers upchuck, Win 8.1 is slower than Win 7. People are not actually completely stupid and a system without any substantive improvement where it counts just doesn't show obvious value to folks trying to decide whether to spend money on it. I guess it's harder to actually DO engineering when you can just say whatever you want. Whatever happened to truth in advertising? -Noel

Oddly, the indirect way to do it is to change the day part of the date format. The long date has to have day as "ddd" instead of "dddd". You may have to set it as custom format, or something. OutSTANDing! You've just earned yourself a free eBook for sharing that. PM me and I'll arrange to send it to you. Thanks! -Noel

That's a good one, and something I haven't accomplished yet. Can you please share (or point me to) information on how to do that? You're talking about this, right? I would love it if I could see hours:minutes:seconds there instead of "4 minutes ago". I accomplish this by importing into Windows 8 a .reg file exported from a Windows 7 system on which the control panel was run to lower the various sizes. I have placed a copy of this file, called SetWindowMetrics.reg, online inside this zip file: Click -Noel

Windows 8 could be considered a small ledge, just below the edge, constructed with available spit and sand by those who haven't already fallen and are still hanging by one hand... -Noel

Thanks, Shae. I know what you mean by the set of things to do to a system to make a system useful being difficult to keep track of. I wrote a book on the subject just for that reason (currently 123 pages). Originally it was for in-house use only. When I set up a new system I just go through the book, front to back. It takes me between one and two hours, including the Windows install itself. Thing is, much of it is disabling the crapware Microsoft has added - things such as disabling "HomeGroup networking" and "Indexing", which don't really work right. And making (as I described in the OP of this thread) Explorer act more like its predecessors. Another thing I do is to use the Classic Explorer component of Classic Shell to replace the File Explorer Status Bar. It's not something you can't live without, but it adds a little value. Add a little value to the desktop a bunch of times and it gets more useful. I'm always looking for more tips and tricks. Thanks for sharing. -Noel

Not really - more than a few million users are needed before the market for people seeking to buy things to go with the OS is large enough to make sales really take off. In short, it ain't makin' me rich. Windows 8 is an apparent flop, and things that associate with it are flopping too. Whether Microsoft will continue to "bet the farm" on a failed initiative is anyone's guess. I wouldn't have thought Microsoft would have kept on with it as long as they have. Back when I worked in the corporate software engineering world as an employee, heck, I had to justify everything and was barely ever allowed to finish anything. Anyone could see during the public betas of Win 8 that it was the wrong idea (God, was that TWO years ago already?) How people in management sometimes get to make boneheaded decisions and continue attempting to make them viable for years is beyond me. I always suspect the folks who want the boneheaded thing must have photos of the boss and a mistress and/or the boss doing something illegal, or something like that. Unfortunately, I share your viewpoint. We've seen the golden age of computing come and go. How many folks can make a modern system into a workhorse with which to develop the next generation of products? Not as many as with prior systems. -Noel

As mentioned above, you're expected to create the key if it doesn't exist. At one time there were problems with per-user settings not always working, but I think they've been resolved by Big Muscle. My recommendation is that if you don't understand registry editing implicitly - such as the difference between keys and values and how to create or modify them - then you should do a bit of research. It's not difficult to do properly with RegEdit, but it's not the kind of thing where you want to poke around and make mistakes, potentially deleting or changing something unexpectedly. That can trash your system. In short: Look for some online tutorials - "how to" information on running RegEdit to edit your registry. (Not addressed to anyone in particular) If you still find making system changes with RegEdit daunting, perhaps this Aero Glass package isn't something you should be running. Good luck. -Noel

FYI, since the berlios site is no more, how many had the foresight to save a copy of the guide page? I did. For reference in the interim while Big Muscle is working on getting a new server, here's the settings table: I hope you don't mind my posting this, BigMuscle. If you would rather it not be here, I'll remove it. -Noel

Right, then going to great lengths to make "dull, matte primer" fashionable. Trying to push fashion is just ridiculous with an operating system. It just screws everything up and we have people working hard to do exactly the opposite of what they should be doing, which is making it work better. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to help much to "expose" this crap. They just do more and more of it as though nothing's wrong. But you can be sure they're paying attention to the lack of adoption of Windows 8. Very few folks know all the many, many tweaks now needed to make it actually work. My book on doing that is selling reasonably well, and there's a lot of it on the web, so it's clearly information that's needed. Microsoft: Build a worse mousetrap, and no matter how much your marketeers sing the world will NOT beat a path to your door. Kind of a "well duh" moment, eh? -Noel

A full shutdown then startup usually use a Hybrid Shutdown/Bootup methodology unless you've disabled it (which you should). A restart by default is actually more thorough, and represents a true shutdown and restart. The intent was for a shutdown to be more like an old Hibernate, and (assuming every driver manages power transitions properly) your system would emerge from hibernation faster than it would do a full bootup. Obviously with a hibernate you continue with whatever problems your system has accumulated since the last real bootup. That Microsoft now hides this distinction from folks just leads to confusion. Do yourself a favor and disable "fast startup" (aka hybrid boot) if your system can do it and is set for it. A real bootup takes only a little longer and will leave your system in a clean state, ready to work. See also the many Google results for "windows 8 hybrid boot", e.g. this one (one of the first search results just now): http://www.maketecheasier.com/disable-hybrid-boot-and-shutdown-in-windows-8/ -Noel

I guess the answer is yes. I'm specifically describing restoring a snapshot as implemented by VMware. This is essentially the functional equivalent of restoring a backup image, in that everything in the virtual machine is set back to the time the snapshot was made. After snapshot restoral the VM begins executing exactly where it was, with the same things on disk, when the snapshot was made. In fact, the snapshot process is even better than a backup / restoral in that a running system can be snapshotted, and when restored it will continue executing right where it was before. -Noel

Thanks, DP. Nobody else? You haven't done anything at all to your desktop environment to make it work better? This forum seems to be all about making the desktop more pleasant to use. I thought of something else I've done that's pretty fundamental: I disabled the stupid "Hide Folder Merge Conflicts" setting in Folder Options. Without doing that there's real potential to get into trouble and not know it! -Noel

In a nutshell, yes. Near as I can tell it works on deltas (each snapshot is, generally speaking, stored as just the changes to the previous one). Taking a Snapshot happens in literally just a few seconds (not even 10) and last time I restored an old snapshot I don't think it took even 20 seconds. I have a fast I/O subsystem, but the technology of the Snapshot process is the real hero. -Noel

The fundamental assumption that upgrading more often is good is flawed. An OS needs to remain stable for 3 to 5 years (key parts MUCH longer) so that complex applications can be developed that use it. Thus the marketeers have no useful function except to try to get people to do things that don't make sense. Back in my day Marketing was what people who weren't smart enough to be Engineers did. How is it these bozos are in charge now? -Noel

Thing is, AS-SSD tends to vary a LOT from run to run anyway, which I've discussed above. That's one of the reasons I don't use it to try to detect system issues. As mentioned earlier, also with Intel drivers your RAM write-back cache affects the numbers quite a lot in that case, and varying amounts of available RAM for cache at the instant you're doing the testing can cause even more variation in results. Here are my AS-SSD results with Aero Glass on or off (no Intel RST drivers, nor RAM cache variations), as tested just now... Aero Glass for Win 8.1 On: Aero Glass for Win 8.1 Off As you can see, my results differ a fair bit from run to run as well - but in the opposite direction from yours. -Noel

Just an example of what I see in File Explorer as a result of the above tweaks... -Noel