Fredledingue

Crahak I think there is a very big difference between the Dos-to-Windows transition era and today, When Windows 3.1 came out computers most poeple had were clearly not up to the task. Processors were ridiculously slow and hard drive were something new. Some computers still relied on floppy for all storage available! Not even talking about memory which was, what, 4 Mb? But the concept was there and the program was there for those wh wanted to try. Fortunately, computer performances improved very quickely and a few years later were able to run windows95 which was THE real revolution in personal computing. Now turn off Vista eye-candy, switch to the old ugly gryish "classic" theme, move the screen resolution slider to 640x480 and you have the same thing, visualy as windows 95. So why in absence of network or other special things, Vista cannot run on a w95 computer? See where I'm going to? It's not like in six months all the computers will have doubled their speed or like a 3d effect is going to revolutionize the way we share and process informations. There is also a big difference albeit not as big, with the w98-to-Xp era and today. For the same reason: computer hardwares don't evoluate as fast as before. 5 years ago, you could buy the fastest processor on the shelve, one moth later a friend of you would show up boasting an even faster one. Today we rely on dual core and we hold our breath on the quad core promises. Now let's say Xp needs 512 Mb (of memory) to run smoothly (not the minimum requirement but where we are confortable), and w98 128 Mb. That's 384 Mb more. To be logic Vista sholdn't use more than 384 Mb more than Xp, which is 896 Mb, let's say 1 Gb. That's almost that, except that it's the minimum requirement instead of the confort zone. What I mean is that requirement can't increase exponentialy forever. One day you have to stop and stay were we are. Looking at what 10 years old boxes were already capable of and how close 5 years old ones are to nowadays computers, it's hard to understand why a new version of windows still need x times more resource to even boot.... I mean 2, 3 or 5 years old computers are not "clearly not up to the task" of running windows Vista. Hence the bad impression.

You didn't understand my question: If Vista64 run faster on 64 bits processor, it uses the processor less often, less intensively, less hindering other apps.

Drivers and other bloats I agree it's an advantage to have a collection of drivers on hand and ready for a quick install. However I disagree that drivers on CDs are worse or older. They can't be older than the hardware itself. And if the hardware is newer than the driver coming with Vista then it's not older. But ok, if that doesn't slow down the system, doesn't make a virus check 10x longer, is not recopied endlessly at each system back-up, and can be deleted if I want to for some reason, then: why not? But that remains to be verified. Had I to install Vista, I would prefer to have the option not to install all the "bloat" (pick another word for that if you want), and have everything copied on my HDD in a few minutes. Of course when Vista is not pre-installed. Indexing service Indexing shouldn't be a "by default" running service. Period. Many poeple don't need it. Some may need it more often but again, when you have some discipline and can sort and name your files correctly you rarely need to search anything. That being said, it's not useless, but indexation shouldn't be a permanent process. It can be done manualy or suggested when the user use "search" very often. It can be very useful when having thousands of files, like a database or something. The problem is more that Windows decided what's best for me, without knowing my personal habits. That configuring it is not obvious and very limited. When I tried to "configure" the indexation service, I was appalled by the few options I had, none of them relevant to what I hoped to do. The other problem with "searching an index" versus "searching in a directory tree" is that it too often either doesn't find anything or finds too many things. Configuration The problem is that you don't configure, personalize and optimize your whole computer by right-clicking on the taskbar. It would be nice to have one tabbed interface from which we could manage all the existing settings instead of having them scattered among multiple "cannot be easier" locations. Actualy everytime I want to change a setting, it's a guess game against Windows, starting by right-clicks here and there, reading all the stuffs in the control panel, pressing "configure" where it doesn't configure anything serious etc.

Since Vista is running faster on 64 bits, I imagine it leaves more resources for all apps, 32 bits included. 32 bits apps may not profit from the 64 bits architecture, but they will have more resources like processing power and memory to run. Am I right?

I'm not sure. Many new features came out of M$ designer imagination rather than explicit demand. Poeple do like new features and I welcome that too to a lesser extent. (Just see on the w98/95/Me forum how many are tweaking their system with XP style skin and as soon as Vista was out, with Vistaish stuffs, it's amazing. Personaly I find it a little bit ludicrous.) I admit that esthetical improvement since 2000 (the last block styled windows) is great. Yet there are two kind of problems: 1/ When it eats abnormal amount of resources. I admited on this thread that on machines built today, there is little difference but that made de facto Vista a disapointement for those who hoped to instal it on an old machine. For example, myself, I could have installed Vista on my 5 1/2 years old computer and I didn't for this exact reason. 2/When new features comes in the way of productivity. You can get the fastest machine that money can buy, Vista doesn't make your human work faster. As an example the little windows preview on the task bar. It doesn't help to have a postage stamp sized view of a screen, and it's rather disturbing. IMO, higher productivity comes with a minimal amount of events on your screen, especialy moving objects, unexpected balloons or dialogs, self-changing stuffs etc. Now because it's my personal opinion, I won't say that they shouldn't exist since other users may like it, but it should be easier to disable/enable. Vista's control panel displays about 50 items and you never find the relevant app. The more there are features, the more the customization interface should be clear and easy to use, like TweakUI but more complete. --------------- Thanks for the explanation, especialy since it's the second time you write it for me. Whatever the explanation, it's clear that with a little effort they could significantly reduce the size of Vista. the old DLL hell problem? Don't exagerate, even on w98 it's been ages since I'v seen a "Dll not found" error and I'm using recent version of most softwares I use. The folowing is no less interresting: This, I'v never understood: Why do they need to stash all the drivers known to mankind on every computers? Every hardware sold comes with it's driver on a cd-rom which is always better and updated. Lost cd-rom? You'll find them on the firm website. While installing, it's fine to have as many drivers as possible on hand on the DVD, but why copying all the drivers on the HDD, for just the few pieces of hardware you will buy in the future and will come with new drivers anyway? Perfect non-sens IMO. The only explanation is that Vista is pre-installed, and the computer is sold without the installation disc. Then the user has the installation disc copied on his hard disc, if you will. And this only on the rarified cases when we are asked to insert the Windows cd-rom when installing something... This I understand even less, but you said yourself they were useless. I expected multimedia content to take more space. But wait, I'm sure there are tons of multi media contents in other folders, like Installers etc. If most of the bloat came from multimedia, it would then be easier to explain. Haha! So they installed 5 "generations" of .NET. As if .NET wasn't bloated enough! Instead of compiling a backward compatible .NET version. That's a clear sign of lazyness. As I said, the only explanation is that most Vista user don't have an installation disc so just in case, they put everything.

I'm not a coder, but almost, I'm a scripter, and I can confirm that more code is necessary to improve performance and avoid bugs. But obviousely, M$ coders have not hand-typed 12 Gb of codes! Otherwise M$ would have run bankrupt by the cost of used keyboards alone! I imagine that they copy-pasted entire folders without even knowing what was inside, that there are a lot of multimedia materials (tours, tutorials, flash screens, demos etc), that there are a lot of duplicated files probably under different names etc. B.L.O.A.T.E.D What we are saying by bloat is things which are there on your hard disc, sometimes running sometimes not, and shouldn't. It's a sign of negligeance. New features don't explain why there is about 10 Gb of datas which will never be used under any circumstance. It doesn't take gigabytes of codes to implement aero-glass. Does it? That Snow Leopard and Ubuntu do the same or that it has always been like this doesn't bring any explanation neither (it only expands the interrogation). Does Vista runs too many processes (or services)? from my own experience, I don't think so considered the processor and memory power. Vista has been built for dual-core processor, huge HDD and 2 Gb of memory. Assuming that you use this sort of hardware, there is no visible hog or sluggishness. Bloat is another thing. It doesn't affect the operations, it just makes me wondering how did they fill all the Gb of datas? Uncompressed videos maybe? Is Vista expensive? I see many poeple complaining, but so far I have found Vista pretty cheap: 0$. (Yes, zero american dollars! ) If you buy a new computer today it comes automaticaly with Vista pre-installed and it's included in the price. As a result, you never need to buy Vista. It costs you nothing. M$ has created the cheapest and most democratic OS ever! It so true that I don't even know how much costs Vista where I live, or which odd person would need to buy it. It's like an mp3 player or a cell phone: you buy it with the software preinstalled and you don't think how much this software costs. So, granted that I have Vista for free when I buy a computer, I don't have to complain neither about price (which is 0) neither about its lack of performance (which can't be compared with a payware).

Xp vs. Vista: One year later, the question is less and less oportune. The question is more "do we have a choice?". One year after XP was released, we still had a choice between Xp, 2000, ME and w98. Today, if you buy a new computer, it's Vista and good luck if you want another OS. It's simple Vista is the GUI for computers build after 2007, Xp (and under) for computers build before 2007. It's not like we have the two OSes side by side. It's still possible to install Xp if you have it, but when you have Vista pre-installed, which is the case of 99.9% of the computers sold today, it's not worth the hassel. It's also possible to install Vista on pre 2007 machine, but again, it's nt worth it and it's not even recommanded. Bloat: Bloatiness is not measured by % of disc space but by the numbers of Mb. The enormous disc space Vista is taking, has inevitably risen some eyebrowses. Normaly an Os like vista should make less than one giga. Xp was already bloated so, logicaly, with improvements, the next version should be smaller as it's being cleaned up. We can understand that M$ doesn't want to spend time and money optimizing, but no one expected that they would find enough stuff to fill 12 Gb! That's why the size of Vista is quiet a surprise. It's not a problem while using but it definetly forbid saving your system on a DVD-R back up. Beyond technical and emotional perception, there is also the questionement of the effeciency of the M$ developement team(s). When you know that probably 10 Gb will never be used and they still write them on your hard disc, you have the right to ask some questions. Finaly: It's too sad that most of grievances against Vista found their cause in small little things like different dialog messages, arbitrary special folders renaming, irritating popups, default settings which fits no one etc. It realy gives a sens that M$ is out of touch with their customers.

Thanks in advance for posting the source. I'm curious to know how the scripts in the various html pages/frames interract with each other (if they do).

Geek, I don't think anybody is trying to find old abandonwares not working on Vista for the sake of it. If I expect a software to work on Vista and, huh!, it doesn't: I post it here. With all your rules, the list is likely to be very short. Crahack, Thanks for the link to Universalis. I'll see if I can apply the patch. Well, this camera is old, but we are still very happy with it.

Nonsense once more. This all depends on how dumb you are as a user. It's not the kitchen, it's the cook. I have never been running ANY Windows OS without being root (or Administrator as they call it) in my user-space, and I have yet to start feeling any suicidal tendencies or be contaminated or be at risk for any threat out there. Well I said "suicide" to put it shortly. I meant, you are more at risk of infection using Admin account than on a restricted account. The fact that XP is almost twice as much infected than Vista is probably because few poeple knows that. My point was that I didn't understand why so many gets epileptic as soon as the UAC ask them to click "Continue" twice. Normaly Windows quintuplate (5x) its size every 3 years. So, normaly Windows7 (if released in 3 years) should weight 60 Gb after install. But with the multi Terabyte HDD we will have at this time, it won't be an issue.

Yeah cool! I like all those little icons. Do you use frames? I'm curious because I never found out how to do that in hta. Could you post the code of this template? Yet, for the context menu customizer, I'm happy with the current layout. Frames could help me keeping the main buttons visible while scrolling through the list thought. I don't know if it's possible because theoricaly, each frame should work as a separate application. Bad news with the promising XP version: Many more exotic expressions in the hkcr keys than I thought. Still working on it.

I have two: -The french digital encyclopedia "Encyclopedia Universalis". Not the latest version (thought released after and compatible with XP), yet I'm not going to buy the new version to run it on Vista, given the price. In this case the "last version" rule shouldn't apply. (it should apply only if there is a free upgrade available IMO). -The Canon Powershot S10 driver. We had to buy a flash memory drive, which after all is much easier than connecting the photo camera. Yet, it's something that Vista refused to run. Canon's website never provided any update.

I would say that if you have a PC with XP installed, keep XP. Vista is not worth the hassle of a reinstall and investment. Vista is suitable only on new computers. Pre-installed, on a new machine it's good, don't lose time reverting to Xp or dual booting (unless you real need to). Of course it's sad to know that it's slower, and not faster than XP, but with 3.4 Ghz dual cores, the difference is minimal. However I prefer the look and feel of Vista over XP. Sure there are a few more annoyances and absurdities than on XP, but when you know them, they are smalll details. Everybody bashes UAC, even experts, but I do like it. It gives me a sens of safety, that my system is protected (I hope it's true). Unlike XP it allows you to install or modify stuffs without being permanently on Administrator privileges. On XP you need to switch usership to do that because running XP connected to the internet on Administrator account is suicide. I don't mind licking 3 or 4 times "Continue" when I install a soft once in a while. I don't understand why so many poeple disable it. So far I'v met only one software (Encyclopedia Universalis) not running on Vista while running on XP and w98. I thought it was usualy old softs, but this one is not that old and much older things, even Windows 3.1 era programs, work surprisingly well. I don't find Vista more difficult nor easier to configurate than XP (without external apps). It needs maybe more customization, performance tweaks than XP, but XP was already like that. Nothing realy new here.

Hi! When I drag a file a huge slide or icon (not sure how you call it now) appears on the cursor. This is a major annoayance as it makes it harder to target the right folder on the tree. How to remove that?

Hi, When i drag-drop a item with the right button pressed, the context menu appearing is not the one that should appear in this case, when I release the button. Sometimes I dont have the time to drag the item, the menu is already there. It seems that right click context menus appear too rapidly.

The bug I wrote about is not a bug in my script but a bug in the script engine installed on a certain computer, probably a wrong version of WSH, and I wanted to know if other users have faced this problem or if it's a rare occurence. The bug affect every scripts, it's only more obvious with this one. Ugly? If you call "ugly" the absence of a "skin", then you are right. Personaly I don't find it uglier than, say, WAssociate. I don't think easthetic is that important for such application. Doing an Hta realy looking like a plain executable with menus, tabs etc is much more difficult than you think, and an invitation for more bugs and errors. I don't want to do that. I don't think Hta developers should seek that. Making it "easy to read" has already been enough of work and tests. It's not like I didn't do anything. But I agree that I could do something, like colored buttons etc. If you want. I don't know what you mean by "smaller" after a cosmetic change. If it's size on screen, the interface appears exactely as I want it to be: Full screen. I don't want it to be a little widget window. If it size in bytes, it will be only bigger.

Ho! Eidenk, what did you eat today? If you are not interrested why do you even read this thread? Context Menu Customizer.Hta is not buggy nor ugly. It's neat and easy. As soon as I have time, I'll release a package of extras to apply with CMC's "Add Script" option. The goal is to create a script-enhanced OS.

You installed the runtime indeed. If I understand well, the online install crashes while the off-line installer doesn't. I used the off-line installer.

IMO, what is optional shouldn't be removed but maybe not selected by default. IE files should be there bycause of the strong interconnection between IE and Windows, but it can be a good idea to make them optional too. We are all looking forward for seeing you back for good, for good Gape!

Hi, Does anybody use it? I'v tried on an old laptop with a very non-regular w98se + uSP install and it didn't work due to bugs, failures or wrong versions of WSH, VBscript or mshta. Possibly due to language issues or character sets. However I'm working on a version compatible with windows XP (boo!) and the pre-release version already works.

With XP and Vista you never know if the changes you are making in your system will pas through all the protections and guardian services, or if they will be applied at all.

Java Runtime installs and works fine on my w98se+++ computer. Maybe it's the developer kid that needs .NET. For the moment, I recommand to advertise only the Runtime update.

Some processes can take 100% of CPU use. I know of at least two exe files who do that (when running) on my computer. That doesn't mean the CPU resource can't be used by another process when needed.

Thanks to webmatze: Updated french version is available here: http://www.divshare.com/download/4984021-6f6

And I retested my shut down time: 4.5 seconds when no window is open and no program left running and no internet connection. Instead of 9.5 seconds previousely posted. So, we are already 3 guys and gals who shut down their computer in less than 5 secs. Not bad! 8)