Barney's Mailbag

By Doug Barney

Last issue I asked for experiences with Vista, especially the Aero interface. Here’s what Jim has to say:

Big whoop-tee-do! I bought a high-end laptop DELL XPS 1530 w/3 gig of ram & 256 Meg video card to run my high-end apps. Once Vista opened I checked the system...1.2 Gig just to open Vista. I turned off the Aero and it still uses 1.2 Gig of ram. I am still searching the Web to look for performance improvements.

I purchased a 1 gig SD card to run in ReadyBoost to improve performance. It seems to help, but loading apps for the first time is time consuming. Once the app is loaded, reopening it later in a session seem much faster since I think it is still loaded in ReadyBoost memory.

Just my thoughts.

— Jim

I asked Jim how apps run under Aero. Here’s his response:

Actually, once the app loads, it runs faster and the performance is better; I also didn’t notice any improvements in performance with Aero on or off. Seems like fluff stuff for the average consumer. I must be missing something or my Vista Home Premium is missing some additional performance features found in the more expensive Vista bundles.

— Jim

Now on to what Brad has to say:

A couple of years ago my wife’s XP laptop died and we needed to replace it. We bought a Toshiba notebook with 1 GB ram, dual-core processor, and built-in wireless networking. We got the computer home and it was dog slow running tasks that XP had no trouble with. We took it back and the technician told us that 1GB ram is a MINIMUM spec and that to get decent performance we would need 2 GB! We ponied up for the memory and got a performance boost. We still had problems with the wireless networking and only after downloading new Atheros drivers and a Vista patch did we get that resolved. I am still wondering what additional capabilities this operating system was going to give me. Personally I don't get it. It is a fat resource hog designed to suck as many dollars out of the Windows-installed base for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer as far as I am concerned. This release will only encourage the Linux, Apple, and Solaris operating systems.

— Brad