Vista: More like Sluggista!
My old roommate knows better than anyone that my computer hasn't been the most stable rig to eat pretty graphics for breakfast. I'm pretty sure I've created a record for experiencing BSODs in a post XP world. This year, I'm not having it. I started getting BSODs left and right with Vista when it came to gaming. Fallout 3 has been a big crasher (although it is reported to have it own problems regardless of system build).
I've taken a few measures: added ram (moving the old ram out of the 1 and 2 slots in to the 3 and 4 slots) and removed the bastard ATI HDTV Wonder card that refuses to play nice in Vista (not that it would play nice in XP either). The ideas here is that I use crappy memory less (old ram only works properly when downclocked) and to remove any potential driver issues that may arise from have a misidentified hardware that error prone anyway. Did I mention the RAM I installed is two shiny 2GB sticks? I got Corsair XMS again so that everything matches up. Now, my system has no choice but to be stable.
The most common error was a IRQL Driver Not Less or Equal (quick Google identifies RAM or drivers to be the issue). So everything should be solved right? Quick gaming session proves that the system is indeed stable. However, despite a much faster boot -- Vista still seems to chug with launching Firefox 3 and OpenOffice. Sure, I have 60+ processes running but so what? If you can't smoothly run 60+ processes with 6GB of memory, when can you?
Now, to complete debase my entire complaint. One of the side processes is uTorrent running like crazy. Since everything is on a single hard drive, it's understandable that hard drive access could be slowing everything down.
So, essentially I'm just being pissy but to be honest, Ubuntu runs with a much lighter footprint than Vista while taking on the same strain of multiple processes. Living in the Linux community is just a entire world of efficiency. I'd love to see how it handles the memory boost -- I would imagine nothing would hiccup again. But right now, a little sluggishness is worth the access to Windows Media Center. Come Christmas, I can expect to sit back and watch HDTV or listen to FM Radio with everything controlled nicely with my remote -- something I could only dream about in Ubuntu-land.
Needless to say, I'm liking be back in the Windows world. I miss Linux but not enough to leave Vista Ultimate just yet.
Ooooo Mojave....