Windows 7 May Not Be Much Faster Than Vista

PC World ^

[killermosquito]

I just received a used Thinkpad A30. I think the CPU is 1 Ghz and 256 megs of RAM. What flavor of Linux would you suggest I install?

[killermosquito]

Question: When you download the RC are you downloading an iso file to burn to a DVD or what?

[antiRepublicrat]

Question: When you download the RC are you downloading an iso file to burn to a DVD or what?

Burn to DVD to install, or as I did hook the ISO file up to a virtual machine as the attached CD and install from there.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

What don’t you like about it in Vista?

In Windows 2000, I can right click on a directory, scroll to search, and then search on a bunch of different parameters which narrow things down and let me find exactly what I want [which is typically in a hidden "System" file].

In Vista, I have to go to the search entry thingamabob, enter my search term, wait half a day while Vista searches both all file names and ALL FILE CONTENTS, then I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of that set of results to get to "Advanced Search", with which I can finally perform the kind of search [to include searching hidden "System" files] that was available to me seamlessly in Windows 2000.

The Windows Vista user experience is so awful it's as though it was designed by a committee of baboons to be used by a customer base of orangutans.

[GATOR NAVY]

It now boots from the bios to a sign-on in 15 sec, and from password to usable screen in another 10. I'm amazed.

I just checked my times because I thought mine was pretty fast. Mine boots from the bios to a sign-on in 18 sec, and from password to usable screen in 20 more, maybe less if I wasn't counting the wireless card connecting.

My motherboard burned out last month and I had a choice. Buy a new box that would most likely have Vista or rebuild the one I had. Since I had a new 350GB SATA HD, and all the other hardware was still in good shape, I went for buying a new mobo, CPU and RAM. I reinstalled the XP SP3 I had and I'm very happy with the results. I'm not seeing Vista or W7 in my future.

[pctech]

I'm gonna install it on my laptop once I backup the hard drive in it now. That way I can take it to work and show it to people there. I really want to know how well programs like Photoshop and AutoCAD will run on it.

UAC can be disabled in Vista, can it not be disabled in this RC? And how does it disable the UI? And what do you mean by "seeing through the lipstick?" Enquiring minds need to know......

[MichiganMan]

And what do you mean by "seeing through the lipstick?" Enquiring minds need to know......

I believe he's invoking the "You can put lipstick on a pig..." saying. 

[Scutter]

LOL, I know exactly how you feel. Believe it or not, most users like this feature. The idea is to be able to find a document that has some keyword in it - just like searching on Google or Live Search, but on you PC. It searches places other than files too, for example emails you have in Outlook. It's slow in the case you mentioned because the search engine hasn't indexed the particular folder you are looking in. You can add folders to the search index, and that will speed things up immensely.

However, sometimes I just want to find a file, not search contents, or it's in a folder that you don't want to search. I don't have Vista installed to try this, but I know on Win7 you can type filename:xxxxxx, where xxxxxxx is a value within the name of the file for which you are searching. This will restrict the search to the file name, and not the contents. It looks for the string anywhere in the file name, not an exact match. There may be a way to do th exact match, but I have to do some research to see. There are other prefixes you can use other than "filename:", like "size:" or "Date modified:". Looks like a neat, semi-documented feature.

Another option, and one that I am sure works on Vista, XP, Win7, etc. - go to a CMD prompt, change to the directory under which you want to search, and type

DIR /S /B file_to_search_for

This is even faster than the previous method, and it can do exact filename matches.

[antiRepublicrat]

UAC can be disabled in Vista, can it not be disabled in this RC?

It probably can, but that's not the point. Why even include it as a security feature if it sucks so much everybody turns it off?

And how does it disable the UI?

Whole screen dims, waiting for you to click something in the box to get it back.

And what do you mean by "seeing through the lipstick?"

Much of it is the same UI with a different paint job. There are some dialogs I recognize from back in the NT days, just with prettier colors that you could pretty much achieve with XP using a theme utility. This is especially true for many administrative utilities, with the main pleasant exception of the reworked Performance Monitor.

[MichiganMan]

UAC can be disabled in Vista, can it not be disabled in this RC?

It probably can, but that's not the point. Why even include it as a security feature if it sucks so much everybody turns it off?

Because then you can blame it on the users when the OS gets owned by a trojan. 

"Hey, we built a secure system, its not our fault the user chooses to drive without seatbelts..."

[Scutter]

You may also want to try one of these two utilities:

• Everything Search Engine
• Locate32