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Tuning Windows Vista's Performance

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Tuning Windows Vista's Performance 18_0672328941_ch14.qxd 11/16/06 6:00 PM Page 381 CHAPTER 14 IN THIS CHAPTER . Vista’s Performance Tuning Windows Vista’s Improvements . Monitoring Performance Performance . Optimizing Startup . Optimizing Applications . Optimizing the Hard Disk We often wonder why our workaday computer chores seem to take just as long as they ever did, despite the fact . Optimizing Virtual Memory that hardware is generally more reliable and more powerful than ever. The answer to this apparent riddle relates to Parkinson’s Law of Data, which I mentioned back in Chapter 1, “An Overview of Windows Vista.” On a more general level, a restatement of Parkinson’s Law is as follows: The increase in software system requirements is directly propor- tional to the increase in hardware system capabilities. For example, imagine that a slick new chip is released that promises a 30% speed boost; software designers, seeing the new chip gain wide acceptance, add 30% more features to their already bloated code to take advantage of the higher performance level. Then another new chip is released, followed by another software upgrade—and the cycle continues ad nauseum as these twin engines of computer progress lurch co-dependently into the future. So, how do you break out of the performance deadlock created by the immovable object of software code bloat meeting the irresistible force of hardware advancement? By optimizing your system to minimize the effects of over- grown applications and to maximize the native capabilities of your hardware. Of course, it helps if your operating system gives you a good set of tools to improve and monitor performance, diagnose problems, and keep your data safe. Windows XP came with a decent set of client tools, and Vista improves on them, although not with anything radically new or earth-shattering. Vista’s perfor- mance and maintenance improvements are evolutionary, not revolutionary, but they’re definitely better than anything we’ve seen in a Microsoft client operating system. 18_0672328941_ch14.qxd 11/16/06 6:00 PM Page 382 382 CHAPTER 14 Tuning Windows Vista’s Performance Vista’s Performance Improvements Certain computer pastimes—hardcore gaming, software development, database adminis- tration, and digital video editing, to name just a few—require hardware help to maximize performance. Whether it’s scads of system RAM, a mountain of hard drive storage space, or a state-of-the-art graphics card, these intense computer tasks require the best hardware that users can afford. Those of us who are not into those intense computing pursuits generally don’t need the fastest machine on the market to write memos, build spreadsheet models, or design web pages. What we really need is a system that doesn’t get in our way by making us wait for seemingly routine tasks. For example, in Windows XP, I often right-click a document in Explorer with the intention of clicking a command such as Cut, Copy, or Rename. Along the way, however, my mouse pointer has to pass over the Send To command. XP popu- lates the Send To menu by going to the Registry and searching for items that it can add to this menu. For some reason, that sometimes takes several seconds, so my mouse pointer remains stuck on Send To, even though that’s not the command I want. This kind of interface annoyance must have bugged the Windows programmers one too many times also because they’ve rewritten the interface code from the ground up to make actions such as choosing menu options (including displaying the Send To menu) much faster. Even the in-place All Programs menu (refer to Chapter 2, “Customizing and Troubleshooting the Windows Vista Startup”) is a huge improvement over XP and enables you to launch items much more quickly from deeply nested folders such as System Tools and Ease of Access. Besides these fit-and-finish performance improvements, Vista comes with a host of new features and updated technologies designed to make Vista the fastest Windows ever. The next few sections take you through the most important of these performance enhance- ments. Faster Startup New The first thing you’ll notice about Windows Vista is that it starts up much faster than any previous version of Windows. I don’t mean that it’s a second or two faster, either. My own testing reveals that Vista starts up in approximately half the time of an equivalent XP setup. For example, on an XP machine that takes 60 seconds from power- up to the point that you can actually start working with the interface, the equivalent Vista system would take 25 to 30 seconds. Remember, too, that I was testing with a beta version of Vista, so the release version you’ll use should be even faster. NOTE One Microsoft document claimed that Vista startups would take “typically 2 to 3 seconds.” This seems extremely unlikely, but it sure would be nice if it was true! (But see my discussion of the new sleep mode, later in this chapter.) 18_0672328941_ch14.qxd 11/16/06 6:00 PM Page 383 Vista’s Performance Improvements 383 Where does the startup speed boost come from? Some of it comes from optimizing the startup code. However, most of the improvement comes from Vista’s asynchronous startup script and application launching. Older versions of Windows were hobbled at startup because they had to wait for each startup script, batch file, and program to launch before Windows handed the desktop over to the user. Vista handles startup jobs asynchronously, which means they run in the background, whereas Vista devotes most of its startup energies to getting the desktop onscreen. This means that it’s not unusual to notice startup scripts or programs running well after the desktop has made its appearance. Because all startup items run in the background, theo- retically it shouldn’t matter how many script or programs you run at startup; Vista should start up just as fast as if you had no startup items. CAUTION 14 The Vista team was right to give the user top startup priority because it’s frustrating to wait forever for startup items to execute. However, asynchronous startup could lead to problems if a script or program that you require for your work has not finished its chores before you’re ready. In most cases, this should just mean enduring the usual waiting game, but it’s something to bear in mind whenever you or one of your programs adds a script, program, or service to the startup. Sleep Mode: The Best of Both Worlds New In the last few versions of Windows, you had a number of options at your disposal for turning off your computer. You could use the Shut Down option to turn off the system entirely, which saved power but forced you to close all your documents and applications. You could put the system into Standby mode, which preserved your work and enabled you to restart quickly, but didn’t entirely shut off the machine’s power. Or you could go into Hibernate mode, which preserved your work and completely shut off the machine, but also took a relatively long time to restart (faster than Shut Down, but slower than Standby). I think it’s safe to say that these options confused most users, particularly the (subtle) difference between the Standby and Hibernate modes. By far the most common power- management complaint I’ve heard over the past few years is, “Why can’t Windows be more like a Mac?” That is to say, why can’t we turn off our machines instantly, and have them resume instantly with our windows and work still intact, as Apple has done with OS X? The new answer to these questions is that Vista is heading in that direction with a new Sleep state that combines the best of the old Standby and Hibernate modes: . As in Standby, you enter Sleep mode within just a few seconds. As in both Standby and Hibernate, Sleep mode preserves all your open documents, windows, and programs. 18_0672328941_ch14.qxd 11/16/06 6:00 PM Page 384 384 CHAPTER 14 Tuning Windows Vista’s Performance . As in Hibernate, Sleep mode shuts down your computer (although, as you’ll see, it doesn’t quite shut down everything). As in Standby, you resume from Sleep mode within just a few seconds. How can Vista preserve your work and restart in just a few seconds? The secret is that Vista doesn’t really shut off your computer when you initiate Sleep mode. Instead, it shuts down everything except a few crucial components such as the CPU and RAM. By preserving power to the RAM chips, Vista can keep your work intact and redisplay it instantly on waking. Don’t worry, though: Vista does make a copy of your work to the hard disk, so if your computer completely loses power, your work is still preserved. To use Sleep mode, open the Start menu and click the Sleep button, shown in Figure 14.1. (Notice that Microsoft has designed the Sleep button to look like a power button. This is no coincidence because Microsoft would greatly prefer that we “shut down” using Sleep mode instead of actually powering off.) Vista saves the current state and shuts off the computer in a few seconds. To resume, press your computer’s power button; the Vista Welcome screen appears almost immediately. Sleep button FIGURE 14.1 Click the new Sleep button to quickly shut down your computer and save your work. 18_0672328941_ch14.qxd 11/16/06 6:00 PM Page 385 Vista’s Performance Improvements 385 SuperFetch with ReadyBoost: The Faster Fetcher New Prefetching was a performance feature introduced in Windows XP that monitored your system and anticipated the data that you might use in the near future.
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