Sometimes, a firmware bug will prevent otherwise
good discs, written with a good burner, from playing on a perfectly
good player. And that??™s not good.
204
Chapter 5PerformanceMaximizing Performance CHAPTER 5
Performance
Windows Vista is by no means ???fast.??? Running on a high-end PC, at least by
the standards of the time of the product??™s release, Vista seems sluggish and
overburdened by its own weight.
This is nothing new. While the above statement may sound like an indictment
of Vista, Windows 95 was much worse 12 years earlier on the hardware
of its time. But put 95 on a PC of today, and it will fly.
Of course, Vista does more with its hardware, right? Well, there??™s the Glass
interface, covered later, which certainly sucks up a lot of processor cycles.
And sure, it takes longer to copy or move files than, say, XP, but as
explained in Chapter 2, Vista is doing more in the background, which is
why you now get a single window warning you of 27 upcoming conflicts
rather than 27 individual warnings. And there??™s the indexing service, also
discussed in Chapter 2, which keeps your hard disk busy much of the time.
These are all nice toys to have, but how vital are they? Are they more important
than a snappy, responsive computer, particularly after you??™ve just laid
down a thousand bucks for new hardware?
Perhaps a better question: if you get a new PC with hardware that??™s twice as
fast as your old machine, yet put Vista on it and end up with one that feels
slower than Windows XP did on the old hardware, is that progress?
Your PC truly spends most of its time??”something like 99.
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