9%??”waiting for
you to do something. That leaves only 0.1% of the time when you really
don??™t want Windows to be doing anything other than fulfilling your request.
But it??™s precisely the moment you start a program, move a window across
the screen, or apply a filter in Photoshop, that you want your PC to perform;
and of course, it??™s at this moment when Windows has the most work
to do.
Trim the Fat | 205
Performance
This is why your PC is full of caching technologies, such as Vista??™s search
indexing service. While your PC is idle, Windows uses that latent power to
read through all the documents on your hard disk, making the Windows
Explorer??™s Search feature much more responsive at the moment you actually
need a response. Of course, this means that search results are sometimes
out of date, but that??™s the price you pay for speed.
So, it usually comes down to finding a balance; do you want snappy windows
or do you want the Glass interface? Do you want quick file searches,
or would you rather Windows use that time to defragment your hard disk?
Do you want Windows to start up and shut down quickly, or do you want
to save power at night by shutting it down completely?
That??™s what this chapter??”and the whole book, really??”is about: overcoming
the ???try to please everybody??? approach Microsoft took when it designed Vista,
by turning off the stuff you don??™t need and customizing the stuff you do.
Trim the Fat
Surprise: Windows Vista is not configured for optimal performance right
out of the box.
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