Topic: Trying out Vista

[Reno]

I have put together my quad with the intention of installing ubuntu, but because ubuntu had installation problems I decided I'd try vista. So I *cough* acquired a copy, and installed it. So far, aside from some setting changes like enabling the start button, disabling the uac, and funky little widget nuisance on right its run very fast and stable. It runs about as fast as xp on this machine, but it takes up about 3x the space. It does look pretty though. 

From where I'm sitting it doesn't live up to the hype, but then again what does.

[Clive]

I wonder how much space ge next version of Windows will require?   

[Simon]

Yes, that's true, Clive.  It can only get worse, the 'prettier' they try to make it.

[sam]

yep, graphics takes space.. and lots of resources.

Have you set it up to make use of the multi-processors, or does it just do it for you? I guess my question is, do you have the ability to change how it does this?

[Reno]

You can assign tasks specifically to each cpu in both xp and vista. The other benefit is it takes advantage of more than 3 gigs of ram. With xp installed it would only see about 2.8 gigs.

[sam]

You can assign tasks specifically to each cpu in both xp and vista. The other benefit is it takes advantage of more than 3 gigs of ram. With xp installed it would only see about 2.8 gigs.

yes, but I meant does it do this automatically / efficiently / do it run OS tasks over didn't processors or is always on the same one.

[Reno]

I don't understand the last part of your question. Here's a screenshot of the task manager. As far as i can tell it distributes tasks over all cores. If you feel the need to limit a process to a single core there is an option. I don't really see a difference. I doubt there is a noticeable performance difference.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/7346/13187730cf7.jpg

[sam]

you answered what I was asking - I really wondered if Vista just hammered the one node.

[Reno]

Well, last night the machine was running fine. Today when i got up though it had a nice healthy spyware infestation, porn icons, popups, and all. I remember hearing awhile back how someone had figured out a way to exploit the speech recognition software remotely to gain a hold on a machine. I wonder if that's what happened in my case.

[sam]

Well, last night the machine was running fine. Today when i got up though it had a nice healthy spyware infestation, porn icons, popups, and all. I remember hearing awhile back how someone had figured out a way to exploit the speech recognition software remotely to gain a hold on a machine. I wonder if that's what happened in my case.

yikes!