Vista fills up the RAM for processes that you might start up later on. Free RAM is just a waste of RAM. This technique was taken from Linux . RAM really is cache and its job is to bring up processes to be used faster.
Think of it as the Pizza guy and the Chines guy standing at the corner of your block waiting for you to call, but they already have what ever you usually order fresh and warm waiting in the car. With XP the would have to cook the food and bring it over. get it?
" And the most important rule of cache design is that empty cache memory is wasted cache memory. Empty cache isn't doing you any good. It's expensive, high-speed memory sucking down power for zero benefit. The primary mission in the life of every cache is to populate itself as quickly as possible with the data that's most likely to be needed-- and to consistently deliver a high "hit rate" of needed data retrieved from the cache. Otherwise you're going straight to the hard drive, mister, and if you have to ask how much going to the hard drive will cost you in performance, you can't afford it."
This was taken from:http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html
a must read for every computer person
I saw an offer where you could get Vista for free if you gave up your privacy to microsoft for like 3 months.
I'd highly doubt that. Unless if the Vista was like trial software loaded or something.
forcing software to conform to the new standards has been micro$oft's MO for like.. foreverI mainly use my PC for Audio production software, and on transferring my software from my XP computer to my Vista computer I found that none of it would work - there were issues with running the ASIO driver, which Microsoft strangely decided to completely replace with a driver that is far less able than the previous one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output). This rendered Vista useless for my needs! There was no benefit to me running XP and Vista side by side and so I went straight back to XP. It seems to me Vista forces the XP generation of software to conform to it, rather than being backwards compatible in the first place, which is ridiculous. But I guess it depends on what you're using your computer for, for other purposes there are probably some advantages...
Vista doesn't have to have drivers installed for hardware, it will ignore it if need be. Saying this, you can dual-boot Vista and XP and use XP for hardware/software that Vista doesn't support.
On newer computers, drivers aren't an issue since Vista is more than likely to have drivers for the hardware.
My experience with Vista:
http://socius.exofire.net/news/?p=9
As much as I hate vista I have to defend it there, cause that's also XP. For more on that look up the Sony DRM Rootkit Scandal, it buggered more than one pc (including two I own).Updated: February 13, 2007 11:47:04 AM
Type: Other
Publisher: First 4 Internet Ltd.
Risk Impact: High
File Names: aries.sys
Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP
Behavior
SecurityRisk.First4DRM is a rootkit that hides any processes, files, folders, or registry subkeys that start with the following string:
$sys$
Note:Symptoms
- This rootkit was designed to hide a legitimate application, but it can be used to hide other objects, including malicious software.
- Customers running Norton Internet Security 2005 AntiSpyware Edition, programs from the Norton 2006 line of products, and Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.x can make use of the product's remediation functionality to remove this risk.
Any processes, files, folders, or registry subkeys that start with or are renamed to start with the following string are hidden from view:
$sys$
Transmission
This security risk is part of the XCP software present on some Sony BMG content-protected music CDs. When a CD containing this software is started from a CD-ROM, the security risk is automatically installed on the compromised computer.