I wanted to give Vista a run through its paces. I tried to get in on the Vista preview program thing, but I guess something expired and I got left in the dark. Screw 'em, I'll just torrent the thing. I downloaded it, ran it through vLite to remove 2,500+MB of unnecessary languages and components, then proceeded to burn and install it. Well, after spending a full day torrenting and backing up my crap, then erasing and testing my hard drive, of course.
Full clean install. I pop the disc in, get greeted with an interesting load screen (graphical setup, yay!), and install the thing. I've got to say that Vista installs faster than a full version of XP, surprisingly. Copies files, makes a few adjustments, then bam, it's done. It greeted me with some questions like "enter your product key", which I said "no thanks" to (how do you like that? It doesn't require a key!), my username and password (but no "name and organization" crap either - wow!), et cetera, ad nauseum.
So, now with everything up and running, and an "experience index" of 2.0 (bitches!), Aero Glass in all its kickass fucking glory, all my drivers already pre-installed, everything working like a fucking dream, I get to start the experience. So I plug in my FireWire cable for the 400mbps LAN, and, what do I get?
Bupkis. Not a goddamn thing. Microsoft truly did remove IP over 1394 support.
Slam on Vista #1: Removal of IP over 1394 support.It's no matter, since what I'm about to find out in a minute is even worse. Okay, so I plug in the rest of my devices... USB hard drives, keyboard, burner, flash drive--... wait, flash drive? It pops up with autorun bullshit like everyone's used to for XP but there's an interesting new menu item. "ReadyBoost" - use this flash device to speed up my computer. Wait, what? Since when can a shitty, slow-ass USB memory stick be used to speed up my computer? Have we really reached that low?
ReadyBoost. Seems like a Flash based swap file that "predicts" what you're going to load next, and loads it onto flash, because god knows, Flash is (somehow) faster than a 5,200RPM hard drive. Flash is crappy at random access. I ran Windows 98 off this Flash drive and it was like watching a waterfall made from molasses. Whatever, I turn it on anyway. I guess it's better than letting that Flash drive sit there unused.
I decide that I want to try "assimilating" into the Microsoft lifestyle. Use IE7, use Windows Media Player, etc... because for one I'm damn tired of being left out of all the "computer ease" that everyone else seems to be doing. It's a pain in the ass to build a DVD or archive video from my camcorder. So there has to be an easier way. I'll find out what the easier way is, because people sure seem to be buying it. I'll put my music in My Music instead of C:\MP3, my downloads in my Downloads folder instead of all over the desktop, pictures organized into Pictures, etc... what a great idea, eh? It's like cleaning my room, digitally.
First step: restore my crap. It's all torrented, like I said, and spread across 2 computers on 3 hard drives (my 100 is my biggest drive, so I had to spread it across 2 20's and a 40). First I grabbed uTorrent 1.6 and... nope. Still unable to map UPnP port. Goddamnit. Okay, so I load the torrent, and... fuck, I need to start the torrent on the other computer. I go to Remote Desktop and log into the other computer. Very interesting. It's asking me for my login before I even connect. Okay, so I type it in. Now it says it can't verify the identity of the computer because it's not running Vista. No shit Sherlock? Whatever, move on. I connect, start it up, then go back to my computer and connect to the peer. Whee! 4MB/s! I could have been getting 15MB/s over Firewire. Bastards. What's this? Disk overloaded? At 4MB/s? What the crap? 3MB/s... 2MB/s... and it stays at 2MB/s the whole way, overloaded the whole way as well. I have to put up with 2-3MB/s transfers for all 25GB of two torrents.
Slam on Vista #2: Horrendously slow disk performance caused by way too much overhead from unneccessary visual bullshit running at all times.
*ugh* I get the shit restored... well, most of it (I still have at least 3 more torrents - 20gb - to transfer back), and I poke around. It's asking me at every fucking turn if I really authorize this action or that action. Great for keeping the system secure, but if you want to protect against malware, you need to know what to look for in a bad program... people will still click "OK" on programs that are going to kill their system because it was bundled with a program they intentionally downloaded! Like Limewire - or hell, even Live Messenger itself comes with Microsuck spyware! It isn't going to be solved by shitty Linuxlike authorization at every turn...
Windows Defender. Looks like a built-in antispyware program. Yippe, bugger off. It was set to scan my computer "automatically" or some shit... disable the hell out of that. My computer's already running slow enough without it.
It feels like my whole system is running under some kind of emulation layer - like I'm using a G4 PowerBook that's running Virtual PC. Sound - just simple sounds like the MSN "contact sign in" ding - are delayed and choppy. My typing, here, in this box, is unresponsive and laggy. The animated smileys off to the side are putting a huge strain on the system, I guess. All the drivers are installed and the only third party driver I'm using is one from Synaptics for my touchpad. Everything else is Microsoft supplied. The CPU fan runs constantly.
Oh, speaking of which, god bless the fucking print spooler service. Microsoft supplied drivers for my networked Canon i860 and S600 printers seem to be hanging up the Print Spooler service, so every time I turn on the computer it eats up 100% CPU time until I go to the Services section and shut down the Print Spooler. Gee, I wonder how many end users are going to have that little problem?
And that's not even scratching the surface of the much publicized Content Protection schemes in Windows Vista. Tilt bits, anyone?
