Cutting Windows Vista Install Bloat

[engine]

I read on PCWorld about a tool designed to cut the bloated Windows Vista install.

Has anyone ever tried such a tool? Did it work, or was it a problem?

Cutting Windows Vista Install Bloat [pcworld.com]

[Swanny007]

Thanks, I'm going to check it out. I just got a laptop with Vista. Holy **** is it ever slow and painful. I bumped up the RAM and it runs a little better. But overall Vista is more difficult to use and slower than XP on similar hardware (I have two laptops with almost identical hardware).

One annoyance with Vista is the constant updates. I try to shut it down and it takes a half hour to do updates. Then you boot it up and it's configuring the updates. Talk about annoying! I wish I could "downgrade" to XP right now....

[LifeinAsia]

From what I understand, it decreases Vista INSTALLATION footprint (i.e., the amount of disk space needed to install it). It doesn't look like it decreases the bloat once it's already installed. I'd definitely like to hear from someone who's used it to know if it will do anything for computers with Vista already installed.

I just bought a new laptop for my wife and it came with Vista. Without any user applications running, it already uses 1G RAM! There's probably still some 3rd party crap pre-installed that I haven't nuked yet. But I am certianly glad I got her one with 2G RAM instead of trying to be cheap with just 1G!

[kaled]

I run Vista in 1 Gig without problems but I did perform a clean install. Vista certainly isn't as quick as XP, on average, I would say it's about half as fast (way to go Microsoft - the hardware manufacturer's best friend!).

I would advise setting updates to "notify only". I perform updates roughly every two months. A solid firewall, and antivirus software are your best friends (together with Firefox and sensible browsing habits).

Kaled.

[zafile]

It seems some of you including the guy who wrote the piece in PCWorld would want to go back to October 5 1991, you know "when men were men and wrote their own device drivers...". (1)

I personally don't miss those days...

"Imagine a tougher version of MS-Dos ­where the commands are even harder to memorise and less forgiving of errors­ and you are starting to get there. And if you want to cheat a little, you can put on a pseudo-graphical front end and ­ bingo ­ you might just manage to turn a modern Windows NT-capable PC into a passable imitation of Windows 3.1 circa 1992." (2)

Oh yes! The author of the PCWorld article misses those days as well as developer Dino Nuhagic.

Wait a minute!

Developer Dino Nuhagic? Shouldn't the correct title be undeveloper.

If you guys can't run Vista in your current PCs because of lack of proper power, then stick with XP. One of my old PCs, a 333MHz Pentium II runs XP pretty well.

But please, don't misinform others simply because you can't run Windows Vista in your legacy PC.

[edited by: bill at 6:00 am (utc) on Feb. 1, 2008]
[edit reason] removed unnecessary links [/edit]

[webdoctor]

If you guys can't run Vista in your current PCs because of lack of proper power, then stick with XP. One of my old PCs, a 333MHz Pentium II runs XP pretty well.

But please, don't misinform others simply because you can't run Windows Vista in your legacy PC.

Sorry zafile, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

FWIW, I'm currently using a PC with 8GB RAM w/ AMD Athlon X2 5000+ processor, and Windows XP Pro 64-bit runs rings round all versions of Vista on my hardware. In my mind this is not what you'd call "legacy hardware"...

During Vista beta testing (yes, I was a tester) many, many testers kept telling MSFT "this is slower than XP on my hardware". Zero official response from MSFT. MSFT fans replied to us with "wait until RTM, it will be much faster then..."

Guess what, on all the systems I've tested, Vista turns out to be significantly slower than XP Pro on identical hardware. To me, that's the end of the discussion, and I'm not planning to upgrade to Vista any time soon (although I have the licences).

Try a search for "slow vista" on MSFT's support site [google.com]... and read some of the results. BTW, why are there so many articles? From where I'm standing, "buy [even] more expensive hardware" isn't the solution I'm looking for...

To all those with a new PC runinng Vista who aren't happy with its performance, try installing XP [64-bit if you can...] and watch it fly...

[LifeinAsia]

That may work for PCs, some new laptops (and probably PCs) are coming out with new hardware that don't have XP drivers.

[bill]

We're way off topic here folks. Let's stick to the original thread topic if possible.

This tool reduces the amount of software installed with Vista. It allows technically savvy users to eliminate things they don't want or need in their setup. What's wrong with that? As the article says, there are similar tools available for XP.

[kaled]

I'm not sure I'd want to use a cut down Vista disk for installation. Why not use the standard disk and then run OptionalFeatures.exe

That probably won't save as much space (and none at all during installation) but hard disks are huge these days - 120GB is standard for basic laptops.

Kaled.