View Full Version : My team hates me
tornadog
12-03-07, 05:28 PM
This year I decided to reward my programming team members by getting them all Lenovo laptops with 4GB Ram, 160 GB HD and Vista Ultimate x64. Its been 2 weeks and all the guys are cribbing, first we had to struggle with some of the development tools not working, our sip based softphone not working. Now they are complaining its slow opening up VS2005 and other apps, even with 4 gb ram and after turning off aero,sidebar and all the unwanted stuff.
Anybody has any recommendations on what I can do. I am thinking of installing XP 32 bit and removing 2 GB Ram from each machine and use the money to buy something else, software,etc.
Bman212121
12-04-07, 12:03 AM
What model are they and what processor is in them? I've used Visual Studio 2005 on Vista 32 bit and I didn't notice any problems with load times. I probably wasn't loading as much stuff as you guys were though. Another thing is if they are doing it on battery chances are the speedstep is slowing it way down.
Absolution
12-04-07, 12:04 AM
Just format them, my lenovo had quite a bit of bloat on it. I didn't format, but I removed a lot of their programs.
I'm with Absolution; I'd stick with Vista, but I would whipe the drives with a clean format. I run Visual Studio in Vista with no trouble and I only have 2Gb of RAM. Of course I'm using the 32bit version, but I doubt that would be a serious cause of slowdown. New computers come with tons of crap installed, formatting clean is always a good idea.
nekrosoft13
12-04-07, 12:23 PM
vista
good place to check up on your nasty cough
http://www.1800doctors.com/
zoomy942
12-04-07, 12:24 PM
always do a clean install when you get a pre-made pc
good place to check up on your nasty cough
http://www.1800doctors.com/
:D
lduguay
12-04-07, 01:48 PM
Any funny VS2005 plugins?
I run this on Vista 32 without a problem.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Version 8.0.50727.762 (SP.050727-7600)
Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0.50727
Installed Edition: Enterprise
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005
Microsoft Web Application Projects 2005 Version 8.0.50727.762
Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Developers
DevPartner Studio 8.0.0.2999
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers - ENU Service Pack 1 (KB926601)
PVCS Version Manager 8.1.4.1
SQL Server Analysis Services
SQL Server Integration Services
SQL Server Reporting Services
A lot of the slowness is probably caused by Vista's insane pre-fretch feature, which will spend several minutes after bootup loading several gigabytes of data into memory. Disable prefetching, the indexing service, UAC, and automatic defrag, and Vista should speed up noticably.
Bman212121
12-04-07, 06:40 PM
For me System Restore was a absolute hog. As soon as I turned that off my drives stop seeking all the time.
einstein_314
12-04-07, 06:58 PM
A lot of the slowness is probably caused by Vista's insane pre-fretch feature, which will spend several minutes after bootup loading several gigabytes of data into memory. Disable prefetching, the indexing service, UAC, and automatic defrag, and Vista should speed up noticably.
But prefetching speeds up the computer....by caching commonly used programs for quick start up. I don't think it would slow down the computers. Maybe for the first 30 seconds or so after boot up....but after that it shouldn't.
conroejoe
12-04-07, 07:44 PM
I am thinking of installing XP 32 bit and removing 2 GB Ram from each machine and use the money to buy something else, software,etc.
Win, win right there...I still run 4GB and let XP just use 3.25GB oh well.
I use Vista on my gaming system and I used to use it on my laptop for school, I had no problems running VS2005, JBoss or JEdit, Oracle, Tomcat, etc.. but I have to admit, switching back to XP made that stuff A LOT snappier.
Redeemed
12-04-07, 10:19 PM
Win, win right there...I still run 4GB and let XP just use 3.25GB oh well.
:rolleyes:
But prefetching speeds up the computer....by caching commonly used programs for quick start up. I don't think it would slow down the computers. Maybe for the first 30 seconds or so after boot up....but after that it shouldn't.
It's supposed to speed things up, but in reality, it doesn't. What you get instead is disk thrashing and unresponsiveness for the first few minutes of the system being on (btw, if we can assume roughly 40MB/s transfer rate, to get around 3.5GB into memory, you're looking at around 90 seconds, which you'll find doubled since the precaching is done at a low priority), and then more thrashing and unresponsiveness every time you close something and free some memory up, which Windows will fill with pre-cached files.
This year I decided to reward my programming team members by getting them all Lenovo laptops with 4GB Ram, 160 GB HD and Vista Ultimate x64. Its been 2 weeks and all the guys are cribbing, first we had to struggle with some of the development tools not working, our sip based softphone not working. Now they are complaining its slow opening up VS2005 and other apps, even with 4 gb ram and after turning off aero,sidebar and all the unwanted stuff.
Anybody has any recommendations on what I can do. I am thinking of installing XP 32 bit and removing 2 GB Ram from each machine and use the money to buy something else, software,etc.
move to Vista 32-bit and i think you will find their systems to be very quick.
Redeemed
12-05-07, 11:43 AM
It's supposed to speed things up, but in reality, it doesn't. What you get instead is disk thrashing and unresponsiveness for the first few minutes of the system being on (btw, if we can assume roughly 40MB/s transfer rate, to get around 3.5GB into memory, you're looking at around 90 seconds, which you'll find doubled since the precaching is done at a low priority), and then more thrashing and unresponsiveness every time you close something and free some memory up, which Windows will fill with pre-cached files.
This will only hold true so far... for example I only have to wait maybe 15 seconds after the desktop appears before I can actually start using my computer without any kind of slow-down. And regardless which application I have opened or closed, there isn't any form of "unresponsiveness". If you buy the low-end $400 PC from your local retailer and then wonder why it's slow- it is more than likely going through exactly what you mentioned. But any $700+ rig from most retailers should run Vista comparable to how it performs on my setup- which is lightyears faster and more responsive than XP ever was.
I always explain the ups and downs with Vista to my customers- informing them the importance of atleast 2GB of system RAM and explaining the whole "prefetching" concept and how it can aide or kill a system's responsiveness.
zoomy942
12-05-07, 11:45 AM
This will only hold true so far... for example I only have to wait maybe 15 seconds after the desktop appears before I can actually start using my computer without any kind of slow-down. And regardless which application I have opened or closed, there isn't any form of "unresponsiveness". If you buy the low-end $400 PC from your local retailer and then wonder why it's slow- it is more than likely going through exactly what you mentioned. But any $700+ rig from most retailers should run Vista comparable to how it performs on my setup- which is lightyears faster and more responsive than XP ever was.
I always explain the ups and downs with Vista to my customers- informing them the importance of atleast 2GB of system RAM and explaining the whole "prefetching" concept and how it can aide or kill a system's responsiveness.
agreed. and also to remember is that Vista and MS are big fans of Standby and Hibernate modes. In those cases, the precaching actually isnt a bad things. It's only on reboots when it has to reload everything.
This will only hold true so far... for example I only have to wait maybe 15 seconds after the desktop appears before I can actually start using my computer without any kind of slow-down. And regardless which application I have opened or closed, there isn't any form of "unresponsiveness". If you buy the low-end $400 PC from your local retailer and then wonder why it's slow- it is more than likely going through exactly what you mentioned. But any $700+ rig from most retailers should run Vista comparable to how it performs on my setup- which is lightyears faster and more responsive than XP ever was.
I always explain the ups and downs with Vista to my customers- informing them the importance of atleast 2GB of system RAM and explaining the whole "prefetching" concept and how it can aide or kill a system's responsiveness.
Hm well, that's not my experience of Vista and its prefetching anyway, and I'm running Vista u64 on a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo with four gigs of RAM and a RAID0 array with two Seagate 320GB 7200.10s in it.
Ignoring that though, I'm not impressed by the intelligence of the Vista pre-fetcher. It seems to function pretty much on a basis of pre-loading files that have been used before, without any consideration of the performance benefits of preloading one file rather than another. If it had been written with any sense, I'd imagine any 800MB file with 'Setup' in its title would be pretty much off the pre-loader list, since they tend not to get used twice. 4MB MP3s could go, too.
And, continuing the vague theme of Vista grumbling, has anyone figured out how to fix the taskbar, to make it not change colour when a window gets blown up to full-screen?
Redeemed
12-05-07, 11:11 PM
Hm well, that's not my experience of Vista and its prefetching anyway, and I'm running Vista u64 on a 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo with four gigs of RAM and a RAID0 array with two Seagate 320GB 7200.10s in it.
Ignoring that though, I'm not impressed by the intelligence of the Vista pre-fetcher. It seems to function pretty much on a basis of pre-loading files that have been used before, without any consideration of the performance benefits of preloading one file rather than another. If it had been written with any sense, I'd imagine any 800MB file with 'Setup' in its title would be pretty much off the pre-loader list, since they tend not to get used twice. 4MB MP3s could go, too.
And, continuing the vague theme of Vista grumbling, has anyone figured out how to fix the taskbar, to make it not change colour when a window gets blown up to full-screen?
This doesn't surprise me. Just PM Q and ask him how well Vista runs on his rig with a Q6600 and 4GB RAM. :p Vista seems to be picky. You're aren't the first person I've come across with a nice setup that doesn't seem to like Vista all that well. Kinda' wierd... wonder what causes the discrepency...
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