The Ed Bott Report

Windows Vista is a resource hog, right? Everyone says it doesn’t even get out of first gear without a gigabyte of RAM, and it takes 2 GB before it stops stuttering and stammering with each mouse click. That’s what I keep reading on the Internet, so it must be true. I had steeled myself for pitiful performance when I yanked all but 512MB out of my test system last week and downgraded to Vista Home Basic. But guess what? It worked. In fact, I was impressed with how well Vista ran on this barebones system.

May 9, 2007 by Ed Bott

1 Comment Vote

Are you having performance problems with Windows Vista? You don't need a stopwatch to find the cause. Vista's onboard monitors are constantly recording information about performance and storing it in the new, greatly expanded event logs. None of these details are documented anywhere, which is why I sat down with a group of Microsoft engineers to unravel the mystery.

May 4, 2007 by Ed Bott

138 Comments 1 Vote

Everyone knows that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But that doesn't stop shady resellers from offering Windows XP at eye-popping prices with a plausible sounding story that even suckered one leading Windows newsletter. It's a great deal, until you end up in court.

April 29, 2007 by Ed Bott

326 Comments Vote

Almost without exception, the first reaction when people hear that Microsoft is working on Windows Home Server is, "Why would I want that?" After they see it, the first reaction is much simpler: "I want that." In this post and accompanying image gallery, I supply details about why you'll want Windows Home Server on your home network.

April 26, 2007 by Ed Bott

248 Comments Vote

When a Windows tip becomes popular, it spreads through the community like wildfire. Case in point: I've seen at least 10 sites this week echo a tip that shows how to use an obscure command-line tool to trim the amount of disk space Windows Vista sets aside for System Restore. But is this good advice? Before you start chopping, make sure you understand the facts and the alternatives.

April 24, 2007 by Ed Bott

1 Comment Vote

The echo chamber is spreading the alarmist news that Microsoft is cutting off access to Windows XP in 2008. Too bad the story's not true. By my calculations, anyone who wants Windows XP will still be able to get it even in 2011. Here's why.

April 19, 2007 by Ed Bott

60 Comments Vote

As I’ve pointed out in the previous two installments of this series, a properly configured, well-maintained Windows Vista installation should start up in a reasonable amount of time. I've condensed the lessons I learned from several days of concentrated testing into four basic principles.

April 18, 2007 by Ed Bott

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Is Windows Vista really slow to start up? Over the weekend, I played lab rat again, clicking a stopwatch over and over agin to measure startup times on a room full of Windows PCs. Is Vista really faster than XP? The results surprised even me.

April 16, 2007 by Ed Bott

102 Comments Vote

According to a handful of guys on the Internet, Vista is slower than a Commodore 64 to start up. Oh really? On my test machine, I needed a stopwatch to measure the difference in startup times. So what's the real problem?

April 11, 2007 by Ed Bott

178 Comments Vote

In the last installment of this series I showed how to quickly (and temporarily) mount a shared folder on a Windows Vista machine from a Linux PC in read-only mode. But what if you want the Vista shared folder to be permanently available to all users, in read-write mode? Here are the step-by-step instructions.

April 2, 2007 by Ed Bott

54 Comments Vote