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You should run HD tune on that USB stick. I don't know what Vista needs as a minimum to call it ready boost, but from what I have seen most USB flash RAM has abysmal read times compared to the HD. I'm not even sure Vista would use it, given the fact that you have 4GB of RAM, but it wouldn't surprise me. I used RC1 and I don't remember it taking 18sec to get to the home page. Something is wrong, and that's coming from a Vista disliker. I didn't want to be a hater.

Well, you are either a victim of your poor writing, or lack of comprehension.

First of all, let's look at the first part of your statement, "...you have to authorize XP through the internet..." You have obviously missed two of the three bullet points under Activation Methods (by the way, "activation" is the proper term) heading in the KB article you linked. And while mention of the modems, in today's day and age, makes me chuckle a bit, phones are not going away any time soon.


Second, and mainly, is your implication that MS can "shut off" XP via the activation tool. I can't really tell definitely enough what nonsense you mean by that - whether it would be denying activation after a legitimate purchase or that somehow after activation they could use it to shut off your machine - both statements are utterly ridiculous, although the latter is doubly so.

Activation is a tool for validation of authenticity. As in piracy prevention (less than ideal, which is why that behavior is changing in the upcoming SP). To think that MS would be able to deny activation for a legitimately purchased copy is ridiculous and would most likely be a violation of EULA (I would think, although it is quite surprising what those EULAs say with respect to who actually owns the software and what rights they have).

With respect to "shutting off" (again, whatever that could mean) a validated copy of XP - well that just is not how activation works, so...

Lastly, as people have pointed out already, older Windows versions really die when MS stops to support them (via service packs). The installed base is much much more of an important indicator than new installations.

And upgrading to Vista in the enterprise (Zorg) makes a ton of sense because the performance hit on productivity applications on adequately configured systems is negligible, while the ability to deploy and manage client installations is much improved over XP. Additionally, the security enhancements alone are well worth it. If you think (like I do) they are worth it on the home user end, it is certainly so when you have thousands of often borderline moronic users to manage.

So no, DX10 is not the only reason for upgrading to Vista... But I digress.

So, back to the subject; pip_seeker, once again, do you have any clue of what you are talking about, or do you just like to mix lack of understanding and poorly formed opinions in a public forum?

That's why Ready Boost takes advantage of low latency on the flash memory for random access while directing sequential transfer requests to the HDD because of higher transfer rates. At least according to the people that designed it.

Vista sucks butt.
90 days after Vista went on sale MS said it would end -all- support for it at the end of December 2008.

Vista is this decades ME.
http://www.blip.tv/file/340692

As a gamer nobody -needs- Vista for DX10 gfx...use Google.

No no no! NOTHING is as bad as ME!

I would say that Windows ME is considerably worse than you.

You must really have hated it to say something like that

That all sounds real good but I don't believe it. Vista uses the additional extremely slower Ready Boost RAM to load additional stuff that it can't load into existing RAM for SuperFetch. The idea behind this is that people with older machines that won't accept more RAM can use Ready Boost to make up the difference, thereby eliminating the need for an upgrade. Now whether they will exhaust all of the low latency high bandwidth RAM first is a matter of discussion. We don't know how well they have programmed their OS and only testing will tell, although I haven't seen any. Payola anyone? More of a concern is the relative speed of the USB RAM, which is generally very slow compared to the HD speed. Don't misunderstand me I am a proponent of low seek times, but if your throughput is 10MB/sec it means nothing. So as I said earlier, with 4GB of RAM you should probably unplug your thumb drive, or at least determine it's speed relative to your HD.

But don't listen to me I use XP and have a Raptor.

If Vista was free I would upgrade today... Since it's not , I need some motivation to buy it, and security (never really had problems with XP) and DX10 (can't tell the difference) is not enough for me.
And I don't get my OS with a new system because I usually change only components, not the whole system.
Save XP petition:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/

The save XP campaign won't do anything. And as said earlier, XP is good until at least 2012. Take a deep breath it will be OK.

I agree with those who say that Vista is just ME all over again. That said, I'm one of the few people who actually liked ME; it seemed to fix some Win98 problems I had at the time. And THAT said, I have no reason to get Vista. I have specific programs that work under XP that won't on Vista. Vista costs more, and offers nothing I need. As for stability, my work PC has not had to be reloaded in some 4+ years; I've had no trouble keeping it clean and stable.
M$ will beat the marketing drum on Vista as hard as they can (and will unfortunately enjoy much success), but when the next Windows comes out, they will be just as quick to sweep Vista under the rug.

register? activate? wtf is that????

and yes I still get all my updates..., nuff said

In XP it takes one second or less to open such a simple page like Google and 2-3 seconds at most to open as many tabs as I want??? Whats your point? Opening a websites is not dependent on your OS as it is your internet connections speed (DSL, Cable, Dial-up, Wireless).

The problem with Vista is not so much performance as it is a resource hogging OS that requires much more hardware investment than XP. In other words its to FAT. 64bit or 32bit it doesn't matter. I have 64 Vista also and XP 32 bit still runs circles around it on the same dual boot machine. Look at my PC specs, its a heavy weight.

By design Vista was made for newbs. All adminstrator controls are hidden and every safety feature under the sun is turned on. Couple that with its "performance" enhancement features like superfetch and all its optimizing algorithms and what not and it quickly becomes a slow fat hog. You add real newbs on top of that equation that start to install and download everything and anything that begins to load down the system on startup and game over dude.

At least with XP its easy to clean up those kinds of messes and it takes much longer before a ton of startup apps begins to weigh heavy on the computers resources. Its just happens much much faster on Vista because the OS itself is so taxing to begin with.

Congratulations on your success with Vista , but don't pretend its because of 64 bits or anything.

I'll probably get Vista at some point for DX 10, but I'm hoping the next Windows OS will be a much greater departure, like it being only 64 bit, and moving away from some of the legacy support to try something new.

Whether you like Vista or not saying it's the new ME is ignorant. Do you even remember Windows ME? Even if you hate Vista it still doesn't have any of the faults of ME. Here's why ME sucked and failed.

1.) ME was released with 12 months of 98SE and XP on both sides. There was no sense for anybody to buy it nor MS to support it. Vista came 6 years after XP and atleast 3 years before the next OS. It will both become the standard for users and receive lots of attention from MS as far as support.

2.) ME was almost identical to 98 except for lack of a true DOS enviroment. Vista has vast differences from XP from the ground up. You can be an idiot and say "DX10 offers nothing" when games have yet to be really developed for it, but eventually they will be and I'm not sure how Google will help XP with that. Along with better security and the ability to handle better hardware and Vista offers new features that are desireable.

3.) ME was horribly unstable. This probably the biggest downfall of ME as an OS; You pretty much couldn't run it without expecting a BSOD. Vista on the other hand is by far the most stable Windows OS within it's first year at least going back to 3.1.

Even when XP was released and pretty much up until SP2 many people were still weary of using it, in large part because they felt it(XP) would be ME all over again.

My friends and I refer to Vista as a bloatware downgrade from XP. I will run Vista only when I have no other choice. I never have any security issues with XP. Most other minor features on Vista I might really want I can get as applet for XP. Maybe Vista support from third parties is not universal yet because they agree with this. UI for certain settings in Vista is a step backwards, with rediculous 'wizard-like' procedures instead of much better xp controls. If Vista is better in any particular ways, the sum of them does not add up to better overall. If it had better controls and you could fully customize and streamline it, maybe it would be ok. But they dont want you to have that control, a step towards a mac-like mentality but without the elegance.

I don't know the exact issues but am aware that my company has had to obtain copies of XP for the new computers that came with VISTA. In fact, several of the Engineering department computers had to be shut down because of VISTA and security issues. That cost us tons of money because of project delay issues. Right now, the IT people refuse to allow anyone using VISTA to connect to the server. Again, I don't know the specifics but definately know that I can't buy a new laptop unless it has XP.

pp40: I have the same problem. We're using a Cisco VPN to communicate with the corporate intranet from overseas work sites. There's some kind of incompatibility with the Cisco VPN and Vista. We just got a bunch of laptops that company IT downgraded from Vista to XP.