Wired has an article up about how to speed up Vista. While they have a couple OK tips in there, there are a couple of suggestions that caught my attention as colossally BAD. I tried to edit the wiki page to reflect this, but I was rebuffed by the original author. So much for community contributions.
- DO NOT under *any* circumstances, shut off Windows Error Reporting. How do you think Microsoft knows what to fix in the Service Packs? Microsoft doesn't collect personal info with these reports, so what are you worried about?
- DO NOT use vLite, despite it's perceived appeal. Look guys, there are *thousands* of people at Microsoft who helped engineer Windows, including the new dependency engine that manages the Setup process. Do you seriously trust ONE GUY to understand enough of all that to be able to delete files safely without affecting anything else? Using this program will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to install SP1, PLUS it needs to be run to make a custom install of Vista, so it won't help anyone after the fact. Even so... seriously, you mean to tell me you can't spare 6GB on your hard drive?
- YOU DON'T NEED TO manually defragment. Vista's defragmenter, though seemingly hobbled, is actually quite good. Vista has a new "prioritized I/O" system that pauses lower-priority operations (like defragmenting) for higher-priority operations (like saving Word documents). Even if it runs while you're working, you shouldn't really notice it too much. And while the author will tout the usefulness of a visual UI showing what's going on, that actually DOES take up processor time, and will slow down the defrag. You're better off without it.
- YOU REALLY SHOULDN'T shut off Aero if your graphics card is capable of it. Aero at it's core moves desktop drawing off of the CPU and onto the GPU. Even if you don't want the transparencies of Glass (you can turn those off), unless you're on a laptop trying to conserve battery life, you should let Aero do it's thing.
Maybe next time, Wired will get someone who has actually used Vista, instead of regurgitating XP tips, to write their tuning tips. Just a thought.