Vista the RAM Gobbler
I recently purchased a new home computer after my last one gave up the ghost, and reluctantly agreed to the most recent Windows offering as the operating system. Having spent the last several days getting used to things I have to say that Windows Vista has proven a very interesting place, but I wouldn’t want to live there - at least not yet.
Possibly because it’s such a new operating system with some kinks to work out, or that the minimum spec is so ridiculously high - more likely both - my experiences with the OS the last few days have not been stellar.
Despite featuring a 3.7 GHz CPU and 512 RAM, the machine has had noticeable difficulties keeping up with the Vista’s hoggish demands. Sure RAM isn’t expensive these days, but I’m unwilling to accept a spec that carries with it a 1 Gig of RAM MINIMUM on principle alone.
Unfortunately the result of the RAM shortage has been that programs take longer to load, but also more importantly my capacity to meet via web conference has been virtually eliminated. Were this purely for fun it would be bad enough, but this has inhibited my ability to do my job - and that is no bueno.
I’ve been looking after the pilot of a web conferencing program at my uni for the last year and a half or so, and by nature you deal with people in different time zones. Just tonight for example I had to test the connection of someone in the UK. Unfortunately with a 13-hour time difference between the UK and Sydney there’s no convenient way to schedule things. You just do it from home in the evenings.
Unfortunately Vista the RAM gobbler rendered my audio virtually unusable because it couldn’t keep up with the audio processing tasks while feeding The Beast (gave up on video virtually immediately), so I had to switch to another computer entirely. Not happy, Bill.
I had really wanted to give Vista the benefit of the doubt, but this just isn’t going to work. It’s unrealistic to expect people to fork out several hundred dollars for the OS and then turn around and tell them they’ve got to upgrade their entire machine to use it. It may well turn into a great OS in time when their spec becomes more commonplace, but until then I’ll be using it as a test environment and not my primary one.
This decision was borne more out of necessity than desire I’m afraid. My machine came with Vista pre-installed and I’ve since realised I can’t replace it with the copy of XP Pro I have. Needless to say I was very irritated with that ephiphany, but you know what they say: When life gives you lemons you make lemonade.
Courtesy of a tutorial on APCMag.com (”How to dual boot Vista and XP“) I’m in the process of dual-booting the machine. XP will become my primary OS with Vista relegated to a test environment and playground.
Sorry Vista, you’re just too high maintenance. I think we’d better see other people…
