http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/83EC0FFE-EE04-4D53-8B87-25D1F05C954E1033.mspx
Haha. WTF?
A few choice ones.
- Run fewer programs at the same time
You what? Are you really suggesting I change the way I use a computer?!?
- Turn off visual effects
And that, uh, leaves me with what in Vista exactly? 
- Restart regularly
PMSL. Yea.. "We can't manage memory properly"
- Add more memory
Uh, yea.. just throw more resources at it - that'll do it
- Defragment your hard drive
"We can't be arsed to develop a none-fragmenting file system"
And finally:
Haha, indeed.. don't settle for slow.. install XP :rasp:
I've never seen such nonsense.. ever.
Actually, I'm in favour of the article. What you've done is attempt to 'sum up' the article in a way that suits your own opinion - which is fine - but I hate people that twist things to suit their own arguments.
It makes valid points. You DON'T need a million and one browser windows open. Add to that the fact that I don't need my media controller open whilst I'm playing a game, or my TV software running whilst I'm playing music. What about Adobe Acrobat quickstart and the likes? If you only ever open a PDF once in a blue moon why do you need to hold 20-30Mb memory for it and a percentage of your processor to make it open one second quicker?
Which brings me onto my next point: Memory usage. Why is it Microsoft's fault that 3rd party developers are s**t at memory management. It can only be so intelligent, and it can't say "I don't need that API open any more that * program forgot to close". It's down to the individual developers to stop being so lazy. I work with it on a daily basis - I know! Lotus Notes is criminal for it.
Turning off Visual effects IS a good idea. If you're running Vista on a bog standard IGP (Intel 915 series perhaps) then you're likely to be making a lot of extra work for a stressed system. Do you need the start bar to 'woosh' up the screen for that? BUT do you like the 'woosh' enough to mean the .01 seconds it spends doing that isn't really a problem?
Adding more memory allows you to run more programs from the fastest access media you have available to you in a reasonable quantity. The more memory you have, the more of your active processes can be stuffed in there. The less you have, the more that has to be paged or the more that you cannot 'pre-load' - such as the Adobe PDF reader above. Why do SQL servers have so much of the stuff? Because they load as much as they can into it
And no operating system can prevent file fragmentation. No matter how hard you try, once you've filled 75% of your disk you're heavily fragmented, simply down to the way that most of your data operates. If you have a large portion of static files like MP3s, MP4s etc then you're ok - they tend to stay exactly where they are. But if you make a Word document for example, and it gets bigger, the file then can't live in it's original allocated space - it needs to be put somewhere else in order to be contiguous or it gets fragmented and you in effect have the original part in the original position, and the excess further on in the disk. That's not so much of a problem, but when files get to 5-6Mb fragmentation starts to impact on performance and as such utilities like Raxco PerfectDisk are brilliant at restoring performance. In one extreme case I managed to drop boot time for a laptop in the office in about half. Now typical home users won't encounter that problem so often, but it does happen.
And it's right - don't settle for slow. It makes your computer into more of a chore or a hate object, I know I hate working on the slower Dell 1650s at work - but relish the chance to do work on our new DL380s as they do things when you ask them to. Same with your laptop - how long before you get fed up if it takes 30 seconds to open IE up?
