I came across the tool vLite , in a post by Ina Fried, which lets you create a new Vista installation ISO stripped of unwanted applications which bloats and slows down Vista. What's unique is this tool actually modifies Vista before it's installed so the unwanted applications aren't ever installed as part of Vista's installation process.
As you might expect, Microsoft's indicated it does not endorse using a tool like this as it could have unintended consequences with future software updates from Microsoft. That's understandable, especially given this program's unconventional nature. I'd also be concerned about users unknowingly disable important security software, or creating instability by not having all the needed software in a Vista installation.
I haven't had a chance to try out vLite myself yet as I'm traveling this week. While I don't run Vista on underspec'd machines, I don't find poor performance to be a major concern running it on an Intel Duo Core 2.0, 2GB memory machine. Other than Vista's poor file copy performance, it does fine overall from my experiences.
I'm curious who is using vLite, and what benefits you're finding from it. Is it when using Vista on underspec'd machines? Are there are few key programs or services that if disabled or not installed really make a significant difference in performance?
If you have experiences improving Vista's performance, particularly using a utility like vLite, please post a comment about your experiences.
Like this? Here are some of Mitchell's recent posts.
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Mitchell Ashley is CEO and Chief Strategist of Converging Network, LLC, providing product and technology strategies to emerging technology companies. A serial entrepreneur, Mitchell has created many successful products and services in the networking, security, convergence, Internet and IT industries. In addition to blogging for NetworkWorld, Mitchell regularly blogs at TheConvergingNetwork and co-hosts the widely popular Still Crazy After All These Years podcast.
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Gee I wish I'd known this
Gee I wish I'd known this before I would have tried it. I find that Vista is so bloated and such a resource hog that my machine is just under performing. But maybe I should look into pumping up the memory as I only have 1 GB right now.
I have a Toshiba Core Duo
I have a Toshiba Core Duo laptop w/ 4Gb ram and it still under performs. I feel Vista's performance and usability to be to "Teletubby". If vLite can make Vista into the OS it used to be XP I'll use it in a moment. I would like to find a "how to" or utility like this to put some of the components back to where they were in XP too.
What are you, on goofballs?
What are you, on goofballs? Vista is a total dog. By god, man, it's pathetic. I recently bought my wife a new laptop which shipped with Vista and I didn't know enough to avoid it, just thought it was different. I now know from experience that it's complete shite. We tried to format the machine and install XP but they actually shipped it with hardware for which there were no XP drivers, so the video card was disabled, the DVD was inoperable, etc. We had no choice but to go back to Vista. The difference was astounding. The very same machine literally performed at about 25% of the speed under Vista compared when it was (albeit briefly, and crippled) running XP. No comparison. By god what an ignorant thing to say.
It's all about the hardware, and Vista settings
You wouldn't be the first to see horrible performance with Vista, especially when trying to run it on lower end hardware. I've been running Vista on a dual core Intel machine with 2GB memory and overall performance is within reason, though not nearly as good when running XP on the same hardware.
Vista SP1 will improve some of the file copy slowness (which has been born out in testing but it's still not as fast as when using XP) but I've not seen any reports on whether there is any overall improvement in the user experience.
An option other than using something like vLite, is to disable some of the user interface features that are big performance hogs. Check out the following post for more information: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25142
Mitchell Ashley
Converging Network, LLC
Personal blog: http://theconvergingnetwork.com
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