Why I suddenly “like” Vista (and surfing)

It was inevitable. After nearly two years of harping on Vista’s poor performance –- The Great Moore’s Law Compensator (TGMLC) I once called it –- PC hardware has finally advanced to a point where I can (finally) run Vista comfortably. Here’s all it took to make Microsoft’s Windows “BM” (BIG MISTAKE) livable for me:

• 4 CPU cores running at 2.53GHz and with 12MB of L2 cache
• 8GB of DDR-3 memory running against a 1,066MHz FSB
• A pair of 120GB 7,200rpm disks in a RAID0 configuration
• One smoking-fast video card with 1GB of discrete RAM (Quadro FX3700)

That’s it. That’s all it took. Lots of cores + lots of RAM + lots of disks = I can now call Vista (x64) my full-time home. No more whining and pining about lost CPU cycles –- I’ve got ’em to spare! In fact, for the first time in a long time I’m working on a system that’s actually ahead of the TGMLC wave.

You can see it in how it boots up quickly (less than a minute from POST to desktop), how it’s almost always responsive (even when running lots of concurrent tasks), and how I rarely see the CPU meter in Task Manager spiking to 100 percent (or 400 percent -– it is, after all, a quad-core machine). You can also see it in the Windows “Experience Index” scoring for this system: 5.9s across the board. Sweet!

It’s a liberating feeling, being in front of the wave for a change. And I have the good folks at Dell to thank for enabling me to experience, for the first time, how brute-force performance can overcome the sluggishness of even a bloated pig like Vista. A special shout-out to the Precision Workstation folks for loaning me one of their smoking-fast M6400 mobile workstations (see specs above). And do check out my formal review of the M6400, and one or more of its competitors, in an upcoming Test Center roundup.

Until then, I’m going to enjoy the ride. I figure I’ve got a good week or two of computing bliss before the wave finally catches up to me. Then it will be time to start testing Windows 7 (the PDC build is so close I can taste the jewel case). And if anyone knows how to chew-up available CPU cycles, it’s Microsoft. TGMLC cometh … again!

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted….