My take on Vista/Server 08 and tweaks

I like Vista because it's new and (from my point of view) modern and because it looks better than XP. I am not one of those die-hard disable everything for "performance" fans.
Since I have first started getting into tweaking and until now I have only learned one sure thing: tweaking doesn't always improve performance, it's mostly about (a kind of) personalization.
Sure, there are a few tricks that make an OS (XP, Vista and others) use less RAM, be a little more responsive and maybe increase the functionality (such as adding some options to the right click menu and others similar), but in the end those are very few and well known for a lot of time by enthusiasts. Some tweaks you may want to apply to the OS might already be incorporated or do not work for quite some time, but people still use them without noticing anything or knowing that they don't work (such as unloading DLLs if you know what I'm talking about).
This is why I am thinking that maybe we have reached a point where we can't do much to change something that thousands of people have worked at. I believe that 99% of the basis have been covered by the people working for Microsoft that you can't find any tweak that will improve performance in such a dramatic way without reducing some functionality or downgrading to an older operating system (some like to call downgrading to XP from Vista an upgrade and I tend to disagree). Don't think that by following different guides found on the Internet you will gain something extra compared to other guides. They are mostly all the same, using the same known tweaks. And this is the reason why I recommend and (now) ask other people like me to recommend the " NBR Member Vista Tips and Tweaks Guide" to others. It is pretty well documented and covers the bases people need to check out after installing Vista and wanting to improve on it (though like I've said, it may have a few downsides).
Having said my opinion on tweaking an OS I think I can continue to something a bit delicate coming from XP days: Prefetch/Superfetch. While I have disliked Prefetch since XP days (since without Prefetch XP worked the same and didn't notice any difference in application loading times, while the booting process appeared to be faster without it) now I dislike Superfetch even more. You may wonder why, considering there are quite a few positive remarks and articles about it on the Internet. Well, let's start with what it does: through some complicated algorithms made by some of the Microsoft nerds the operating system tries to figure out which programs you use the most (by also trying to figure out the use pattern) and loading them into RAM so they will start faster, because as we know the RAM is in the 21st century, while the HDD speeds are from donkey's age. You will now ask what's wrong with that. Well, in theory nothing is wrong and I will have to concede and tell you that it is a brilliant idea, since it will ease the HDD a little, but as any pretty girl it also has downsides. The first downside is (from what I have noticed in both Vista and when I have activated it in Server 08) that the RAM usage tends to get higher for one of the svchost.exe processes (by a lot of MB, from what I can remember even 60MB or so). I have read numerous posts about a memory leak related to the process Superfetch is using (which was fixed by disabling Superfetch). The most annoying downside has to be the HDD trashing (it's current title for the extra HDD spinning because of Superfetch) because of a poorly implemented idea. I am asking myself if it's worth shortening the life span of my HDD just for less than five seconds gained every time a program loads. The answer after quite some time is a definite no. A lot of you don't know, but Server 08 doesn't have Superfetch enabled and it doesn't even have the registry keys there. You can manually enable it (like I did), then disable it (as I did). Sure, it's a server operating system and it will not be used according to Vista, but maybe, maybe some nerds thought about the life span and data security and maybe that's the reason why they've even deleted the registry keys, so an inexperienced administrator will not enable it without knowing what it does. One night I had to leave the PC open while I had to sleep close by (around 7 feet or so). The HDD was spinning like crazy (sure, there was some HDD activity that justified that) and I have asked myself what would cause that. After disabling Superfetch I have found my reason. The noise wasn't completely gone, but it was surely very much less noise than before.
I guess that all I'm trying to tell you is that while it may load programs faster you may end up one day asking yourself why your HDD is spinning more in Vista than in XP. And this is the reason why: Superfetch. I have also noticed (more likely felt is the right word) that decompressing is faster with it disabled (haven't tested it, probably I am wrong here).
Some people also complained about the eye-candy in Vista, comparing it to the new KDE or Mac OS's graphical interface. I tend to agree on the most part as it's obviously they had a lot of great plans and ended up coding something crippled, so to speak. But you can not say that you can't feel the difference between XP and Vista when it comes to prettiness. I can honestly say that XP is definitely 2002 and Vista is 2007. I have never been a fan of 3rd party products as some caused unique problems (and because they weren't made by people actually knowing the operating system they're dealing with). This is why I can't understand such comparisons.
Regarding Aero, I like 3D Flip, but while I have used it a lot in my early days with Vista now I don't use it at all because of how I work it's much faster using ALT + TAB. One thing I don't like is the fact that whenever an applications is minimized and, let's consider it's a movie, it changes frames the application shot you see when you point the mouse click over the taskbar is not actualized. For me it only works while the application is not minimized. What's the point in crippling something like this? This I will not understand. I minimize windows for a reason, not because I want to fool around, but because I have to in order to keep everything easy to deal with. They should change that behavior, as I'm sure it's nothing more than a ten minute job.
While my mini-review is apparently, until now, more about criticism and less about proving a point that Vista is good, it was never intended to give Vista a boost in confidence. I have my own problems, though I have always supported Vista and I think that I don't have isolated problems.
I think that I will only say one more thing Microsoft messed up at: x64. I am one of the promoters of x64 on this forum and I always recommend people to migrate. The reasons for using it you can find in my other thread regarding this 5 year old new architecture. I have to blame Microsoft for being stupid and totally idiotic (you may add other words here that suggest how many morons work for Microsoft) because they created Vista for x86 CPUs too. Why they didn't make Vista x64 only is simple: stupid buyers and profit. You may disagree and tell me that you're not stupid, but if Cisco made it's VPN client compatible with Vista x86 they could have made it from the start compatible with the only Vista, the x64 one. How can you argue (convince) with a person that needs a VPN client and doesn't have one? I have used XP x64 almost since it's launch; I haven't used it since the start because there are a few drivers missing, but after half a year or so all my drivers were there, maybe my printer driver wasn't yet released (thank you HP). Microsoft, please make your next desktop operating system x64 only or else I'll get a Mac (Apple at least made something designed for x64 from the start, even though Leopard works on non-x64 CPUs such as the old Ts; that's from what I remember, please correct me if I'm wrong). I am considering getting a Mac right now because of the hardware, not the software (despite the logical reason being the exact opposite). That's something else though.
While I have criticized Vista for being available in both x86 and x64 I have to say that at least the x64 version isn't as intentionally crippled by Microsoft like they did with XP x64. Hopefully people will figure out that time has come to move on from a 10+ year old technology (Microsoft did the same mistake with the 32 bit architecture when it came out, implementing it only in Windows 95, while it was available for quite some time) and move on to something that will be the future for quite some long time. So let's move on.
I am not sure if I have said anything until now without also adding some bad aspects, but I can't ignore some aspects like others do.
I guess that while I like so far is proper x64 support, the graphics, the redesigned explorer windows, the driver support and probably that's about it; I may forget the minor daily things. So far I woun't get a medal from Microsoft, but I like this product much more than I've liked their other OSs (and I've used quite a few). It just feels right and it works. I don't care about those a few extra frames in games or those extra seconds gained in different programs. I am not that anal about performance. I'd like to enjoy the whole experience. And until now I don't want to downgrade in order to upgrade.
I have started this thread because I wanted to give you my take on tweaking, then remembered Vista, then wanted to also show the positive aspects and ended up with this long article. I hope you're not very bored right now. It was the best I could do between 2PM and 2:45PM.
Maybe I will add something, maybe not, either way we can discuss anything, can't we?