Why Does Vista .........

work so damn well(flawless) on Desktops, and give me nothing but problems on Laptops/Notebooks?

I'm just wondering if anyone has noticed this trend? I have also notice that is seems to use less resources(RAM) on Desktop too.

 

I do not know!

the resources are because it doesn't have to have all of the mobility features running, but i wish my laptop ran as well as my desktop!

 

I don't have a vista laptop but my desktop runs pretty well for me. I have only encountered one problem.

 

I have a vista laptop, and it runs flawlessly for me, so I really don't know why you're having problems with it.

 

Both run amazingly well for me :O

Maybe some extra RAM would help via the superfetch reature?

 

Well i guess since desktops cost less to have better parts than laptops it would support the theory that vista needs better specs to run good. I mean, i do have a pretty good system and vista runs very fast for me.

 

I have 2GB and AMD Dual Core on Both my main Desktop and Laptop.

I also have a 1128MB laptop and a 768MB Desktop. Vista actually runs better on the Desktop.

My friends tell me that they experience better performance using Vista on a Desktop too.

 

Well that's odd. It should run better on your laptop....wait. What's your GPU?

 

The two things that really drive up Vista's RAM usage are the Sidebar (about 200 MB) and UAC (about 200 MB). I turned both of those off, and now idle at 400-425 MB. Make sure these are the same on both machines that are being compared - otherwise you'll find quite a differencer in resource use.

Performance should be the same on similarly specced machines. My best guess is different hard drive speeds is causing the difference - that spec often goes overlooked, and most desktops are 7200 RPM, while most laptops are 5400 RPM (some even being 4200 RPM).

 

That's what I would experience on my notebook. But on my Desktop with Sidebar, UAC and everything else on. 350MB with Firefox running is the norm.

 

Same here...I run Vista on my laptop and its the fastest and most efficient computer I've owned or used...I actually prefer Vista over XP...

 

I would suspect people install more junk on laptops than on desktops thus a performance decrease. Also consider that laptops are smaller, thus they tend to get hot. Hardware does not like being hot. And last, a lot of people don't realize that their laptop is not set to 'High Performance' mode on the power options.

But if it's true that you are only using 350MB on the Desktop with both the sidebar, and UAC on, then that's actually as good as XP. What's the Page File size on the desktop?

 

I think Apollo hit the nail right on the head. Pretty much all desktops have 7200rpm drives, and if they don't then their from the 90's and vista doesn't belong on them.

But as for laptops, most of them have 5400rpm drives or less. And since Vista is much more hard drive intensive than XP (superfetch is one example), hard drive speed plays a bigger role in overall system quickness.

 

Vista Ultimate 32bit on the laptop and XP Pro on the desktop.I have no problems on either machine. My laptop has a 160 gig 7200 rpm drive and a 100 gig 5400 rpm drive. It is very quick.

 

Never thought of that.

 

Vista runs perfectly on my machines.

 

My laptop runs flawlessly with Vista. Super fast, and super easy to do things. I prefer it over XP now. Once drivers get better and SP1 rolls out, XP will soon become a thing of the past for me.

 

Junk junk junk....laptops come with so much junk on them these days...all the trial software...

I just installed Windows Vista Business on my desktop and its too good to be true...less than 450MB consumption with a few applications running!

Of course I see it because I did a clean install, versus my laptop which has a OEM install...

 

Sidebar doesn't take near 200 MB of RAM. Right now, sidebar is taking >10 MB of RAM on my system. I'm not sure about UAC, however. Where did you get the 200 MB for Sidebar??

 

Could you please write up a guide on how to achieve this? Did you use vLite?

 

That's the same with me on my Desktop with apps running, but I'll be lucky not to be over 450MB on my Notebook without any apps running. And I do a clean install on all my desktops & notebooks, so it's not any pre-installed Junk. But maybe Vista chooses to run more background processes on notebooks vs desktops.

 

Whoa...450 mb ?
On startup for my notebook, I get on average ~1000 mb usage. But I haven't really had much complaints about such memory usage due to the 2gb sticks of RAM.

 

Wow, and i thought i had low ram usage at around 600-800mb with FF running, and about 600 idle.

 

Yeah 450 is no big deal. Clean install then remove uncessary startup, services and fully tweak vista (i mean fully tweak) and I brung my idle ram to 400-450 range. My friends laptop was idleing at 9xx and I did a full cleanup on his and brung it down to under 500 range.

 

Pretty simple. Since I am a student I picked up a copy of Vista Business through MSDN, and I just popped in the Vista Business DVD soon after I turned my computer on, and it prompted me to "click any key" to boot from the disk...

The rest was so easy....follow the easy steps to install Vista and after about a half hour you are logged in, viewing the full Aero interface. Now I think whoever complains about Vista being slow/annoying/etc is totally stupid.

Vista Business is fully functional and it runs just over 400MB RAM consumption on idle...on boot I have the option to boot into Windows Vista, "Earlier Version Windows" (or something like that...referencing to Windows XP) or Ubuntu 7.04

 

As you can see in my signature...my laptop and desktop are almost identical in specifications....desktop actually has a better graphics card...but laptop has a better processor and memory speed

My laptop consumes about 700MB RAM on idle, and often times around 1GB during normal usage...I am looking into a clean install for it...when I first purchased it I manually removed all the junk software...now I want to plan out whether to restore to factory settings and clean install, or wipe it and install Vista Business

My desktop is running under 500MB RAM consumption and I have not even done much tweaking yet...Vista is surely making its case to me to make it my choice of OS

 

I'm only using 390 to 430 meg with FF, Outlook 2003 and HDTune running. Also have sidebar with 3 gadgets running. I do have UAC off though. I did also uninstall all the trialware crap that came on the system.

HP dv9000z
Vista Ultimate 32bit
AMD Turion 64 x2 LT50 1.6 gig
2 gig ram
GeForce Go 7600 256 meg

 

A clean install is really the best thing to do. After downloading 3-4 drivers from Sony's website and quickly installing all of my mostly free software plus some tweaks, Vista is really performing...optimal raw speed and efficiency.

 

Unfortunately even if I managed to get the memory usage of Vista down to an acceptable level, the increased power consumption and use of the hardware took its toll on the battery life and my ears. The fan always ran on my system with Vista no matter what - the BIOS was/is fully Vista compatible, reduced the services, killed Aero and still the fan remained on. With Win XP or Ubuntu I can definitely feel the difference and this fan issue was ultimately a deal killer for me. Maybe some other laptop might have been a different story. But having used Vista over the past 1.5yrs personally I feel the improvements are just not enough to make it an OS I would recommend using on a laptop. Maybe SP1/SP2 might change some things but I ain't holding up until then.

 

This really is something to look more into. I have performed clean installs of the same OS, Vista Business, on both my laptop and desktop....I have configured the same settings, tweaks, etc for them but my desktop always consumes less than 500MB on idle, and my laptop varies about 600-650MB, sometimes between 575-600MB.

 

This was my desktop with Vista Business at idle...

Who said Vista is a resource hog, even at startup or idle?

 

300MB or even 500MB is not really the norm. I have gotten it down to around 365MB before but regular usage and even with a clean install it hovers around 700MB to 1GB!

 

This is what really puzzles me...the gap in idle RAM usage between my desktop and notebook...with identical OS, flavor of OS, and applications/programs...

My notebook will consume about the same RAM as before, sometimes less, even after I performed a clean install...but it does appear a little more responsive.

 

Doesn't Vista perceive RAM in a different way than XP now? As I understand it, Vista considers free RAM as wasted RAM and tries to optimize overall system performance by using up available RAM during idle as cache.

 

Ofcourse but that doesnt show up as being used. In the Task manager you will notice the cached memory is displayed separately from what is actually being actively used.

 

My laptop usually sat somewhere between 600MB and 1GB of RAM usage on idle or with just Firefox running. I pretty much wiped Vista off, but not really because it was slow. With 2GB of RAM, it really did feel fine, and in some ways snappier than XP or Ubuntu (due to Superfetch making common apps like Firefox open quicker). I ditched Vista cause it turned my laptop into a frying pan and disk transfers took FOREVER due to the way Vista checks all your files for piracy violations.