• How to install Data Protection Manager 2007 to a Windows 2008 Server http://snurl.com/2luso #
• Seems Windows Search 4.0 improves Vista’s performance. http://snurl.com/2luub It also available now for Vista x64 http://snurl.com/2luuv #
• Yet Another Pro-Vista Argument: IE7 on Vista has Fewer Vulnerabilities than Even Firefox http://snurl.com/2luz9 #
• Top 10 tips to speed up Vista http://snurl.com/2lv44 The tips in this article are quite useful if you have performance problems with Vista #
• Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) RC is available at Microsoft Connect. #
• IE team congratulates Mozilla on Firefox 3 release. This demonstrates that a great Firefox isn’t really a problem for MS. #

You probably know that you can set the CPU affinity with Task Manager (right click on a process). This comes in handy, as sometimes it is useful to run a certain program just on one processor core. I usually do this if I have an app that runs amok and utilizes all my CPU resources. Restricting this program to one CPU core gives me back some processor power. You can also decrease the CPU priority, but in my experience, this doesn’t always help.

Since quad core CPUs are becoming common, even on desktop computers, there are more options for making use of processor affinity. For example, you could reserve some of your CPU cores for an application that needs more resources. Virtualization solutions are typical candidates for this. Unfortunately, managing processor affinity with Task Manager is a bit cumbersome. That’s where Edgemeal Get and Set CPU Affinity comes in.

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Today, I can just quote Kennedy because he expressed the essence of his stance in just two sentences:

Windows Vista is a bloated pig of an operating system. In fact, compared to Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or 3, Vista requires roughly twice the hardware resources to deliver comparable performance.

He knows what he is talking about, because he ran numerous performance tests. I have been discussing some comparable performance tests before, and I don’t want to go into this again, since I think that they are rather pointless.

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I already discussed the Vista x64 vs. Vista x86 question a year ago. Vista was just released and for the early adopters, the first decision to be made was which edition, i.e. 32-bit or 64-bit, would be the better choice. At this time, I was skeptical regarding Vista x64, mostly because the advantages didn’t outweigh the downsides. It is time now to reconsider this question since the main disadvantages of the 64-bit version (hardware and software compatibility) might not be such an issue anymore.

I was planning to do some research already for some time, but fortunately the German print magazine C’t (8/2008) just published a couple of comprehensive reports about this topic. So I will summarize some of their findings garnished with my own views. Today, I will focus on performance and in my next posts in this series, I will discuss software compatibility and hardware compatibility.

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Iometer is a free Open Source tool to test disk performance. Among others, you can measure the I/O transfer rate and the average I/O response time. Its first version was released 10 years ago for Windows NT. But it is still a useful tool because it also works under Windows XP/2003 and even with Vista and Windows Sever 2008. Iometer supports many different settings. In this post, I will just show you how to get started with this nifty free disk measurement utility. If you like it, you should consult its manual for further instructions.

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Network monitoring is certainly an essential part of any system administrator’s work. However, from my experience, it is often neglected. If your boss calls you because he can’t access his emails, it is already too late then. There are so many different monitoring tools out there that I find it very difficult to choose. There are various approaches to network monitoring. To a certain degree it is a matter of taste, but it also depends on your environment and on your work style to consider which tool suits best for you. I had a closer look at PacketTrap’s new version 2.0 of pt360 PRO. I was wondering before what “360” stands for. It became clear after a few minutes when I tried the tool.

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The German print magazine C’t (5/2008, p. 62) compared the performance of Vista SP1 with Vista RTM. There are quite a few performance tests about Vista SP1 these days, but those from C’t are always worth mentioning because they are known to have a lot of experience with such technical tests.

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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes from ZDnet ran a comprehensive performance test comparing Windows Vista SP1 with Windows XP SP2. He only tested file copy related tasks, though. Now, guess which OS is faster? Good guess! Anyway, it is interesting to see the exact difference because it allows you to estimate in what way a move to Vista might affect performance. However, in one sense all these performance tests are pointless.

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Robert McLaws ran a performance test with the refresh of Vista SP1 RC which I blogged about yesterday. He compared the performance with a patched Vista RTM using PCMark Vantage. This benchmarking program leverages specific Windows features such as Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Media Player, etc.). McLaws ran this benchmark on systems with Vista x86 and Vista x64. The results are quite interesting.

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Did it ever happen to you that your computer was unbelievably slow because your hard disk was so busy? I am sure it did. Sometimes you know the culprit keeping the light of your disk drive blinking like wild. But most of the time you probably wonder what the heck could have a higher priority for Windows other than loading the application you just launched.

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