Review of Stardock's TweakVista 191
mikemuch writes "The new TweakVista utility from Stardock surfaces some of Vista's more obscure settings, giving access to diagnostics and making suggestions for services that you should be running. ExtremeTech's review of TweakVista generally likes the software, and though it's called version 0.9, it is for sale — $19.95 — and feels feature-complete. More suggestions on system optimization, however, would be helpful. From the review: 'According to TweakVista, on July 1st, the "Windows Shell Services DLL service took 651ms longer to shut down than usual." That's nice. Other than this stark presentation, there's no digestible information as to why the shell services DLL took over half a second longer to shut down. And there's no hint as to what to do about it.'"
Vista For Dummies (Score:5, Funny)
Stick with XP.
The End.
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Chapter 3: (Score:2, Troll)
Chapter 3: The old story. How to get a Windows operating system to work the way you want, with 3rd party tools and lots of time.
Oh well, I suppose a life working on Windows is better than playing canasta or knitting booties for your dog.
This video [apple.com] explains a bit about the User Account Control in Windows
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You're absolutely right. I'm not using Vista because I'm a dummy. So please, please help me. If you'd be good enough to give me instructions for disabling Vista's support for DRM, I'll install the copy of Vista that came with my new computer (that I was too dumb to use). The one that I replaced with XP Pro.
One other thing, if you could just help me with some simple instructions (I'm dumb and need "simple", you see) for maki
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for making Vista perform as well as XP Pro on my system
0: Shut down the dock.
1: Pick a low-stress theme
2: Turn on background indexing et al.
3: Turn on your PC, and let it run for a few hours.
4: Tun Off background indexing et al.
5: Drop a 1 GB or so USB drive into a spare slot.
That should take care of everything Vista does to slow down, and everything it can do to speed you up. If you're complaining about your graphics drivers, well, bitch at AMD and Nvidia.
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Seems like it should go both ways or neither.
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I hate that usage of "surface" (Score:4, Insightful)
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The definition of the intransitive form, which doesn't take a direct object, is what the submitter is really trying to say:
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Interestingly, the Online Etymology Dictionary entry also on that page claims the transitive form is the original verb. Presumably the newer intransitive usage has now displaced the older convention, except here.
News For Nerds, Vocabulary From The 19th Century.
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taskmanager? (Score:3, Informative)
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Skins (Score:2, Interesting)
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On all my XP installs, I had that issue prior to installing the nVidia drivers, but not ater. I do get a little flicker with Intel graphics, but I get the same thing on *nix systems as well...
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It's called debugging. (Score:5, Insightful)
Without the software, you'd still be wondering why your computer took a half-second longer to shut down, not why a particular process took longer. With the software, you can focus on the process, paying less attention to the computer as a whole.
The software doesn't fix your computer, it's a diagnostic aid.
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Vista doesn't allow apps to do that any more.
Anyway, there's nothing you can possibly do to speed up that process' shutdown. It's not like you have the source code or anything. It could have simply been because, say, you had a Control Panel dialog open, and that process deals with Control Panel dialogs. It could be practically anything.
And (2) anyway, half a second is almost impreceptible in Vista's shutdow
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Performance Center. (Score:5, Informative)
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slashvertisement tag (Score:3, Insightful)
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Amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that things are much better on the Mac (which I use mostly now on the desktop). I downloaded this program, RDC Menu, to launch multiple instance of Windows Remote Desktop Client. There's the standard "trial" and "paid" versions. The author wanted money just to enable the "bookmarks" feature so you could save your connection profiles and select them from a list in the statusbar. I said screw that and I just wrote my own damn program to do it. Took me all of a few hours to get it working the way I wanted. Only functional difference between the two programs is that RDC Menu is more polished (graphics, icons, language translations, etc).
Don't get me wrong, I think programmers should get paid for their work if they want and they're certainly free to charge whatever they want, but how much are we paying of "polish?" Doesn't it seem strange that a simple GUI front end for standard OS features is like 1/5th the cost of the entire OS itself (depending on the version you buy) which probably has 1,000 times the man-hours behind it?
I dunno, when you look at the trivial utilities that people pay $20 or more for, it makes Microsoft products seem pretty damn cheap! That is, if you compare lines of code...
-matthew
Re:Amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's just it, they don't "have to" charge anything. Some of the utilities that people sell are downright trivial when you really get down to it. Like they took some example out of a "how to program" book and slapped a pretty interface on it.
It is wierd, you can get a full web brower completely free but to bookmark a few Remote Desk
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There will always be somebody willing to pay for certain conveniences, and it's just supply and demand. Taking an example out of a "how to program" book and making a lot of money off it is a great business plan if it works. The cost might be more in support and marketing than actual programming.
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You are grossly underestimating the cost of packaging and retailing software. You don't "slap a pretty interface on it," you have to spend lots of time making the interface decent, work correctly in multiple OS:es and also pay translators to translate your program.
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No, if they knew 50 million people were going to purchase, that is, the demand was totally inelastic, they would charge far more. They simply solved for the maximum of the function: PeopleWhoWillBuyAtPrice ( X ) * X
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I was just trying to make the point that with high volume you can have lower margins than you do with low volume, and if your volume is low you probably need a higher margin to make money.
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The people they con into buying the one program for $20 are just easier money than they're used to; they still want those people to upgrade to the full suite.
I was a subscriber for a long time. It's not a bad little suite, but every program has its quirks, and I final
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A commercial product requires "polish" and testing and support and marketing and accounting and etc... You have to recover enough money to pay all the staff and expenses. If you have a small market, you have to charge more.
>>The point being, peopl
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Sure, if you're doing it for funzies, coding it up yourself makes sense. If you just want something to get the job done, and you've got actual productive work you can be doing, it makes more sense to spend the $24.95. Honestly though, in the case of RDC Menu, I'd rather just use rdesktop from the command line.
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If you want to look at it that way, I didn't get a good deal. I could have easily charged in excess of $200 for the time working on my alternative. Paying $19 would have been a much better deal. But I guess I'm just not one to think of my time as money. I did it out of principle. I also wanted a real project so I could practice programming in Objective-C and RubyObjC.
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So how much do you normally get paid an hour? Unless its $10 or less, you've spent more money writing it yourself than if you just paid $20.
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On the other hand, I can download Firefox for free, for example, where I would probably charge millions of dollars to write it myself. I'm just saying that the software market is fucked up. That's all.
-matthew
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You're assuming that he's paid hourly and had the option of working additional hours if he chose to. Unless both of those conditions are true, your attempt to value his time is meaningless.
You're also assuming that he got no enjoyment and/or educational value out of doing the coding, which also throws of the valuation.
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-matthew
Re:Amazing... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd also say that the idea that "polish" isn't worth paying for, and is something optional and unnecessary is one of the biggest problems remaining problems with the FOSS software development community.
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And we wonder why FOSS acceptance is still lagging behind...
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But I'm not even "arguing." I'm juts ranting about how messed up the software market seems. This has nothing to do with what is a better deal. That comment I made about Microsoft products being a good deal was tongue-in-cheek sarcasm.
-matthew
People are funny. (Score:3, Interesting)
The author wanted money just to enable the "bookmarks" feature so you could save your connection profiles and select them from a list in the statusbar. I said screw that and I just wrote my own damn program to do it. Took me all of a few hours to get it working the way I wanted. Only functional difference between the two programs is that RDC Menu is more polished (graphics, icons, language translations, etc)....
I dunno, when you look at the trivial utilities that people pay $20 or more for, it makes Mic
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Another thing that amazes me is how many people put a price on their time as a general rule. It is as if they can't do something in life without consciously or unconsciously keeping a running tab of how much it is all going to cost someone in the end. Sad, really.
Did it ever occur to you that saving money had nothing to do with it
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I also think if you are working 50-60 hours a week and have a wife and kids, you are pretty selective in what you do in your free time that doesn't involve the wife and kids since you have so little of it.
I don't put a
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Sigh. I was thinking the same thing as I read the replies to you. You'd think no one here has ever written a program for fun or used F/OSS software. Maybe because it involves Windows, people have the idea that you must pay for every trivial, half-assed utility that comes along.
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Oh, it isn't just Windows. It is like that on the Mac also to a significant degree. I think it is just a matter of culture and expectation. You buy/use a lot of commercial software as a Mac or Windows... so you, in turn, expect that
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Which is cheaper now?
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What a completely uninsightful and thoughtless response to what I wrote. The actual dollar amounts are irrelevant.
The GP's post seemed thoughtful to me. How are actual dollar amounts irrelevant? -- you asked "how much are we paying for polish" and "Doesn't it seem strange that a simple GUI front end for standard OS features is like 1/5th the cost of the entire OS itself". The GP simply replied that it was worth it to him.
Sometimes time is worth more than money, sometimes not. For most people, the opportunity cost of writing the interface themselves is greater $20. For you, it's not. Both are cool with me...
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Wow. I've either been completely misunderstood here or society/capitalism has really done a number of you people.
All I was really saying is that the process of assigning value to software is completely arbitrary. I don't really want to go into a debate on economics, but suffice it to say that I think it is interesting t
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Triviality has nothing to do with it. It took time to make, hours according to you. So someone charging $20 is not outrageous IMO.
Yes, the price is "arbitrary", as are almost ALL prices. Set the price, watch the market react, adjust accordingly, repeat. How else can anyone possibly come up with a price?
If the author sells one copy, they have lost money (as per your experience). If they sell 5, then they've broken even IF they
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Not outrageous. Just interesting. Intersting to see the differences in general culture between a (mostly) proprietary platform and an (mostly) open source platform.
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Plus the cost of the raw materials, the cost of the factory, administration/marketing/sales/executives/investor profit margin, storage space, transportation, distributor's storage/administration/marketing/sales/profit, retailor's storage/administration/marketing/sales/profit, yada-yada-yada.
When you pay $1.97 at Wal-mart, you just bought a materia
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I apparently missed the point of what you wrote, so I don't think I really care to read it again and find the hidden point you were trying to get across.
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The "hidden" point was that the cost of software apparently has absolutely nothing to do with how much work goes into producing it or how much it does. You can get large applications like Firefox for free and trivial utilities and front-ends for $20.
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So you throw a $20 price tag on it, and once you sell 3 copies everything else is just gravy?
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Ignoring the fact of course that you didn't really address the point I was making and instead said exactly the opposite.
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Indeed. Imagine having to download third-party software [slashdotdash.net] just to disable the startup noise...
(And if anyone knows how to stop iPhoto popping up whenever it thinks you've attached a camera, I'd like to hear how...)
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You pay for the bread at the store for convenience, and the fact that you know that every loaf you buy will be consistently tasty and made to some standard of quality.
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I dunno, I wouldn't be surprised if making my own bread was actually more expensive due to the small scale.
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Polish costs up to $400 (Score:2)
Well, in the case of iPhone, "polish" is about $400. iPhones feature set is comparable to a $200 device (more or less), but peopla are paying $600 for it in droves due to the polish. "Polish" is why people pay to use photoshop rather than using GIMP for free. It's why people pay to use MS Office 2k7 rather than use OO.o for fre
You're complaining about 651ms in Vista? (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, if you're complaining about 651ms when you're using Vista... You need to get out of the house more.
slashdotforsale (Score:4, Insightful)
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Startup (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.speedyvista.com/ [speedyvista.com]
Used it and it ...... (Score:2)
Free version (Score:4, Informative)
CMD shell here is about same as the XP power toy (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize this is just about the same thing as the Windows XP Open Command Window Here power toy?
Here is the link to get it for XP [microsoft.com]
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Re:CMD shell here is about same as the XP power to (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Too lazy to login... but Vista doesn't suck bal (Score:2, Informative)
I've had good luck with Vista overall, the x1250 isn't great and only gives the machine an overall 2.8 rating. Otherwise - I'm not noticing the speed issues I did on my older machines running better graphics cards. Aero runs just fine. I'm not seeing any "2D tearing issues" and xVid, DivX, x264 encodes and DVDs run very smoothly. I use Haali Media S
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Not in this version, perhaps. It's exactly this kind of thinking that got you in the state you're in though. Just wait a couple more years and your computer will do exactly what Bill wants. And your constitution will be in a museum.
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A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection [auckland.ac.nz] - Article detailing the extremes that Microsoft DRM is headed towards.
It may not crash every 5 minutes, but regardless it is slower OUT OF THE BOX than XP ever was. All because of the eye candy to distract the customer from the nasty DRM surprises that hide behind the veil of ignorance.
As one understanding man once said 'The last act of any democracy is to elect a dictatorship'. We as
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So there is plenty of DRM in there. It dont utilize a huge amount of ram/cpu time but any time the OS is utilizing (and not a specific player) is too much. They're also trying to force hardware manufacturers to do th
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Re:Too lazy to login... but Vista doesn't suck bal (Score:2)