I've only had one complaint about Vista since using it as my main desktop (back when it was still in beta!), which is the file operation speed. When you go to move a bunch of files, or delete a large file, etc, it seemed as though the operation took so much longer than XP did on the same machine. And it turns out that it does so because of a "feature" of the OS. The feature basically calculates with better precision how long the operation will take. So, for instance, if you want to delete a directory with 5000 files in it (like your temp directory, for instance), the OS would loop over all those files to calculate how long it would take to delete them before actually doing any work to delete them!
This is a good feature for people like my mom since the accuracy is more important than the actual amount of time it takes. People like mom don't think in terms of wasted cycles. They just want to be assured the computer isn't going to lie to them. However, for people like myself (and probably, a lot of my readers too), these wasted cycles and the lost productivity are annoying. So, here's how you change this setting.
First, go to your Control Panels->Programs and Features applet. In the task list on the left, you'll see an option to turn Windows features on or off. Click on that to bring up the list (note that this list may take a while to populate).
Once the list appears, look for the option titled "Remote Differential Compression", and uncheck it.
That's the feature which causes a lot of file operations to be slow. I know the tooltip claims something about network operations, but this affects local operations as well. I turned it off early this week and can see a world of difference in my daily use of the computer. Honestly, this removes my only complaint with Vista.
I'd like to send a shout out to my good friend Steve Novoselac for pointing this out to me. Thanks Steve!
Do you think the overhead involved with the 'previous versions' feature could also impact file operations speed? Doesn't Vista have to archive or move stuff in order to offer a previous version of it? I dunno, I don't even have Vista anymore (the RC1 was about to expire for me), but I thought it kept track of that stuff...
Volume shadowing probably has a speed hit, but I don't think it's too much of one. That happens at a lower level than file copying does, I believe. And that's also something which I think happens in the background, so to speak (instead of as a result of user interaction).
Thanks for the tip Aaron. I like Vista. It's shiny. It's no OS X, but it's nice :-)
With this change, it definitely seems faster to move large files and folders. Emptying the recycle bin seemed faster, too. Moving files to the recycle bin is still slow, but I think that is a Windows thing.
I guess I'm just used to OS X, which puts stuff in the trash instantly, but is a bit slow when emptying the trash.
Go figure.
There must be more than one reason for this behavior.
I was very excited to see this possible fix, however it produced no improvement for me.