Pieces of eight: Eight things to make Vista run faster on older hardware
I have an 'older' machine, a Toshiba M400. Vista isn't blazingly fast on this machine. Here are some things I've tried to squeeze more out of this laptop...
(Before you jump in, make sure you get the latest BIOS and Vista drivers for your model of laptop!)
1) Before you install Vista, replace the system drive with a new 7200 rpm drive suitable for your laptop. Make sure it has a decent disk cache on the drive (e.g. 8mb+). Something like a Seagate Momentus 7200rpm 2.5" laptop drive might be suitable, but check the dimensions and heat specs to be sure. This requires some simple screwdriver work to install. After installation of Vista, defrag your drive twice.
2) Make sure you have at least 2gb of system RAM.
http://blogs.msdn.com/steverowe/archive/2007/01/22/how-much-memory-does-vista-need.aspx
3) Match the system RAM with the same amount of ReadyBoost memory. Make sure you get a compatible USB stick because ReadyBoost is picky. Alternatively (and better), use a fast SD card, such as a 2gb Sandisk Extreme 3. I've been told that ReadyBoost gets better under Vista SP1.
4) Switch off Aero glass if your machine doesn't have the latest graphics hardware. You can do this easily by selecting a non-glass theme.
5) Take control of indexing. If you have large folders of email in Outlook 2007 (or 2003) or many files on your hard drive, switching off Windows Desktop Search is a drastic option to try:
Start – Control Panel – Admin Tools – Services – Windows Search – Stop, and Properties, Disable
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=251
This is unworkable for me because I rely on Instant Search in Outlook 2007. Instead, I selectively removed file indexing so that only Outlook Instant Search is functioning (no file search). This seems to help performance:
Start – Control Panel – Indexing Options – Modify – uncheck everything except Microsoft Office Outlook
Indexing is CPU-intensive, so it might be better to put indexing on a periodic schedule instead of allowing it to run in the background.
It is difficult to pinpoint performance issues when Vista, Outlook and Windows Desktop Search are all involved. However, your Outlook mailbox size is worth examining. If you have a lot of mail, or you use Outlook for daily RSS feeds, these can swell the size of the Outlook OST (or PST) file. When this file exceeds 2gb, the amount of disk activity by Outlook increases significantly, impacting performance on many common mail and folder operations. There is a fix that alters Outlook's disk behaviour to improve this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932086
Alternatively ... I suppose you could consider a different integrated search. I've heard about this one:
http://www.x1.com/
6) To eliminate the “Connecting...” delay in IE7, switch off the Links toolbar. For some reason, loading these links takes ages while IE7 looks for their icons. This made a lot of difference to my IE7 startup performance, which was driving me crazy.
http://www.vincentverhagen.nl/2007/02/13/ie-7-slow-starter
7) If you don’t really use it, switch off the Windows Sidebar on the desktop. Some people claim these gadgets take memory and other system resources. I only ran 2 clocks as gadgets which can also be achieved in the System Tray using the normal Windows Vista clock, so I switched off the Sidebar (see the Additional Clocks tab under Clock Properties).
8) Wait for Vista Service Pack 1, it's on the way. Meanwhile, be sure to allow Microsoft Update to run on your Vista machine, they are already delivering Vista performance fixes via this channel so things should just magically get faster.
I hope this helps someone else, these are some of the things I've been looking at. It's a very great pity to switch off the Vista cool stuff (like glass, search and sidebar) but on an older machine, some of the above might help Vista performance.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
