francois.
ZynewavePlease vote in the poll.
I’ve set the poll to run a year. Next year I’ll make a new poll so that all users can vote again. It will be interesting to see how many will stick to older Windows versions.
If you are unsure whether your Vista PC came installed with a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of Vista, then it is most likely a 32-bit edition.
Personally I’m now running Podium on Vista Business 32-bit. I bought myself a new Dell PC this Christmas, so I’ll be working on full Vista compatibility in the coming releases.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
I’ve set the poll to run a year. Next year I’ll make a new poll so that all users can vote again. It will be interesting to see how many will stick to older Windows versions.
Good idea.
Personally I’m now running Podium on Vista Business 32-bit. I bought myself a new Dell PC this Christmas, so I’ll be working on full Vista compatibility in the coming releases
Excellent news.
I have been running Podium on Vista for about a year now with few issues (all resolved now). Official support is still a big deal IMO as I would not have used Podium if I was trying it out for the first time and noticed it had no Official vista support. I would have waited for that first.
Many are understandably still cautious about moving to a new OS and want to see the dev make the first move to support it, before they migrate over. So official Vista support in Podium is great news thanks.
Additonally…
This is really just a write up for any user just starting out with Vista. Of course any changes to any OS or feature should be after a full back up. You are getting user feedback here though so I have sucessfully done this. As always though YMMV.
You may already know of the suggestions listed here or maybe not know of any of them. Hopefully it can serve as a helpful resource in one way or another. It might get the voters out and drive more traffic to this thread…
Perhaps the very first stop for any Vista Musician is thisaudio forum optimisation page for Vista Musicians
I would then say for an excellent broad breakdown of Vista, you really should read this great summary of general ideasand suggestions for Optimisations to safely try or avoid.
Disk thrashing / excessive disc activity / slow access
This is a problem I encountered very quickly even on a quad core PC with 4GB of ram. A big surprise that was. It would appear it has a number of possible causes. Here is a list of these possible causes…(FWIW I have since made the tweaks below and have no more excessive disc usage or thrashing).
Ready boost
Hereis an interesting article on Ready boost & Super Fetch.
Another can be found here.
Superfetch
It does speed app’ launching times (so fast there was not enough time for my Outlook 2007 splash screen to show up) but when I switched Superfetch off in Services, my free memory soared to 1 – 1.7GB and my apps took about 1 or 2 seconds more to load. Booting up took about 1 or 2 seconds more. Not much difference. Again YMMV.
If you are still not sure about Superfetch…this is a really excellent thread on Superfetch.
System Restore
Nice idea and seems better than in XP, much better, but takes up too many resources and is not something I want working in the background while I am using Podium. I disabled it on all my drives. With Vista Ultimate I have the surprisingly fully featured Back up and Restore centre, which I think is as good as any commercial product I have used.
Sidebar
Lovely with even more gadgets here but it can access the internet at unexpected times…gadgets refreshing info e.t.c so I disabled it.
Indexing
10 times better In Vista than in XP. WOW.
Apart from the search field in the start menu (one can even search for Podium and start it from there) there is a Search box in every windows Explorer window (top right). So if you cannot find something in a folder open My Computer for a far wider search. Within a few seconds of typing, whatever you are looking for will show up, or as you type (if it is there of course). Brilliant.
But…I think because Indexing tracks changes to files constantly or as you work it leads to disc thrashing or at times excessive disc activity…so I have disabled it. I noticed windows still searches very quickly. Still way better than XP. YMMV.
Hibernating
Another nice idea but when I switched it off my excessive disc activity finally stopped completely. Disk thrashing reduced with other tweaks so I guess this was the last of tweaks required for seriously smooth performance. Better than XP even. I am extremely happy with Vista’s performance now. Love it.
To make the necessary Hibernation tweak..
1. Go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance >Power options
2.Simply choose your existing plan
3.Click on your existing plans “Change plans settings” link and then click on Change advanced power settings (at the bottom of the screen)
4.Once there, on the Hard disk setting set it to Never
5.Sleep settings:…all three including Hibernate after are set to Never, off and Never on my system.
Aero on or off?
Filp 3D for instance needs Aero to work (AFAICT) and is very cool indeed. You can even click anyone of the 3D scrolling windows to bring that to the front not just the window in front of the 3D flip…however when I disabled Aero dwm.exe used 10 times less memory. yes you read that correctly.
You of course will know if it is a big enough memory resource to give away or not. YMMV. Being able to see a live preview (scrolling project in Podium for instance) in a mimi window on the task bar is ultra cool but I personally can do without it on my Music PC (Vista ultimate). I have another PC (Vista Premium) for a full on Graphical Vista experience.
More info on Dwm.exe here.
UAC
Great for security but I eventually switched it off. As I am an administrator, I should not need those consistent prompts to get permission. Having said that, a developer may need to see them to mimic most users Vista setups correctly.
Other personal discoveries over the last 12 months in Vista…
Favourite Links (Drag and drop favourite / frequently used folders):
I love this feature!
Top left of every Windows explorer window is a Favourite Links area. Simply drag and drop any folder to have it appear there every time. You can drag re order the folders in that list as well. You can also maximise that view by clicking on the Folders bar below it. Or dragging the Folders bar down.
Save a previous search:
Any searches can be saved. Great idea. I tend to search for the same things from time to time so this is a time saver.
Preview of file contents without opening the file:
This works with almost any file including PDF’s…fantastic.
Open an explorer Window, make sure it is fully maximised then go to Organise > layout > Preview pane. Click once on any note pad file, word doc, PDf or even spreadsheet to see a preview of the files in the left of the Explorer window. It gets better you can drag that window to the left to make it bigger. if you click on an audio file a mini version of Windows media player will appear in the preview pane and preview the audio file. Great!
Resizing folders:
If the folders are made large enough you can see a tiny preview of the contents as 3 D images. Very nice. Yu can reallyg et some jumbo icons in Vista. Great for folders with a few items in it.
Adding tags:
This works for almost any file (word docs, excel files and images), this seriously adds to the ease of finding files. You can simply click once on a file to bring up the properties below the window. Add or change any editable info there to taste. Lovely.
Developer friendly tools in Vista:
Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Administrative toolsIn particular the Event viewer and the Reliability and Performance monitor may be of some help.
Having said all this…you may find that Vista is 100% fine when you use it out of the box with no need to tweak anything, if that is the case don’t change a thing. :wink:. I just put this together so that people can have a better idea as to what might be good starting points for a tweak or solution to a problem. I might update this post or add more optimisations over time.
Almost forgot…here are some very useful forums for Vista users
The official Windows Vista magazine is a great source of info. I am a subscriber to their physical mag.
Here is their home page.
Here is their forum that deals with general comments e.t.c on Vista.
Hopefully some of the info in this post will help you (Frits) by gathering useful links into one place for you, to save you having to google for the more useful Vista resources out there. I spent the last year doing just that. Of course this post is also for any Podium user starting out with Vista for the first time as well. 😉
HTH.
ZynewaveMany thanks for the useful tips and links. I’ll go through them eventually. To begin with I’ll leave my Vista installation at defaults, to test that Podium and all my development tools are working like I was used to with XP.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
Many thanks for the useful tips and links. I’ll go through them eventually. To begin with I’ll leave my Vista installation at defaults, to test that Podium and all my development tools are working like I was used to with XP.
I think that is the best way to go. You may not need to change anything. Better to leave things as is and then see if changes are needed especially on a machine used for software development. Thanks for the feedback. 😉
ZynewaveBtw. do you have any recommendations on Anti-Virus software under Vista? It seems to be the only thing missing from Vista, with regards to security.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
Btw. do you have any recommendations on Anti-Virus software under Vista? It seems to be the only thing missing from Vista, with regards to security.
AVG (based on my experience) runs quite well without too big a CPU footprint it also has a free and Pro version. But I now use Windows Live One Care which I think is very light on resources while offering an improved Vista firewall, Antispyware and that missing Virus scanner.
Kaspersky is supposedly a bit tougher along with Nortons but I would go with a Microsoft solution any day for compatibility reasons. kaspersky for instance offer very weak support compared to Microsoft and Onecare gives you 90 days of full usage (60+ days left here) giving you plenty of time before making your mind up to buy it or not. Nice. It has a simple and easy interface as well. Sometimes less is more.
kaspersky compared to One care is also very heavy on resources. One care is very light based on my tests. I stopped using Norton ages ago because of resource issues. Perhaps things have changed now.
Anyway personally I would recommend One care.
jpleongFrits, all the computer tech support people I know hate Vista with a passion. A few people I know have wiped their new Vista computers and replaced them with Windows XP Pro.
My dad purchased a Dell with Vista Home Premium and I’ve had a bear of a time making it play nice with the other computers on my parents’ home network (other machines running XP Pro, XP Media Center, and a Lacie NAS). That means a nice 90 minute drive to provide tech support when he can’t open his network folder… *sigh*
As far as virus-scan programs go, if you can get your hands on the corporate versions of either McAfee or Norton, that would be the best way to go. As opposed to the home versions, these allow you far more control over what, when, and how they do their thing. My father has McAfee home versions while I use the corporate version at work. The home version is simply too invasive and CPU intensive for the multi-media work I do and I’m glad I don’t have it.
And I don’t trust Microsoft. Sorry, Conquistador!
JP
Conquistador@jpleong wrote:
And I don’t trust Microsoft. Sorry, Conquistador!
JP
He he.. 🙂 for me it is not so much trusting Microsoft but more like choosing their solution based on my own not so good experience, reliablility wise, resources e.t.c with other solutions.
I think all current Anitvirus offerings have demo’s so Frits can easily try before he buys. 😉
jpleongFrits, you also may want to link to this poll from the other parts of this forum -some people might be like me and ignore the General Chat section of forums.
JP
Conquistador💡 Perhaps it might be a good idea to invite demo users of Podium to vote as well. Unless you only wanted existing customers. I am suggesting inviting them (by changing your original post for instance) because you will then have an idea as to what OS potential customers are using the Podium demo on as well.
Just a thought.
NiDerLanderMy vote is for “other” because I’m running Podium on WinXP Pro 64 bit version, and there is no such option in the poll.
Also, I’ve tried it under linux (JAD 1.1 alpha with wineasio). It is working there, but with not much useabilty due to big latency (yes, I know, this is not Podium fault, its because of wine emulation layer), so I stick with Win x64 for now.
Thanks,
Nick
🙂
darcyb62I haven’t been using Podium as much as of late and when I provide my system you will uderstand why.
Mac OSX 10.5.1 Leopard…
I run Podium (just on occasion) on WinXP Professional SP 2 under a VMware Fusion session. With exception of not being able to use my Firewire audio it works relatively well.
AYZXP Pro.
I want to try using Podium on Linux sometime too, though.. Just to see what happens.
PodianerI recently upgraded to Vista Home Premium. Podium runs smoothly so far.
KlempererI voted XP home as it is on my main music PC at home. But when abroad i now have a laptop with Vista home premium. It is the worst audio experience I ever had, but this has nothing to do with Podium. Even listening to some mp3s you recorded, or whatever audio, gives random-glitches and stuttering every 15-20 seconds. Reaktor uses more CPU with my new hp Turion64X2 2,2GHz with 3GB of RAM than my humble old laptop (AMD AthlonXP2200+, 704MB Ram, XP home) used – with the same Edirol UA25 card and the usual tweakings which are good for audio-production.
The audio glitches make musical work a real pain. There is an article about this here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/31/microsoft.technology which describes why Vista is worse than XP for certain users. Unluckily enough, for me too:-(.
So conquistador’s post above might be just great for me, in case it would include a workaround for all those Vista-audio-bugs for certain machines. I had hoped the drivers for my Edirol UA 25, especially for Vista 32 bit, would help, but no. As soon as my girlfriend’s old PC might “go to meet his makers;-) I’d immediately switch back to XP, using hers, as most laptops come with XPs that are just allowed to be used on the one and only machine.
By the way, another thanks from the heart for the Podium copy-protection!!! My challenge-response software is no fun if an OS is not good for you personally and so you have to reinstall your laptop often (like here, January the old laptop. then this week the new laptop with Vista, then maybe in a few weeks or as soon as I can get a not expensive XP a next time…and so on).
Interesting thread. Let’s see what next year will be….2010 we all might be on Windows 7, which is said to not be a bloated OS like Vista is- for me.
EDIT: did some short tests. With Rhino2, if you play a pad just using 5 fingers you can get Podium with my Vista home premium and the ??? bug after reading through conquistador’s very great advice-sites to 100%, audio drops, crackles for about 5 seconds, slowly comes back… ONE INSTANCE!!! Rhino2 is a very versatile synth, but from 2004…ran without the least problem on my very old Xp-laptop….:-(((. Same with Minimonsta. A real nightmare, and this after the “tweakings”, background services instead of programs mainly, but a few others. In fact those tweaks changed nothing for me. I just hope it will be better in 1 year for me, as now this is an unuseable Vista for me. Better improve my playing skills without laptop and waiting for making music when at home with my XP Pc. March 15 seems to be the day for SP1 to come out, with more than 100 bugfixes. Nice for all who have a good system with Vista, but there are MANY tales from people who simply run into horrible problems.